Resigning the Movement

After forty years of very orthodox pastoral ministry, I have a terrible confession to make. I am resigned to the fact that some of my friends will no longer be able in good conscience to have fellowship with me. I am ready to face the consequences, if they rally together to get me fired from my church and revoke my ordination. I have abandoned what many believe to be a major tenant of the faith.

I confess that I am no longer part of the church growth movement. I have come to the conviction that this movement is neither biblical nor holy. And I have to resign.

When I say something like this, my friends have shot back at me, "Don't you want people to come to Christ?" And I do desire that with all my heart. But I don't believe the desire to grow my church should be the motivation for my ministry. I am convinced this is a desire for worldly success rather than service to God. Where does the Bible urge us to develop a strategy for church growth? Instead, the Bible calls us to obedience and leaves growth up to God.

I remember reading Donald McGavern in seminary as he observed church growth. At that time it seemed to me that McGavern and other church growth specialists were showing where the church was alive. And to some extent they surely were. I was stirred as they pointed out instances of growth and began to enumerate principles that accompanied it. Some of the principles were great, like the need for much fervent prayer. Others often led to ungodly notions like the homogeneous principle that noted the most rapid church growth came in homogenous groups. This was attractive to some. After all who wants to go through the difficult process teaching people to love those who are different from them? That always requires miracles in people's lives. And everyone knows we can't count on God to do miracles everyday.

Church growth is not a Biblical measure of success. Yes, we see some phenomenal growth at certain times in scripture. More than 5000 people came to Christ in Jerusalem on the week of Pentecost. But if we turn back to John chapter 6 we have to say the ministry of Jesus failed. Huge crowds who had "believed" left Him. And as we study the event we discover that Jesus was clearly at fault. He surely could have said things in a way that would have been more palpable to people. Did He have to say, "Eat my flesh and drink my blood?" If Jesus could have taken our Friendship Evangelism class, He would never have made such a blunder.

Of course, you can say this was a temporary set back. Jesus knew what would happen after His resurrection. That perspective seems to me to be alien to the attitudes that come from the church growth movement. Does anyone look at a temporary slump as God's work in the church? What about a ten year slump as God accomplishes something we will only understand in the heavenlies? I know some great men in large churches that are saying things like, "God works in eternity." But everyone seems to hear, "If you aren't growing rapidly, you are failing."

Even this perspective on timing does not fully take into account the will of God or His judgment. We love the wonderful account of Isaiah's call in chapter six of his prophesy. I just went over this passage with a group of students in a seminary class on Foundations for Christian Ministry. The students were clearly moved by Isaiah's powerful account. But I did not stop with verse 8 as we often do. I had them read to the end of the chapter. I pointed out that God called Isaiah to failure.

"Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy,and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed."

Isaiah was to harden people's hearts until judgment had taken them all away. I told the class that following God's call means being faithful even when no one will respond.

The church growth movement promotes a wrong means of discerning God's direction for ministry. If you only do what will produce growth, you will not be open to following wherever God leads. Remember Phillip in Acts chapter 8? Wise men today would have refuted his "imagined" vision. Common sense tells us God wouldn't want him to leave the great revival in Samaria where the whole country was turning to Christ to go out to Gaza where no one lived. The chances were slim that he would find even one person there. And what benefit could witnessing to one foreign traveler produce for the Kingdom of God?

I admit that watching for the work of God around you is a legitimate part of discerning God's will. But the point of this is watching for God's work. The foundation principles of the church growth movement seem to focus on methods of reaching people that would work if there were no God.

We have often sought the "wisdom" of worldly leaders for principles of marketing the church. A friend of mine recently told me, "It looks like we need to go to the ungodly to tell us what the ungodly are looking for so we can fill our churches with the ungodly."

I want to be part of a different movement that I suspect still has a few adherents. I want to join the church obedience movement. I want to join that group of people who measure success by pleasing God rather than impressing the world. I pray to be part of that group who obey God and cry out to Him to build His church by His power and for His glory rather than ours.