Something concerns me. A deep, gnawing concern that just won’t go away. I have been sitting and pondering (again) this whole issue of ‘church growth’. I have just read another blog (I won’t mention it because I generally think it is great) and one of the statements basically amounted to this: ‘If your church is small, it is failing and there is something wrong with the leader and his structure’. Now, this really does trouble me.
Firstly, is this completely true?
I pastor a church with a membership of about 60 people, a Sunday congregation of about 80 (ish) and a weekly outreach setup that connects with about 50 or so people. Many of the latter group don’t go to our Sunday services but they come along to our building Monday’s through Saturday’s. Now, when I came 4 years ago our Sunday congregation was half that, our membership was in the 30’s and we had little or no community connection at all. In my time, we have seen many people profess faith in Christ. Some have moved on. Some have stayed on but most have fallen away. I am left with only a handful who have stuck it out for 2 years or more and are still walking with Jesus.
Am I a failure?
I have a team of 2 Pastoral trainees, a full-time Women’s Worker, A Cafe Manager, a full-time Youth & Community Worker & soon to be 3 Interns. We run a comprehensive training programme through Porterbrook Training Institute and CCEF (see website link) and the long-term goal is to become a training ground for those wanting to enter into ministry in deprived areas.
Am I a failure?
I have people on the waiting list for baptisms because in my culture I prefer to ‘wait and see’ for a time before they make this massive public committment. I know that in the NT they were done straight away and there is no biblical warrant for waiting, but there is no biblical warrant for acting unwisely either. Baptism was almost a death sentence in the NT era and so I feel it is unfair to compare with our culture, in which people will do almost anything to have an ‘event’ in their mundane lives. My point is that as a body we are making a big splash in Niddrie but I am not seeing revival.
Am I a failure?
Of course, I want to see revival and I strongly believe the Lord can bring about revival but my concern is that there is this obsession, being driven by pastors of large churches mainly, fuelled by thinkers from the USA, to equate success with numerical growth. Now, I want to join with all of my fruitful brothers in praising God for their increasing congregations. I have no problems with that. I am not one of these sad gits who gets all bitter when he hears that a church has baptised millions of people in the last year. On the contrary, it excites me! My problem comes as I wonder how much of our UK church ‘growth’ is actually ‘free transfer’ growth as opposed to ‘gospel growth’.
Often in the UK a disgruntled member will leave their church and go to the one down the road. There they are welcomed with open arms because (1) it adds to their numbers and (2) it means more money in the kitty. Before long, family members join them and some do a smattering of friends. Hey presto! Church growth.
There is a real spirit of this in Edinburgh, in my opinion. We are too out of the way at Niddrie to be a part of this game, but I do watch and listen with interest. Some of the larger churches spend some time on top of the ‘flavour of the month’ hit list. The students (fickle lot) swap allegiances almost constantly. The city’s tag of ‘student church’ has swapped hands at least 4 times in my 4 years in the city. More dangerous than that, however, is the number of members ‘under discipline’ from one church welcomed unquestioningly into the fold of another community without any contact with their ‘home church’. I know this from personal experience. I think many churches in the UK are growing through this ‘strategy’ rather than any real gospel outreach.
The challenge for us as leaders is to really look at ourselves and ask: ‘What type of growth do we “really” have here’? One is about spiritual vitality and the other is not. Many large churches can hide an institutional spiritual malaise behind big attendances. They can appear ‘successful’ and us little fellas can appear to be ‘struggling’ when in reality the opposite is true.
I need to tease this one out of my brain and think about it more. But it is fermenting.