Church Health > Church Growth

You must excuse me from breaking the letter to God format but as I have yet to receive any emails from people looking to submit anything I find myself beginning to look at this blog as more of a place for general spiritual musings. I'll still write a good deal of letters but I'll also write a bit more conventionally sometimes too. Again, if you have something you want to post, whether a reply to one of these posts or simply something that is on your heart, send it to my email at spokes4oryoungfolks@gmail.com...Now on with it!

This title is slightly ambiguous so before you attack it and disregard the post, let me clarify. What I mean by church health is that the parishioners are seeking God in their lives and living out an authentic faith. I should probably go a bit further in explaining that I'm not trying to suggest absolute human perfection either. The truth is that we are called to a different kind of perfection as followers of Christ. It doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to sin no more but there are issues that can arise when we become legalistic and almost lose sight of the fact that even the person with the absolute least amount of sin in this world is incapable of bringing about their own salvation or even standing in a higher ranking in the eyes of God, whose primary ranking criteria is as follows:

Sinners (everyone, population a whole bunch to be technical)
vs.
Sinless (Jesus Christ, population one)

Secondary criteria:

Sinners who accept Christ's gift of undeserved salvation
vs.
Sinners who build a tower of Babel to reach God (or whatever they choose to worship in their lives)

Basically, you're not going to do it yourself so lets get that thought out of our minds. I like sports metaphors so you'll have to forgive me if you're really interested in athletics, but basically the invention of fantasy leagues have made sports fans increasingly interested in statistics. In this system the value a particular player is perceived to have is completely dependent on how many points per game (PPG) or rebounds per game. Being a healthy church of believers doesn't look like a group of people who are doing well to earn God's favor through a dominant performance of sorts. It doesn't mean averaging a triple double in Souls Won to Christ (SWC), Sinless Moments (SM), and Bible Verses Memorized (BVM). None of these things are bad and just as a basketball team, whose primary goal is to win games finds themselves scoring points and getting rebounds because they are playing winning basketball, if we as the church are striving to be a healthy kingdom people we're going to see our fair share of good fruit as a direct result.

What I'm really hoping to direct our attention to is this notion that is becoming particularly popular in today's church that a healthy church is one that is growing in terms of numbers. Again numbers aren't bad, nor are they good. Numbers are quantitative by nature and can go in either direction. 100 Superheroes = Good; 100 Villains = Bad. The problem is when the overall value of us as a body of believers is entirely derived from the number of people we see come through the door.

Anybody in the church wants a high attendance figure because this can mean that the church is reaching a great number of people in the community. Churches also hope for a congregation that faithfully tithes, not only because it allows them to keep the lights on and pour out into the lives of those in need, but because tithing is a definitive act of surrender to God. It goes along with everything God wants from us, to give up trying to be the God of our own lives. To stop looking to control things out of our hands or provide for ourselves when God can do far better for us than we could ever hope.

High attendance and high tithe figures can be a bad thing though, because as I just said, numbers are neither good nor bad, but simply quantitative reflections of the things we either value or don't value. If a particular church starts out at 100 people who faithfully attend and within two years that number inflates to 1,000 people, there are a number of things we might assume about the situation. An optimist might suggest that the church simply did a great job at being the body of Christ in their community and as a result of being a light in a dark place they reached into the hearts of 900 individuals who found refuge in their congregation. That is ideal and we can only hope that this is the case all the time. Unfortunately there are other factors that might have contributed to the growth of this church. Perhaps they have great events on their calendar or a worship band that is good enough to go on tour and put out albums of their own (not dissing David Crowder Band or Hillsong here). Maybe this body of believers is meeting under an umbrella that allows them to be just a little bit too comfortable, very much looking like the world around. Again we're speculating here.

On the other hand we may have a church that was 100 people and two years later it stands at either the same or very close in either direction. The number again, is not a direct reflection of anything so much as a base from which we can begin to analyze. Could the number have stayed close to the same because the congregation was simply maintaining who they were as a counter culture and not marketing themselves to their community? Maybe they showed love but offered an uncomfortable alternative to a life of sin apart from God that is often too natural for us to shake. Following Christ doesn't mean we are no longer sinners, but that we humble ourselves before God in that sin and seek to kill off every part of us that is trying to run our own lives so that God can begin to get more of the say in how we live our lives so this scenario wouldn't be a bad one if it were the case. Then again, the numbers may have stayed nearly the same because the church became an exclusive club of insiders who were too unwelcoming or just never bothered to reach out into the darkness and show love to others.

The bottom line is that a number does not tell us anything if it stands without explanation or is further defined.

And so we come to a relevant example that is circulating around the blogosphere about Mars Hill Church in the great state of Washington (not to be confused with Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan which was founded by Rob Bell). In this article which I recommend you read (click this!) it discusses how this massive growing church (upwards of 5,000 members, not to mention thousand more attendees) deals with disciplining its members. In this case it deals with how a particular member was dealt with after confessing to cheating on his fiancee, and separately, to engaging in an inappropriate relationship outside of marriage with his fiancee as well. The member, Andrew, was dealt with harshly and cut off from the community he was once a part of. This disciplinary action was passed off as a loving act on the part of the church to allow Andrew to tend to his failing relationships with both his fiancee and God.

I will not try to make my own case for whether this church's disciplinary actions crossed the line or not but as my dear friend, and fellow young pastor Kevin Nye points out (click here this time!) it seems absurd that a church would support cutting off an individual for their personal sin when in reality there is not a soul on earth without sin of their own. And yet, even if the leadership of Mars Hill Church had not been the ones responsible for alienating Andrew to his own modern day leper colony, if we are to honestly look at ourselves in the mirror we just might see our own affinity for pointing to the splinter in one's eye while a plank remains firmly lodged in ours.

Why bring all this up? Obviously because it is perhaps as perfect an example as I can find of a church that is growing that appears to be struggling in the health department, at least when isolated to this particular area. Now to be fair it should be pointed out that any church is going to inevitably have their own weak points because it is made up of unique and flawed individuals who are trying to live against their very nature. The church is kind of like a child trying to finger paint the image of their Father. The image is not really very close to the specific and detailed image of the Father in real life and despite their best effort to replicate what they see they fall short. Yet it is their passion and desire to paint that image that makes it truly beautiful. The real thing I want you to consider is that while a growing church may seem more appealing or perceived to have higher value on a global scale, it does not get a free pass on being held accountable as a body of believers trying to authentically glorify God in this world.

Growth is good, but without health it like a spreading cancer, eating away at the larger Body it is a part of.


As always I welcome comments and criticisms on either here or you can comment on my facebook page if you wish, just please be reasonable and polite regardless of whether you're for or against what I've written.