Recovering Church Growth Addict

I have blogged here on my reasons for returning to the local church. But one thing is certain. I did not return the same guy that left the local church 11 years ago. When I left the local church I was consuming every church growth book I could get my hands on. I still have the inflated library to proove it. I learned much that is helpful to me to this day. However, I have had a definite shift in my thinking about leading a church. Here are some random thoughts I have had in this area.

From outside in to inside out. Much of what I learned about church growth was what I would call an outside-in philosophy. It felt like "throw as much mud against a wall and see how much sticks". So, we would mass market (meaning much money for slick mailouts). Well, you could not market without something to market. So, we spent much time coming up with cool sounding / marketable message series and titles (I knew we had gone too far the Sunday we had a female in a bathrobe in the drama). Did big productions. Created as many programs as possible that might appeal to the community. Researched "felt needs" and created even more programs to meet these needs. We did anything we could to draw a crowd of people. Looking back, I can see the army of people it took to keep all of this in the air and the enormous energy and time it required. [Oh yeah, we did increase the number of people attending our church dramatically over these years]

Then I look at Jesus' ministry and I see that every time the crowds began to get big, He threw out a challenge that He knew would chase many of them away (see Matthew 8:18-22 as one example among many). His mission was not a local one. It was not a mission to only a few. So, what was He thinking? You would think with only 3 1/2 years to get this thing off the ground Jesus would have wanted as many as possible following "the Way" (see Acts 9). When Jesus ascended to Heaven, there was only 120. But because He built a solid foundation the early church was able to grow not only by addition, but exponentially.

It was an inside-out strategy. Rather than creating as many programs / strategies as possible that would bring in as many people as possible, hoping many of them will stick ... it seems healthier to grow as many radical Christians as possible, to send them out into the marketplace where they come into contact with thousands every week that do not know Christ. If they are radical about their faith, they will not be able to do anything but spread it to those around them. Thus allowing for exponential growth rather than growth by addition.

But therein lies my challenge. I am an impatient person. Will I have the patience to spend the time to grow radical followers of Christ? Or will I give in to the pressure to "grow a church" faster and revert to "whatever it takes to get them in the building"? I know I'm older now ... and I believe more patient. I do believe if we had radical Christians making up our churches, we could not build building fast enough. In fact, we could stop building buildings and just meet in the stadiums that sit empty every Sunday.

Don't get me wrong. The Church Growth Movement brought some much needed change to the Church. We were out of touch with the world around us and very much ingrown and focused on our own stuff. We were simply walking through the motions of our traditions in many of our churches. The Church Growth Movement woke some of us up in ways we needed to be awakened. I am grateful for all I have learned from these resources. We do need to make sure we don't erect useless and even harmful barriers due to our church culture and traditions. We do need to be aware we are ministering in the 21st Century and not 1950. That does and must impact what we do and how we do it. But I have a desire to build up a body of believers that are radical about their faith and who take it to the streets every day to the people God constantly brings across our paths.

I am not anti church growth. I do believe a healthy church will grow numerically. I am for making disciples who make disciples ... whom God can use to grow His church. As I have said in the blog before, churches don't reach people. People reach people.