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

The first two parts of this study looked at recent books on the church growth movement. Part 2 left off with a critique of the critiques, so to speak. This final installment will offer some suggestions based on the positive side of some church growth techniques, but first must reveal the darker, hidden side of church growth criticism.

Church Growth: Communist Conspiracy?

One circle of critics has allowed itself, I believe, to read too much into the names and techniques of the church growth movement. These well-intentioned Christians see Rick Warren and his like as part of a large conspiracy involving the Unites Nations and wealthy corporate leaders. There are strange connections (most of which I will not cover here), and I am thankful that there are Christians out there who follow those connections (saving me the trouble!). But I question the degree to which some Christians say these ties extend. One reason for this is that most of the conspiratorial claims are the product of premillenial and dispensational theology. Dispensationalists are watching and waiting for a one-world government to form and to be commandeered by a one-world ruler they call the “antichrist” (although the term is never used of a single individual in Scripture). This belief keeps them keen on every religious or political development which they can interpret as one more piece in the antichrist puzzle.

A corollary to this problematic view is that every development or belief which emphasizes the growth of God’s kingdom, involvement with culture, or an optimistic future must necessarily, to be consistent with their theology, be lumped in together with their view of antichrist. The pessimism of the dispensationalists and premillenialists forces them to interpret growth as suspicious if not satanic. Thus, legitimate Christian triumph is understood by them as humanistic utopianism, and any attempt at social or economic reform on the part of Christians is seen as part of the fulfillment of Revelation chapters 13 and 17.

Unlike many of today’s pessimistic church growth critics, who–wound up by the dynamics of dispensationalism—can only see church involvement in society as part of the coming kingdom of “the antichrist”—Charles Spurgeon at least saw church activism and influence as possible: “If the great host of professing Christians were, in domestic life and in business life, sanctified by the Spirit, the church would become a great power in the world.”1 At least as much damage has been done to the Church by decades of dispensationalism than could be done by an army of seeker-sensitive Churches. If I had to choose, I would rather my church be “Purpose-Driven” than Dispensational-driven.

The crippling effects of the pessimistic outlook pressed upon the Church by our premillenial brethren has become a self-fulfilling prophecy in which a capable body of Christian people has, socially speaking, atrophied and fallen lame. It is in this regard that premillenial and dispensational Christians have become the real conspirators with U.N.-style humanism. Responding to the wild assertions of Dave Hunt, Gary DeMar and Peter Leithart have noted this phenomenon. Under the heading “Who’s Really an Ally of the New Age?,” they write,

Christians may also be unwitting allies of the New Age in another sense. If Christians retreat from the cultural issues of the day, who will, humanly speaking, visibly control the future course of history? If Christians won’t, humanists will. Thus, Hunt’s vision of the future becomes the worst kind of self-fulfilling prophecy when it is taken seriously by Christians. Christians retreat because there is no hope. As more Christians retreat, there is less hope. Finally, the whole cultural field is left to humanists who insist on taking us down the road to an international statist utopia.2

Thus there is a hidden side of church growth criticism—one we should be just as wary of as we should be of the New Age leanings of men like Warren and Schuller. Christian pessimism becomes a tail-chasing endeavor. It consumes its followers and leads to a “Christian ghetto” mentality. Those who become absorbed in the related conspiratorial thinking often grow isolated and paranoid; their ingrown and perverted sense of “us-against-them” devolves into “self-against-all-dissenters.” All who object to the most minor point of the theory must be abettors to the enemy. Conspiracy theory, then, can be a down-ward spiral into the ninth circle of self-conscious hell: the inner circle of pure paranoia.

This is not to dismiss the idea of conspiracy altogether. It is, rather, fundamental to understanding history—in fact it is the central point of all religion and life. Conspiracy is simply the agreements upon creeds, or lifestyles, along which humans organize and pool resources toward their goals. In short, conspiracies are the outworking of our beliefs in everyday life. There are two great conspiracies active in history: the City of God, and the society of Satan.3 Those who are not with Christ are against him. Indeed, we should not look to the U.N.4 or any other godless institution for guidance. Rather we should be able to examine those institutions, discerning where they have usurped or mocked the Biblical worldview, and reclaim that action or function for the Kingdom of God.

It is this stark truth which leads us to our next point. If the lines of faith are drawn so clearly in history, how can we tell who is on what side? Especially when some within Christ’s church are accusing others within Christ’s church of being wolves in sheep’s clothing, what visibly separates the believer from the deceiver?

Church Membership: A Doctrinal No-Man’s Land

An unlikely answer is church membership. Unfortunately, you will look in vain for a good, let alone a unified doctrine of visible church membership. In a baptistic culture that has so much exalted the so-called “invisible church,” we have, perhaps, for fear of being called Romanists, failed to study the visible church on this finer but fundamental point. Jon Abboud, Dean of Reformed Episcopal Seminary, has recently completed a doctoral dissertation5 dealing with the subject. He states,

our Evangelical roots have led us to so focus on the individual’s relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, that we have relegated the role of the Church to something indifferent or unimportant. Quiet times have wrongly been portrayed as more important than corporate worship. Professions of faith have been made the test of salvation; often to the exclusion of church membership, and participation in the dominical sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper have been reduced to something we do for the Lord rather than His means of grace.6

Abboud lowers his sites on the overused though vague idea of an “Invisible Church,” arguing that few if any references to such a concept are found in Scripture. Instead, we find explicitly organic examples of what the church should be: a family, or a vine and branches. He notes,

Having recognized that there is such a thing as the Invisible Church, we must also understand that, practically speaking, there is little else we can healthily say on that subject. We must deal with the Visible Church, and we must deal with it locally and temporally, for that is how the Scriptures address this subject.

