Perspectives on Church Growth (Part 2) • (Part 3) • (Part 1)
by Joel McDurmon

In Part 1 of this study, we introduced the church growth movement briefly and reviewed one author’s critique of it. Having highlighted certain New Age spiritual deceptions lying just beneath the surface of the movement, we ended by noting Rick Warren’s uncritical employment of radically immoral pop-icons as authorities for his purposes. The question is left: Why try so hard to be seen shaking hands with heathen heroes?

Church Growth: Cultural Sell-Out

The central problem has been ably laid out by John MacArthur, Jr. in perhaps his best book, Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the World:1

Ministry has married marketing philosophy, and this is the monstrous offspring. It is a studied effort to change the way the world perceives the church…. The experts are now telling us that pastors and church leaders who want to be successful must…. Provide non-Christians with an agreeable, inoffensive environment. Give them freedom, tolerance, and anonymity. Always be positive and benevolent. If you must have a sermon, keep it brief and amusing. Don’t be preachy or authoritative. Above all, keep everyone entertained.2

What is happening in the Warren-Driven movement is that a far reach is being made to comfort unbelievers, perhaps too far a reach. The plain Gospel is replaced by appeals to pop-psychology and glitzy icons with which unbelievers, especially of Warren’s Orange-County, easily relate. In an effort to appear “relevant” to culture, many churches let culture become the defining and driving force for their existence. When churches should be pirates of the unbelieving world—plundering what is of value for God’s kingdom—they are instead parrots, squawking back every rock tune, fashion, fad, and human vice imaginable. This is the essence of Megachurchism: it is simply the latest wave of pop-Christianity; a phenomenon of Twentieth Century American culture. The church is making itself relevant, so they say, to the modern world—brand new and cutting edge. Or is it?

Commenting on the move toward entertainment and away from traditional teaching in churches, one preacher noted,

I trust I am not given to finding fault where fault there is not; but I cannot open my eyes without seeing things done in our churches which, thirty years ago, were not so much as dreamed of. In the matter of amusements, professors have gone far in the way of laxity. What is worse, the churches have now conceived the idea that it is their duty to amuse the people.... Ought not many [church buildings] to be licensed for stage plays?3

While this is a pertinent critique of our current condition, it was preached already in 1889 by none other than Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892). Apparently, church growth movements are nothing new. Truth is, the church has always had bouts of acute self-consciousness when caught off-guard by a spurting culture. Spurgeon dealt with the problem in Victorian England over a century ago. The rotund Baptist preacher objected, “The fact is, that many would like to unite church and stage, cards and prayer; dancing and sacraments.”4 Sound familiar?

MacArthur has also taken a more recent (hot off the press) stab at watered-down Christianity, editing a volume aimed at strengthening Christian discernment. Fool’s Gold: Discerning Truth in an Age of Error5 is mostly composed of essays by MacArthur’s associates, with a few by himself for good measure. The book is helpful but lacks the robust insight of the earlier work, Ashamed of the Gospel. MacArthur does reiterate the strong theme—“What happens to preachers who obsess about cultural ‘relevancy’ is that they become worldly, not godly”6—but subsequent chapters give only adequate, even sub-par in places, treatments of their subjects. For example, the chapter aimed at Rick Warren’s work finds only mild and tame “strengths” to cheer, then devotes most of its space to tired criticism. Some of the remarks, to be fair, are poignant. First, Warren has an unacceptably “Casual approach to Scripture.” He often cites whimsically selected scriptures out of context, strains passages to make them fit his points, and switches Bible versions to get the words that suit him best. This is, “interpretive irresponsibility.”7 Second, Warren also errs with “An incomplete approach to theology” in which “repentance and self-denial are conspicuously absent.”8 With sin and judgment left out of his message, “Warren does not fully represent who God is.”9 With these points I wholeheartedly agree.

A third point, however, is weaker. The author emphasizes that Warren’s books have taken too high a position of prominence among his readers, even replacing the Bible for devotions. This is a serious problem, if it is accurately represented. The author’s evidence is scant and not authoritative. Would Warren really have believers set aside the Bible for his Word? I do not know. Besides the phenomenon is not peculiar to Warren’s followers. Most Christians long ago left behind their Bible for end-time fictions, something much more flaky than Warren’s devotions. Worse yet, one early twentieth century Christian went so far as to annotate his end-time fictions right into the Bible. Worse again, having been to a few Christian rummage sales, where did those donated lots of romance novels come from? Christians do need to get back to the Bible, but at this point, even Rick Warren is an improvement.

