ASSUMING GROWTH
The speaker at our church retreat this past weekend was to help us through Rick Warren’s “Purpose-Driven Church,” as we continue to develop a ministry plan for our future and for our pastoral search. One of Warren’s key beliefs is that healthy churches, like all organisms, grow; thus, a church that isn’t growing isn’t healthy, and a church that strives to be healthy will inevitably grow.
Our speaker added another dynamic: the church, by definition, is unique among all institutions in that it exists for its non-members. To be more specific, the purpose of the church in this planet and in this time is to serve those outside its walls, in ministries of mercy and evangelism.
Most people would agree with the paragraph above. Bible-believing Christians would also agree that the goals stated above are penultimate, with the ultimate goal being to glorify and exalt God. And indeed, it does speak well of a great God that a human institution would so humble itself in service to the world around it. And it speaks well of a great God that a human institution would submit itself to obedience to such a God and His words.
Here’s where I get a little uncomfortable with all the talk about growth. I wonder sometimes if we assume that growth is the ultimate goal, and then we back into the Bible passages and spiritual principles that will help us achieve that goal. In other words, we take growth as a given desirable end, and use God and His word as a means to that end.
Should we not instead take glorifying and enjoying God as the ultimate end, and seek to commit ourselves as an institution to obedience to His word? And if that means growth, we praise Him and ask for help to be obedient to the responsibilities that growth brings to a church. And if that means stagnancy or loss in membership, we praise Him and ask for help to be obedient in such a situation.
It seems to me that we are ever in jeopardy of co-opting worldly values, and placing them higher in our hierarchy of priorities than obedience to and enjoyment of God. I believe this is the very essence of faith and sin. As John Piper, author of “Desiring God” and several other books espousing a concept called “Christian hedonism,” puts it, no one sins out of duty; they sin because they erroneously believe the sin holds some hope of higher pleasure than faith.
Examples? We desire to be faithful witnesses of the reality and claims of Jesus to a lost world, and yet our verbal broadcast of the gospel message is all too often trumped by a greater desire to not be seen as Christian and therefore close-minded. We read of the many commands and invitations in the Bible to serve the poor among us, but spend a shockingly low proportion of our time doing that, preferring personal comfort to radical obedience. We circle the wagons in tending to the needs of our spouses and children, conveniently forgetting that Jesus Himself told us we must hate our families in order to follow Him.
(Please don’t misconstrue that last statement to suggest that we ought to neglect our responsibilities to our loved ones. It is probably a more apt word to many Christians to love their families more, not less. And it honors no one, least of all God, to serve the purposes of the Kingdom at the expense of a broken and divided family. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note how much of a sacred cow family can be in Christian circles, as if there is no possible way a healthy Christian would ever make a conscious choice to follow Jesus at the expense of his or her family. Clearly, we do not fully comprehend just how radical of a call Jesus is making to us, or just how radical of a response saints have made to that call over the years. While it would be ideal for discipleship to Jesus and devotion to family to be in sync, certainly being a Christian has meant, does mean, and will continue to mean that people pay dear costs, up to and including their own lives and their own families.)
And we seek strategies to achieve church growth, assuming that is what God would want us to strive for and pray about, never stopping to think that what He really wants is our faithful obedience, whether or not that leads to a bump up in membership numbers. I’m not saying the opposite, then, is true: that growth and strategy are inherently evil. But I am realizing that I personally, and humans in groups by nature, can subtly prioritize things above obedience to God that can long very pious and seem very well-intentioned but may not be at all what God would have us to be about. I pray that we as a church will be humble enough to discern the difference, and that our plans and prayers would bring honor to our God.
The speaker at our church retreat this past weekend was to help us through Rick Warren’s “Purpose-Driven Church,” as we continue to develop a ministry plan for our future and for our pastoral search. One of Warren’s key beliefs is that healthy churches, like all organisms, grow; thus, a church that isn’t growing isn’t healthy, and a church that strives to be healthy will inevitably grow.
Our speaker added another dynamic: the church, by definition, is unique among all institutions in that it exists for its non-members. To be more specific, the purpose of the church in this planet and in this time is to serve those outside its walls, in ministries of mercy and evangelism.
Most people would agree with the paragraph above. Bible-believing Christians would also agree that the goals stated above are penultimate, with the ultimate goal being to glorify and exalt God. And indeed, it does speak well of a great God that a human institution would so humble itself in service to the world around it. And it speaks well of a great God that a human institution would submit itself to obedience to such a God and His words.
Here’s where I get a little uncomfortable with all the talk about growth. I wonder sometimes if we assume that growth is the ultimate goal, and then we back into the Bible passages and spiritual principles that will help us achieve that goal. In other words, we take growth as a given desirable end, and use God and His word as a means to that end.
Should we not instead take glorifying and enjoying God as the ultimate end, and seek to commit ourselves as an institution to obedience to His word? And if that means growth, we praise Him and ask for help to be obedient to the responsibilities that growth brings to a church. And if that means stagnancy or loss in membership, we praise Him and ask for help to be obedient in such a situation.
It seems to me that we are ever in jeopardy of co-opting worldly values, and placing them higher in our hierarchy of priorities than obedience to and enjoyment of God. I believe this is the very essence of faith and sin. As John Piper, author of “Desiring God” and several other books espousing a concept called “Christian hedonism,” puts it, no one sins out of duty; they sin because they erroneously believe the sin holds some hope of higher pleasure than faith.
Examples? We desire to be faithful witnesses of the reality and claims of Jesus to a lost world, and yet our verbal broadcast of the gospel message is all too often trumped by a greater desire to not be seen as Christian and therefore close-minded. We read of the many commands and invitations in the Bible to serve the poor among us, but spend a shockingly low proportion of our time doing that, preferring personal comfort to radical obedience. We circle the wagons in tending to the needs of our spouses and children, conveniently forgetting that Jesus Himself told us we must hate our families in order to follow Him.
(Please don’t misconstrue that last statement to suggest that we ought to neglect our responsibilities to our loved ones. It is probably a more apt word to many Christians to love their families more, not less. And it honors no one, least of all God, to serve the purposes of the Kingdom at the expense of a broken and divided family. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note how much of a sacred cow family can be in Christian circles, as if there is no possible way a healthy Christian would ever make a conscious choice to follow Jesus at the expense of his or her family. Clearly, we do not fully comprehend just how radical of a call Jesus is making to us, or just how radical of a response saints have made to that call over the years. While it would be ideal for discipleship to Jesus and devotion to family to be in sync, certainly being a Christian has meant, does mean, and will continue to mean that people pay dear costs, up to and including their own lives and their own families.)
And we seek strategies to achieve church growth, assuming that is what God would want us to strive for and pray about, never stopping to think that what He really wants is our faithful obedience, whether or not that leads to a bump up in membership numbers. I’m not saying the opposite, then, is true: that growth and strategy are inherently evil. But I am realizing that I personally, and humans in groups by nature, can subtly prioritize things above obedience to God that can long very pious and seem very well-intentioned but may not be at all what God would have us to be about. I pray that we as a church will be humble enough to discern the difference, and that our plans and prayers would bring honor to our God.
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