Introduction
WHY CHURCH GROWTH
CAN'T BE IGNORED Gary L. McIntosh
When you hear the term church growth, what words or
phrases come to mind? You may think of megachurches, small
groups, numbers, contemporary worship, marketing, or a host
of other concepts that have occasionally been promoted as popular
church-growth theory.
In contrast, you may identify the term church growth with
effective evangelism, church planting, church extension, making
disciples, church multiplication, or other aspects of outreach
that seek to win people to Christ and enlist them as responsible
members of his church.
These differing perceptions of the term church growth, and
the emotions that arise from them, clearly point to misunderstanding
and disagreement regarding the term, as well as the
movement. Church growth is one of those ideas that cause us to
draw lines in the sand. We are either for an emphasis on church
growth or against it. There seems to be little neutral ground.
Donald McGavran, the father of the modern Church Growth
movement, recognized early on the divisive nature of Church
Growth thought in a letter to his wife, written from Costa Rica
on September 8, 1961: "It is clear that emphasizing the growth
of the churches divides the camp. It is really a divisive topic.
How strange when all are presumably disciples of the Lord Jesus
Christ." Dr. McGavran's words still ring true today. Church
Growth continues to divide the camp, as the five viewpoints
expressed in this book will demonstrate.
SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS
There is agreement, however, among Church Growth critics
and adherents alike that the Church Growth movement has
made significant contributions to the mission of the church, contributions
that cannot be ignored. For instance, one early critic
of the movement believes its major contribution is in "clarifying
of the mission of the church and focusing mission activity on the
responsive." Other critics add that the movement has provided
a "strategy and a set of priorities for mission"; "a militant, optimistic,
and forward-looking approach to the missionary enterprise";
and a way to "make us all aware of peoplehood and its
human diversity as a tool in world evangelization." Another
critic suggests two major theological contributions of the Church
Growth movement: "The first contribution is the theological
clarification that the growth of the Church is not something that
should be simply an overflow of the life of the Church. Rather,
growth must be something that is intentional and embraced at
the purpose level of the Church. [The] second contribution is the
clarification and development of the Church's understanding of
the leadership qualities and characteristics necessary to catalyze
and mobilize a group of Christians."
Advocates of Church Growth thought suggest that the
movement has contributed even more to the advancement of
Christ's mission in the world. One Church Growth advocate
writes, "The Church Growth Movement emerged in the service
of a powerful theological vision: to fulfill the ancient promise to
Abraham, and to fulfill Christ's Great Commission, by reaching
the lost people, and peoples, of the earth." He then lists twenty
specific contributions from the Church Growth school that have
impacted church ministry, particularly evangelism. For example,
the first five major contributions can be described as networks,
receptivity, indigenous forms, new units, and people
groups. Church Growth has taught us:
1. The gospel spreads most contagiously, not between
strangers, nor by mass evangelism, nor through mass
media, but along the lines of the kinship and friendship
networks of credible Christians, especially new Christians.
2. The gospel spreads more easily to persons and peoples
who are in a receptive season of their lives, and Church
Growth research has discovered many indicators of likely
receptive people.
3. The gospel spreads more naturally among a people
through their language, and the indigenous forms of their
culture, than through alien languages or cultural forms.
4. "First generation" groups, classes, choirs, congregations, churches, and ministries, and other new units, are more
reproductive than old established units.
5. Apostolic ministry is more effective when we target
people groups than when we target political units or geographical
areas.
While critics and adherents will no doubt continue to
debate the specific contributions of the Church Growth movement,
most would agree that the "church-growth movement is
extraordinarily influential and significant within American
churches today. At its best, it should be applauded. Where it is
not at its best, it requires criticism so that it might be."
A simple way to summarize the current views on Church
Growth is as follows: Some people love it. Others dislike it.