The fourth point is the weakest yet, repeating cliché arguments against Warren’s books. The author claims that Warren’s PDC “emphasizes marketing techniques and business strategies as the primary method for healthy church growth.”10 This is pure nonsense. Warren clearly teaches that “Attracting seekers is the first step in the process of making disciples, but it should not be the driving force of the church. While it is fine for a business to be market driven . . . a church has a higher calling. The church must be seeker sensitive but it must not be seeker driven.”11 But the fact that Warren wrote this at the outset ten years ago has not dissuaded numerous critics from making the claim against him, and MacArthur’s writer is no different. Warren’s critic is also not finished. He claims that in “seeker-sensitive churches . . . success in ministry is measured in terms of numbers of people in attendance,” and that, “those who preach faithfully but never produce a large congregation...are told they are doing something wrong.”12 Again, nonsense and more nonsense. Not content with a single straw-man, the author erects an army of them. Warren addresses both of these problems in his original work in a chapter titled “Myths About Growing Churches.” There it is in bold type, unmistakable to any reader: “Myth #1: The Only Thing That Large Churches Care About Is Attendance.” Warren explains, “The truth is, you won’t grow large if that is all you care about.”13 As for the second claim, we have another bold face heading: “Myth #5: If You Are Dedicated Enough, Your Church Will Grow.”14 Warren has no illusions about growth and human efforts:

growth cannot be produced by man! Only God makes the church grow...All of our plans, programs, and procedures are worthless without God’s anointing. Psalm 127 says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.” A church built by human effort alone. We must never forget whose church it is. Jesus said, “I will build my church” (Matt 16:18).15

After Warren went through such pains to be so clear on these matters, I question why such a distinguished pen as MacArthur’s would allow these long-dead arguments to get into print under his name. I do not intend to act as Warren’s apologist, but only to call out the kind of sloppy scholarship which halts the course of honest dialogue.16

Some of Fools Gold, however, does succeed in alerting us to areas of foolishness in the modern church. One good section in particular is MacArthur’s own chapter17 on church music. He gives a quick history of modern church music showing a degenerate progression from thoughtfully written hymns, through “Gospel songs” which relied on emotional refrains, to highly repetitious and emotional “praise choruses.” He reveals a parallel change: those who authored earlier hymns were primarily trained theologians; but later and now more recently they are almost always professional musicians or “worship leaders” with little or no theological qualifications. MacArthur does warn that “older is not necessarily better,”18 yet he reveals the degenerative process that should make us even more wary of the newer.

The music issue is important because it is one of the hot issues for Rick Warren-style churches. Warren has quipped, “There is no such thing as Christian music, only Christian lyrics.”19 Perhaps he was just trying to start dialogue on the matter, but surely no one could be this ignorant. Does he mean to say that if I set Bach’s Chaconne from Violin Partita No. 2 beside some acid bath for the ears called “death-metal” he could not tell the difference? No difference between Mendelsohn and Metallica? Chopin and Eminem? Is not that music obvious which is inspired by piety and itself inspires us toward goodness and beauty? And is that music not just as obvious which is the product of anger and hatred and which seeks no reconciliation but destruction? It does not take lyrics to explicate these aims: they are the product of the music and the music is the product of them. This can equally be said for all emotions, for good or ill. There is a music designed to reinforce the complacency and comfort seeking of self-absorbed suburbanites, and there is just as much for the shallow believer who refuses to engage biblical truth but believes he “feels the presence of God” in contemporary music. And as an alternative to these there is indeed true Christian music.

In the end, the question is not one of old versus new, but Christian versus pagan. Deciding this question first will eradicate a good deal of both the new and the old. But to do so we need some principled ideas by which to judge. Part 3 of this article will, among other things, make some suggestions along these lines to help your church to look critically upon its future.                    

1. John MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books. 1993).

2. MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel, 45.

3. Charles Spurgeon, quoted in MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel, 86.

4. Quoted in MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel, 67.

5. John MacArthur, ed., Fool’s Gold?: Discerning Truth in an Age of Error (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005.

6. MacArthur, Fool’s Gold, 39.

7. Nathan Busenitz, “A Sense of Purpose: Evaluating the Claims of The Purpose Driven Life” in MacArthur, Fool’s Gold, 50. (Busenitz’s critique of Warren’s hermeneutic sounds very much like dispensationalism. All the authors of Fool’s Gold? are dispensationalists.)

8. Busenitz, “A Sense of Purpose: Evaluating the Claims of The Purpose Driven Life,” 53.

9. Busenitz, “A Sense of Purpose: Evaluating the Claims of The Purpose Driven Life,” 54.

10. Busenitz, “A Sense of Purpose: Evaluating the Claims of The Purpose Driven Life,” 59.

11. Warren, Purpose Driven Church, 79–80.

12. Busenitz, “A Sense of Purpose: Evaluating the Claims of The Purpose Driven Life,” 59.

13. Warren, Purpose Driven Church, 48, emphasis his.

14. Warren, Purpose Driven Church, 58.

15. Warren, Purpose Driven Church, 14, 59.

16. Another chapter in Fool’s Gold, which I do not cover here, gives N. T. Wright a very similar treatment. While it offers some good thoughts, it resurrects old straw men and misrepresents Wright, often out of context.

17. MacArthur, “Solid Rock? What the Bible Says about Contemporary Worship Music,” Fool’s Gold, 111–129.

18. MacArthur, Solid Rock? What the Bible Says about Contemporary Worship Music,” Fool’s Gold, 115.

19. Warren, Purpose Driven Church, 281.