There is a growing trend among adherents of the Church Growth movement to treat the church as just another business. It should come as no surprise, then, that a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article discusses the latest developments of this trend, the megachurch.
This trend is not an aberration based on misapplication of Church Growth principles, but the logical extension of these principles. The successful church, as measured by the Church Growth adherents, is a thoroughly Americanized vision of success. The successful church is a growing church–more programs, more people. If your church is not growing you must be doing something wrong. Maybe you haven't analyzed your market well enough, or you need to invest more time, people, and money into your efforts. Church Growth materials always speak in investment language. For example, I remember being taught in Church Growth classes that on the average it takes six visits with a prospective member to get him to your church. Another example is the way they interpret the parable of the sower–which we'll look at later-in terms of focusing efforts on the good soil. The implication of both examples is that if you invest x amount of people, time and money into a high-yield-opportunity prospective member, you'll produce y number of church members. It's almost an economic formula. The Reformers well knew, and we'll see later, too, that this is not the biblical view of the successful church.
In their book, Ten Steps For Church Growth, Donald McGavran and Win Arn advise that in our efforts to build the church "we must act as though we alone were responsible and pray as though God alone were responsible." This schizophrenic view of the Great Commission ends up throwing everything onto our efforts. Following this advice, the church profiled in the WSJ article sent out groups to study the success of secular firms such as IBM, Xerox, and Disney. The result is a church modeled after the secular, American business world. Now there's nothing wrong with the business world as such, but it's hardly the biblical model for the church.
A Consumer Oriented Church
Another business strategy advocated by Church Growth adherents is the marketing of the church. In the business world this means finding out what the consumer wants and then tailoring your product and approach to fill that want. For those who follow Church Growth principles this is no less true for the church than for other businesses.
How is this accomplished? First of all, by offering all sorts of activities at the church that have nothing to do with its reason for being. For our "megachurch," this means weight lifting facilities, aerobics classes, a pool hall, a restaurant, and Broadway-style shows. The church is supposed to be in the world but not of the world, but evangelicals, like the Pharisees before them who thought the best way to avoid taking the Lord's name in vain was never to say it at all, think they can escape even being in the world by turning the church into a substitute for it.
The second way Church Growth seeks to get people to "buy into the product" is by removing everything that is distinctive about the church and tailoring the message to appeal to narcissistic consumers. Worship is replaced by entertainment; preaching of the gospel by a series of pop-psychology pep-talks. They are, according to the WSJ article, "stripped of most of the old hymns, liturgy and denominational dogma that tend to bore the video generation." Timing is all important for these consumers who expect instant gratification. They'll squeeze some time for worshiping God into their schedules, as long as they don't have to miss anything else. Therefore, services run with split-second timing. An associate pastor at the church profiled says he was "chided once for exhorting his audience to 'raise your hands up'-the redundant 'up' slowed the service by a vital second." And what is the purpose of all this? To create, as the senior pastor of this church says, a place "that a totally godless, secular person can come to and not feel threatened." One man admitted that he attends this church in hopes of finding a date. How different this is from what the Reformers, following the Scriptures, saw as the purpose of the church.
Church Growth and the Reformers
It is often asserted that Church Growth principles and techniques are independent of any theological system. But nothing could be further from the truth. Upon analysis, Church Growth turns out to be based upon certain assumptions about such things as the interpretation of Scripture, the purpose of preaching, and the nature and purpose of the church. Let's look at these one at a time.
The Scriptures: Revelation or Instruction Manual?
Like many evangelicals, Church Growth adherents see the Scriptures as a book of principles and examples for us to follow. When an evangelical reads the Gospels, for instance, he usually reads an account of an event in Christ's life and interprets it to be Christ showing him what he should do in similar situations. He sees Christ as an example, and instead of finding Christ in the Old Testament, he succeeds in finding Moses in the Gospels. As with Roman Catholicism, Christ has become the new lawgiver. In like manner, McGavran and Arn state that, the "New Testament is a series of Church Growth Documents. [it was] written by Church Growth people to Church Growth people to help the church grow," and they state further that "as the Scripture is read through Church Growth eyes, one discovers that it bubbles with Church Growth information, illustrations, principles, and priorities." The parable of the sower is a typical example of how they use this method and misinterpret Scripture. In the parable, a sower sows his seed on various soils. The seed produces various results, with only the good soil producing a crop. The Church Growth materials tell us that the point of this passage is that we should focus our efforts on the good soil, since that is obviously what the sower did the next time. However, in both Matthew and Luke, Jesus explains this parable, and strangely, he doesn't say anything about focusing our efforts on the good soil. Like the seed, the power is in the Word itself, not in the soil it lands on. The point of the parable is that we are to scatter the seed everywhere possible and let the Word take its course. If we were to focus our efforts solely on people who appear receptive (the good soil), much missionary work would go undone, for there are many groups that are incredibly hostile to the gospel.
