In a couple of my pastoral theology courses, in seminary, taught by adjunct professors, we heard and read quite a bit about techniques for time management and church growth. Another of my professors warned me repeatedly about the dangers of “empire building” (about which he was quite right) but nevertheless, later, as a young pastor in a small congregation, I became quite taken with the church growth movement. 

When I entered the evangelical world in the mid-70s there was much talk and teaching (and guilt manipulation) about personal evangelism but not much talk of church growth. A decade later, however, when I went to seminary, it was all the rage. I expected to study Scripture, to learn Hebrew (I did Greek in university), systematic theology, church history, homiletics, and pastoral theology. I was completely unaware of the so-called “church growth” movement. My earliest experience in a Reformed church was in a small German-Reformed congregation from the wrong side of the tracks. The “successful” and “influential” churches in my hometown tended to be on what was temporarily, “church row” on the east end of town. Meanwhile, my little German Reformed (RCUS) congregation moved toward the center of town where it has been ever since. There we talked about Scripture, doctrine, the Christian life, and “outreach” to the community but there was no expectation that we should become a large, influential presence in our heavily churched city.

In a couple of my pastoral theology courses, in seminary, taught by adjunct professors, we heard and read quite a bit about techniques for time management and church growth. Another of my professors warned me repeatedly about the dangers of “empire building” (about which he was quite right) but nevertheless, later, as a young pastor in a small congregation, I became quite taken with the church growth movement. I read the church growth literature and sought to implement it. We tried to “modernize” the service, we tried diaconal ministry, we tried “The Phone’s For You,” we tried Evangelism Explosion, we tried mass media (radio, a telephone answering machine with a devotional message, newsletters, and fliers), and summer youth ministry to name a few but nothing worked. I so emphasized every-member evangelism and church growth that one of my parishioners said in passing, “Pastor, you seem very interested in the people out there but you don’t seem very interested in us.”

My parishioner had a point. I had become obsessed about “church growth” and I had, to my shame, to some degree, neglected my first duty as a minister, to care for the flock with which I had been entrusted. Not only that, I had swallowed some assumptions about the nature of ministry and the church that I now see to have been grounded not in Scripture at all. The church growth books regularly said that I needed to “take charge” of things and institute a de facto Episcopal church government—in which I would be the bishop—that I needed to recruit leadership to the church that shared my “vision” for the future of the congregation, that I needed to push out those who opposed it, and that I needed to tell everyone else to “get on the bus or get run over.” This far I did not and could not go. Perhaps that is why I failed as a “church growth” guy?

I was not always a critic of the church growth movement but I am now. I like to think that lurking in the back of my conscience during those years was the voice of Luther hectoring me about what he called “the theology of glory.” The core of the theologia gloriae is the doctrine that we can cooperate with grace sufficiently for salvation (justification and sanctification unto glorification), and that human reason is (implicitly) superior to Scripture. Paul addressed the theology of glory when he mocked the self-described “Super Apostles” in 2 Corinthians (11:5; 12:11). Certainly he was mocking the theology of glory when he wrote:

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Cor 1:20-25; ESV).

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