Many simply misunderstand it. Understanding Church Growth,
of course, is more complex than such a simplistic summary,
which is why this book has been written. To make certain we all
begin on the same page, it will be helpful to look at a brief historical
sketch of the Church Growth movement, particularly as it
has developed in North America.
BRIEF HISTORY
Church growth has occurred throughout the Christian era,
of course, and is not really new or modern. Even contemporary
Church Growth thought had a precursor, in the thought of the
Dutch missiologist Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676). Voetius
believed that the "first goal of mission is the conversion of the
heathen; the second, the planting of churches; and the highest,
the glory of God." These three goals comprise a condensed version
of today's Church Growth movement. The particular
expression of Church Growth theory and theology under discussion
in this book, however, first crystallized in the mind of
Donald A. McGavran, during the years 1930 to 1955.
EARLY INFLUENCES IN INDIA
Donald Anderson McGavran was born in Damoh, India, on
December 15, 1897. MacGavran was a third-generation missionary;
by 1954, his family had served a total of 279 years in
India. He attended Butler University (B.A., 1920), Yale Divinity
School (B.D., 1922), the former College of Mission in Indianapolis
(M.A., 1923), and following two terms in India,
Columbia University (Ph.D., 1936).
When Donald McGavran went to India as a missionary in
1923, he worked primarily as an educator under appointment
of the United Christian Missionary Society of the Christian
Church (Disciples of Christ). In 1929, he became director of religious
education for his mission before returning to the United
States to work on his Ph.D. at Columbia University. After his
return to India, he was elected field secretary in 1932 and was
placed in charge of administering the denomination's entire
India mission.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the stirrings of what
would eventually become Church Growth thought began to
develop in McGavran's mind. Several forerunners contributed
to McGavran's developing insights, such as William Carey,
Roland Allen, and Kenneth Scott Latourette. The most direct
influence, however, was J. Waskom Pickett, of whom McGavran
was fond of saying, "I lit my candle at Pickett's fire."
Pickett and McGavran were both influenced by the ministry
of John R. Mott and the student volunteer movement. In 1886,
Dwight L. Moody led a missionary awakening at Mount Hermon,
Massachusetts, which resulted in one hundred students
dedicating themselves to missionary service and the founding
of the student volunteer movement. The slogan "The evangelization
of the world in this generation" became a watchword
for missions during the first two decades of the twentieth century.
As a senior at Butler University, McGavran attended the
student volunteer convention at Des Moines, Iowa, during the
Christmas season of 1919. Describing that event, he wrote,
"There it became clear to me that God was calling me to be a
missionary, that he was commanding me to carry out the Great
Commission. Doing just that has ever since been the ruling purpose
of my life. True, I have from time to time swerved from that
purpose but never for long. That decision lies at the root of the
church-growth movement."
Pickett served in India for forty-six years as pastor, editor,
publisher, secretary of Christian councils, and bishop in the
Methodist Church. Reflecting how John R. Mott influenced him
to look for results, he writes, "Acting on advice given to me by
the great missionary statesman, John R. Mott, I had determined
to challenge every assumption that I could recognize as underlying
the work of my Church in India, not to prove any of them
wrong, but to find out, if I could, whether they seemed to be
right or wrong as indicated by their results."
In 1928, Pickett was asked by the National Christian Council
of India, Burma, and Ceylon to make an extensive study of
Christian mass movements in India. The study required the
development of research instruments, testing, and study of ten
representative areas. The results were published in Christian
Mass Movements in India.
McGavran read Pickett's book, enthusiastically endorsed it,
and recommended to his mission headquarters in Indianapolis,
Indiana, that they employ the services of Pickett to study why
similar mass movements to Christ were not happening in their
ministry area of mid-India. As supervisor of eighty missionaries,
five hospitals, several high schools and primary schools,
evangelistic efforts, and a leprosy home, McGavran had become
deeply concerned that after several decades of work, his mission
had only about thirty small churches, all of which were experiencing
little growth. At the same time, he saw "people movements"
taking place in scattered areas of India, in which
thousands of people in groups, rather than as individuals, were
coming to Christ. He wondered why his denomination's
churches were growing at the rate of only 1 percent a year, while
other churches were seeing much higher rates of conversions to
Christ. Pickett was appointed to do the study; McGavran
assisted him and became the chief architect of the study in Madhya
Pradesh. The results of the study were published under the
title Christian Missions in Mid-India, which was later revised toChurch Growth and Group Conversion.