In contrast, the Reformers recognized that the Scriptures are about Christ and his work on our behalf. Christ is everywhere in the Scriptures. (See Jn 5:39 and Lk 24:27.) The Old Testament points forward to him, telling us what he would do for us. The Gospels show him to us as he accomplishes all for our salvation. When we read of Christ doing something in the Gospels, the point is not to show us what we should do, but rather, to show us how Christ fulfilled the Law in our place, because we could not. The epistles look back to Christ and his work so that we may be confident of our salvation. For the Reformers, the Scriptures are not God's instruction book, but rather, revelation of what he did to save us.
Preaching: Conversion or Advice Column?
The big word for Church Growth, as it pertains to preaching, is "relevance." People have problems with their families, marriages, jobs, finances, and they want to know how to improve themselves. The answer, according to Church Growth advocates, is sermons on these topics. People want to hear any plan for self-improvement. What they don't want to hear, and what Church Growth style preaching avoids, is exactly what the Reformers knew was central to biblical preaching.
The Reformers knew that the essence of sound preaching is the preaching of the Law and the Gospel. The Law tells men exactly what they don't want to hear. They are sinful, alienated from their God, and cannot do anything to change this situation. Rather than creating a place "that a totally godless, secular person can come to and not feel threatened," the Law terrifies men. It drives them to despair, to make them run to the cross. There the Gospel proclaims that God has saved them solely by the death of Christ, apart from anything they can do. Biblical preaching is not an advice column from the pulpit, but preaching of the finished work of Christ for sinful men. There is nothing more relevant to men's lives than this.
The Church: The Body of Christ or 12-Step Group?
By now, we have a clear picture of Church Growth adherents' view of the church. The church is just another organization in the world. The church is a business or a product to be marketed and, as we saw earlier, it has to "get people to buy into the product." To do this, Church Growth proponents examine society to see what people like. Then they adopt practices that conform to society. The homogeneous church is a result of this principle.
The Church Growth leaders tell us that it is a sociological fact that people feel most comfortable around people like themselves. Realizing this, they tell us we should target certain groups according to our community's make-up. If the community consists primarily of white, upper-class families with children, earning six-figure incomes, we should focus our efforts on creating a church where they will feel comfortable.
There is a problem with this. Granted, sociologically speaking, people feel most comfortable around others like themselves. The Church Growth people fail to ask why this is the case, and more important, what should be the church's response to that. If we conclude that being alienated from both God and each other is the result of man's sinful condition, then maybe the church's response should be heterogeneity. In Ephesians 2:14 isn't this the point of Paul's comments about Christ breaking down the dividing wall between us? It's odd that, while Church Growth adherents are so fond of looking at the example of the early church, they completely miss this. The picture of the early church is one of ever increasing inclusiveness. There are rich and poor, male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile together in each congregation. It's hard to imagine two groups with less in common than the Jews and Gentiles and yet, they were together because in Christ there are no longer these divisions amongst us. If they had followed Church Growth principles we might have two churches today, a Jewish church and a Gentile church.
When we examine the purpose of the church as envisioned by Church Growth, we find a practice that is common with most evangelical churches. With its myriad programs for every conceivable group, the purpose of the church becomes everything. It's a support group for single mothers, a place where singles can mingle, a baby-sitter, a men's club, and, with its various Bible studies on every possible problem, it resembles a 12-step self-help group more than anything else.
How different is the biblical view of the church's purpose; the Reformers' view. In the section on Ministry, Word, and Sacraments in his Enchridion (a training manual for young pastors, in the form of questions and answers), Martin Chemnitz says, "the Holy Spirit is efficacious and works in [the church] through the Word and Sacraments in such a way that he calls, enlightens, converts, and sanctifies and preserves those who are saved, namely so that they repent, believe in Christ, and bear fruits worthy of repentance." (Acts 26:20) This is the church's purpose. The church is singularly concerned with the salvation of sinners. Nothing ministers to their needs more than applying the righteousness of Christ to their lives.
The Truly Successful Church
If the marks of the successful church are not to be found in the number of programs it has, or how many people it has, what then are the marks of the successful church? To answer this question it is necessary to note what are the marks of the true church. As the Reformers rightly understood, if the church's purpose is the salvation of sinners, then the marks of the church are that the Word of God is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered. It is through these means that the gospel comes to sinners. Therefore, the marks of the successful church are the marks of the church, for no matter if the church is large or small, if the Word of God is rightly taught and the Sacraments rightly administered, then it is fulfilling its God-ordained reason for being. "And the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."–Matt. 16:18.
