Since its inception twenty-four years ago, the Church Growth Movement has promised rapid numerical growth to American churches. Through researching the sociological, demographic, and psychological needs of people groups, an approach to numerical church growth was proposed. Full length books, hot off the press, with flashy titles such as “Your Church Can Grow” and “Church Growth: State of the Art” have popularized these ideas.
Detailed and documented studies verifying the effectiveness of this approach have found their way into popular Christian magazines and journals. In numerous Church Growth Conferences, Christian leaders and pastors have sung the praises of these techniques and testified with glowing reports about how these methods have led to remarkable growth in their churches.
Yet many sincere Christian leaders have remained cautious. Others with spiritual discernment have pointed to gaping holes in the Church Growth Movement’s techniques and results. Nevertheless, many assemblies and individuals have been ensnared by these seemingly successful evangelistic methods.
A growing number of serious Christians have begun to question the promises and claims of the Church Growth Movement. They have asked themselves, “Do these methods promote true numerical church growth?” Another crucial question that many have asked is, “Do these techniques bring unsaved men and women to conversion in the Lord Jesus Christ?”
The most current research indicates that the Church Growth Movement is alarmingly ineffective at leading the unsaved to salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. Researchers point out that since the Church Growth Movement began in 1973, the churches in America do not show any increase in numerical growth.
Christian researcher George Barna, representative of those who recognize this situation, writes, “Since 1980, there has been ‘no growth’ in proportion to the adult population that can be classified as ‘born again’ Christians. The proportion of born again Christians has remained constant at 32% despite the fact that churches and para-church organizations have spent billions of dollars on evangelism. More than 10,000 hours of evangelistic television programming have been broadcast, in excess of 5,000 new Christian books have been published, and more than 1,000 radio stations carry Christian programming. And yet despite such widespread opportunities for exposure to the gospel, there has been no discernable growth in the size of the Christian body.”l This growing evidence casts serious doubts on the effectiveness of the Church Growth Movement and its techniques in producing numerical growth in North America.
Considering the recent evidence that these principles are not contributing to church growth, to what then can we attribute the apparent growth in many churches? Again, the Church Growth methodologists have come under attack. Observers point out that church growth techniques do not produce conversion growth, but unfortunately draw away faithful churchgoers from smaller churches through slick marketing strategy. The most recent research seems to bear out this distressing situation.
Author Ken Sidey writes, “Perhaps church growth’s greatest challenge in North America comes from research that shows that more than 80% of all the growth taking place in growing churches comes through transfer, not conversion. The statistic strikes at the heart. Whether by computer or spiritual power, the church growth movement must improve on those numbers.”2
In a revealing study of 3,000 people who joined 20 evangelical churches in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, researchers determined that 70% were evangelicals who transferred from other evangelical churches.3 The growing trend of transfer growth and the powerlessness of the North American evangelical church to reach the unsaved has infected smaller church denominations as well as the largest.
In 1988, a denominational newspaper for the Southern Baptist Convention revealed the evangelistic results for all the churches of that denomination and the results were shocking. This denomination, which is the largest Protestant group in the United States, reported in 1987 that within its 37,000 churches, there were on average only 2 converts baptized for every church. The newspaper further reported that 50,000 were baptized who transferred from other churches.4 Again in the largest Protestant denomination in our land the transfer of believers from one church to another is one of the largest contributing factors to numerical growth.
The Church Growth Movement is now beginning to speak about failure. Since 1973, millions of dollars have been poured into this movement, and the offense of the cross has been all but eliminated. Church Growth theology has left many sincere believers disillusioned through its empty promises of spiritual growth. Now in frank honesty, the ineffectiveness of its principles is being admitted. Leaders within the Church Growth Movement itself are haltingly, yet with candor, admitting the failure of the movement to produce conversion.
C. Peter Wagner, a leading author and spokesman for the Church Growth Movement, remarks, “I don’t think there is anything intrinsically wrong with the church-growth principles we’ve developed, or the evangelistic techniques we are using. Yet somehow they don’t seem to work…maybe something else is needed.”5
Many have pointed to an underlying assumption of the Church Growth Movement as the reason for its failure. The assumption is that people are disinterested in the traditional faithful preaching of the gospel and proclamation of the Word of God. The solution that Church Growth advocates propose is to draw the unsaved into churches through attractive entertainment and to soften the offense of the cross. Growth Churches have used jazzercise, drama, gospel magic, comedians, rock concerts, and sensitivity workshops to attract people to their churches.
To restate the words of C. Peter Wagner, these principles do not work; something else is sorely needed. May it also be humbly stated that what is needed is a clear and powerful preaching of the Word of God, combined with the deep conviction of sin produced by the Holy Spirit, undergirded by an assembly of believers on their knees in believing prayer.
The history of the Christian church has vividly taught us that all church growth and genuine spiritual transformation of the unsaved comes through the faithful and powerful preaching of God’s Word. The fundamentals of consistent prayer, faithful preaching, earnest personal witness, fellowship with God, and holiness in our walk are essential to biblical evangelism. Where these are absent the church will be powerless.
In 1939, G. Campbell Morgan, the beloved author and preacher, gave the church of the 1990’s a needed warning when he wrote, “When a technique is necessary to get people to listen to the gospel, there will be failure. That is not the method of Christ. To build an Institute in connection with the church, and provide all kinds of entertainment for the young people, in order that they may come to the Bible classes, is to be foredoomed to failure.”6
Biblical church growth has always been grounded on the principle that all spiritual work can only be achieved by spiritual men and women who employ spiritual methods. May the church of the Lord Jesus Christ soon return to this biblical mandate.
Endnotes:
1. George Barna, Marketing the Church (Navpress, Colorado Springs, CO. 1990)
2. Ken Sidey, “Church Growth Fine Tunes its Formulas,” Christianity Today (June 24, 1991), p. 46
3. Denyse O’Leary, “Study Deplores Supermarket Religion,” Moody Monthly (April, 1988), p. 97
4. “Revived Again: Students Challenged to Cast Nets,” Southwestern News (Nov. 1988), p. 8
5. Sidey, op cit., p. 46
6. G. Campbell Morgan, The Gospel According to Mark (Oliphants, London, 1956), p. 177