One solution to many of our problems—whether church growth or dispensationalism—is simply a proper view of the Visible Church as the living, growing body of Christ on Earth. By drawing that visible line Christians refocus their attention on their brothers and sisters as well as sharpen their views against encroaching shadows of humanism.

While Abboud does remain critical of Rick Warren’s efforts in many ways, and rightfully so, he agrees that there is something we can learn from Warren’s labors. One aspect I think many people overlook (this point even Abboud does not mention) is Warren’s system of church membership. While he goes to great lengths to make his church sociable for everyone, Warren actually has a strict doctrine of church membership. He views his local church as one ring in a series of concentric circles beginning with the larger community. He see the masses who only attend church as another ring, “the crowd.” It is only those who have committed themselves to further learning and supporting the church, having passed a membership class, who can actually become members. Further levels of membership include commitments to regular tithing and group study. This revolutionized view of membership, which may have some faults, is an improvement over the lip-service it has received in past decades. Warren notes this: “Joining a church used to be an act of conformity. . . . You joined a church because everybody else did. Now the rules have changed. . . . [M]embership is now an act of commitment.”7 While the details of Warren’s position need refining, he has hit upon two important things. First, Church Membership is not like membership in a club; instead it requires hard work, discipline, commitment, and a desire to progress. Second, Church Membership should be linked to the tithe. Those who do not invest themselves in God’s Kingdom financially have not really done so spiritually, and should have no right to vote in the local congregation.8

Another area, I should note before I close, in which Warren has excelled deals more with potential members. He has mastered demographics and direct-mail communication. Perhaps learned from his time with marketing guru Peter Drucker, these techniques need not be perceived as antithetical to the Gospel and should be observed by pastors. For a church that wishes to grow, demographics can help by at least informing you who the people most likely to attend your church are. The church should prepare itself to minister to them. Likewise, direct mail can serve a good purpose. In a world hardened to door-knocking because of Jehovah’s Witnesses, an unobtrusive postcard invitation provides a more likely way to draw visitors. Those who have uncritically excoriated such measures perhaps have not taken seriously Christ’s lesson to reach the highways and byways, and today, that means mail and email as well as roads.

Conclusion

The church growth movement has undergone severe criticism. Much of this criticism has been deserved for diluting the Gospel and for avoiding “negative” topics such as sin and judgment. Unfortunately, however, much of the wholesale criticism has ended with little or no analysis of the positive side of this exponentially growing phenomenon. Some of this results from conspiratorial excesses derived from bad eschatology, and some from the apparent belief that no technique from the business world has any place in the church. We should be very wary of worldliness in the church, but in some cases perhaps the business world has done a better job at applying biblical principles than the Church has. We must be willing to apply science where it can lawfully, according to God, be applied. Churches should have the ability to offer financial counseling to members who need it. The failure to do so is one reason humanists control economics. And I see no reason to prohibit applying some things we have learned from advertising and from communications to evangelism, seeing that the Gospel is not overwhelmed by such.

The issue will always be how to keep a clear line drawn between the Kingdom of Christ and that of the world, while extending a wholehearted invitation to whosoever will to cross over to our side, the Church. To this end we need to be willing to reform our doctrine of church membership, a task that will challenge traditionalists and megachurches alike. One author noted that, “Despite the megachurch surge, overall church attendance has remained firmly flat.”9 This can only mean one thing: megachurches are indeed stealing their sheep from small local congregations. If he really believes in committed membership, I suspect Warren will warn all those who follow him to send those wandering sheep back to the original parish they should be committed to. Such decentralization could be one step in improving relations with traditional churches. Meanwhile, traditional churches might think about getting to the highways and byways—places no mall-image megachurch will likely influence anyway—for getting off the duff is the first step for all of us.

1. Quoted in MacArthur, Ashamed of the Gospel, 87.

2. Gary DeMar and Peter Leithart, The Reduction of Christianity: A Biblical Response to Dave Hunt (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press/Atlanta, GA: American Vision Press, 1988), 93.

3. See the excellent article by Rousas J. Rushdoony, “The Society of Satan,” in Biblical Economics Today, ed. Gary North (October/November 1979).

4. See Rousas J. Rushdoony, “Has the U. N. Replaced Christ as a World Religion?” in Your Church—Their Target, ed. Kenneth W. Ingwalson (Arlington, VA: Better Books), 1966, 213–234. Rushdoony had already noticed that pietism led to cultural retreat and therefore culture defeat for Christians. He concludes, “The coming of the United Nations was not a trick of politicians but a religious necessity, called into being by the religious humanism of the Western world. . . ,” and it, “would have been futile if the theological climate had not favored them” (233).

5. Jon Abboud, Toward a More Scriptural View of the Church: A Series of Lectures for Students of Reformed Episcopal Seminary to Help Increase Awareness of the Importance of the Local Church to Proper Pastoral Function and a Healthy Christian Life (Doctor of Ministry dissertation, Westminster Theological Seminary, 2004).

6. I am taking my quotations from an un-paginated copy of Dr. Abboud’s project. Unfortunately, therefore, I have to leave my references without page numbers. All inquiries for copies of the dissertation can be directed to me at dunamis7@poetworld.net or to the librarian at Westminster Seminary.

7. Warren, PDC, p. 312-3.

8. No one has made this point better than Gary North, Tithing and the Church (Tyler, TX: Dominion Press, 1994). See especially pages 38–40.

9. William C. Symonds, Brian Grow and John Cady, “Earthly Empires: How evangelical churches are borrowing from the business playbook” Businessweek Online, May 23, 2005. www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_21/b3934001_mz001.htm.