Through this study, McGavran discovered that of the 145
areas where mission activity was taking place, 134 areas had
grown only 11 percent between 1921 and 1931. The churches in
those areas were not even conserving their own children in the
faith. Yet in the other 11 areas, the church was growing by 100
percent, 150 percent, and even 200 percent a decade. A curiosity
arose within McGavran that was to occupy his life and ministry
until his death. He wondered why some churches were growing,
while others, often just a few miles away, were not. He eventually
identified four major questions that were to drive the
Church Growth movement:
1. What are the causes of church growth?
2. What are the barriers to church growth?
3. What are the factors that can make the Christian faith a
movement among some populations?
4. What principles of church growth are reproducible? During this same time period, McGavran was quietly
changing his view of mission and theology. In the formative
years of his childhood, mission was held to be carrying out the
Great Commission, winning the world for Christ, and saving
lost humanity. This was the view McGavran held when he
returned to the United States for his higher education. While
attending Yale Divinity School, McGavran was introduced to the
teachings of the influential Christian professor H. Richard
Niebuhr. According to McGavran, Niebuhr "used to say that
mission was everything the church does outside its four walls.
It was philanthropy, education, medicine, famine relief, evangelism,
and world friendship." McGavran espoused this liberal
view of mission when he went to the mission field in 1923. As
he became involved in education, social work, and evangelism
in the real world of India, however, he gradually reverted to the
classical view that mission was making disciples of Jesus Christ.
Commenting on this change, he wrote, "As my convictions
about mission and church growth were being molded in the
1930s and 40s they ran headlong into the thrust that mission is
doing many good things in addition to evangelism. I could not
accept this way of thinking about missions. These good deeds
must, of course, be done, and Christians will do them. I myself
was doing many of them. But they must never replace the essential
task of mission, discipling the peoples of earth."
As McGavran's theological views turned more conservative,
and his studies of church growth increased, he began to fervently
encourage his mission and fellow workers to engage in
direct evangelism. When his three-year term as mission secretary
was up in 1936, he was not reelected. According to
McGavran, in effect the mission said to him, "Since you are talking
so much about evangelism and church growth, we are going
to locate you in a district where you can practice what you
preach." It was clearly a demotion, as evangelists worked with
the poorly educated and illiterate people. Believing that it was
God's leading, however, McGavran accepted his new appointment
and spent the next seventeen years trying to start a people
movement to Christ among the Satnamis caste. He felt his work
was somewhat successful, but no people movement resulted.
About one thousand people were won to Christ, fifteen small,
village churches were planted, and the Gospels were translated
into Chattisgarhee. These years brought about the formation of
his Church Growth theory out of the hard realities of missionary
service. He was no ivory-tower theoretician!
FOUNDING A MOVEMENT
With his work among the Satnamis coming to a close,
McGavran took a vacation in 1951 in the hills north of Takhatpur
to begin writing a manuscript titled "How Peoples Become
Christian." McGavran hunted for one hour each morning and
evening and spent the time in between working on his
manuscript. In addition to his own ministry among the Satnamis,
McGavran had done on-the-spot studies of growing
churches and people movements in several provinces of India
for several denominations, and he was eager to share his discoveries
with others. The rough draft was completed in 1953,
but McGavran thought it was too strictly Indian. During the
summer of 1954, the McGavran family went to the United States
on furlough. His mission granted a request to route his travel
home through Africa so that he could study people movements
on that continent.
Continues.
