Video Transcript: Health vs. Growth

Welcome back to Christian leaders Institute. So glad to be with you today as we  continue our discussion on church revitalization. And today we're going to be  really getting into the heart of these next three lectures the heart of what really is church revitalization? And what was our goal and in some of the things that will  help us define and determine what it is that we're actually trying to do. I think this is an important conversation for us to have. Because when I started to do  church revitalization, I didn't even know in a sense what I was trying to  accomplish. I didn't. If you asked me to define what is church revitalization, I  would have said, well, I guess if things are going better or more people are  coming, I didn't have a really clear sense of even where I was trying to lead my  people. So I'm going to try to help you today in the next couple of lectures to  really define this is what church revitalization looks like. This is what it will take  to renew a ministry. So let's, as we always do, I want to pray for you. In this time  we have together Father in heaven, thank you so much for this day, wherever  my dear friends are watching and listening to this Lord, I pray that You would  bless them. Give them ears to hear what your spirit has to say, God work in their hearts and Lord, strengthen them, encourage them, in this great task of working  in your kingdom, may their labor produce much fruit Lord, I pray your blessing  and the gift of your spirit upon them. Amen. Okay, so let's just take a step back.  So in the United States, post World War II was something significant happened.  Starting in the 19, late 1950s, early 1960s, there started to be a decline in  church attendance, there started to be a decline in the role that Christianity had  in culture, its influence, and certainly in the late 1960s, and the hippie  movement, and then in the 70s, with Watergate and kind of disillusionment, just  the church had less and less and less influence. So anyway, the the end, the  latter half of the 20th century, after this had been going on for some time. A lot of churches, a lot of denominations felt the need to reverse this trend. And they  were working from this basic assumption that attendance and membership  statistics were a direct measurement of vitality and faithfulness. So kind of like  the numbers didn't lie, what was going on. And so they wanted to address this.  And out of that came something that was been known as the Church Growth  Movement, that the church was shrinking, and they wanted the church to grow  again. And that was a very well intentioned movement, obviously, but with it  came some really bad things. We're going to talk about that we didn't say a bad  in the sense that they weren't terribly biblical. In in first and foremost, it was this  fascination with statistics, that if if the numbers were good, then that meant you  were doing good. And so with this fascination on numbers, which, even though  the Church Growth Movement started in the 80s, and really kind of exploded in  the 90s, we're still living very much in the after effects of that today, it's still very  much shades are thinking about what a church is supposed to be. And if we're  not growing and getting bigger, we're failing. And it's, again, it's had a lot of  implications. So let's just talk about some of those implications. The problems 

that kind of came along with this mentality that bigger is always better and more  numbers equals more health and vitality. One, really created a consumer driven  culture. And so, one writer James Crumley. He comments on this phenomenon  

that in trying to attract crowds and numbers, you become very much like a  business, who's trying to meet the needs of a consumer who's not buying your  product and And so you're going to change the way you do things in order to get that consumer to be kind of like more interested in your product, which would be the church or faith or however you want to describe it. And this is what James  Crumley says. And he's writing an essay called setting the church's agenda. The church is tempted to become relevant to the people of this culture by using their  wishes and criteria, rather than those of the church. Evangelism is driven by a  market or consumer oriented mentality. The church can meet people's needs as  people define their needs. Thus, the people who may have little or no recent  experience in the church, develop the evaluation of the church. And the church  struggled to fulfill their expectations. So one of the things that happened with  this idea of just to summarize what Crumley is saying is that the church in order  to, and again well intentioned, to reach out and bring people in and to change  the numbers started to say, well, what is it that the people want? What what are  they? What are they missing? And there's part of that that's just a really good  question that churches need to address. But it got to the point, though, where it  was the people who were not Christians, who began setting the agenda for what churches would be doing, it wasn't scripture, it wasn't people within the church, it was this hope that if we could reach out to these non believers, and discover  what they want, then we'll make our church about that. Now, hopefully, you can  see why that's just a terrible approach and how that can lead to all sorts of  problems. Now, there were a few ways that were done. Couple models of  churches, called an attractional model where you do things and offer programs  or that would attract people to come in. Or another way of doing this was called  a seeker sensitive or a seeker driven, where you were just very aware of the  idea with people who had never been to church before. And again, there was  there was some wisdom in that there was some value with that, but it kind of  was kind of like a runaway train, though, to the point where people started, who  started looking for churches, you know, became really like, well, if you don't  have this, I'm not interested in. I'm not interested in the church that doesn't have  yoga and karate classes. And I'm looking for a church that has X, Y and Z when, you know, in terms of a style of worship, that might be very much more  entertainment than worship, or, or whatever it was, in the church, really, broadly  speaking, the American church, the American Evangelical Church, kind of lost  its, its, its its bearings, or its moorings, what it was tied to what a church was  supposed to be. And the focus became on what are the felt needs of the  people? How do we minister to that? Rather than how are we glorifying God?  How do we exalt the name of Jesus, in our location in our generation? Okay, so 

another point and it was kind of closely related here is there was this Triumph of  methodology over theology. And if there is a relentless drive to draw a crowd or  to establish a market, whether you're a church or a business, it's always going to open a door to compromise. Bill Henard, who wrote a wonderful book on church  

revitalization called can these bones live said this. In our world today, we have  learned how to grow churches through a variety of means. We have become so  concise and advanced in our methodology, technology in programming, that a  church can grow, and quite possibly have never mentioned the name of Jesus.  Isn't that something? Isn't that amazing that we can grow a church without really ever having a focus on Jesus. And I can personally attest to this a couple of  years ago, I went to a church I joined them in worship. And it was kind of the  growing church. It was the church a lot of people had been talking about and it  was not far from me. And so I decided to go to it. And the music was great, the  was very warm fellowship. The pastor had a solid message. But at no point. It  was you know about kind of, you know how to live a better life and everything he said was, you know, kind of out of the Bible and made sense and was God's  wisdom. But at no point did we ever get to talking about Jesus, I mean, it wasn't  like, glorifying and, and honoring the Lord at all. But kind of on the outside all the things about the atmosphere, and the kind of coffee and style of worship and the atmosphere that was created in the facility, it all matched, like all the things  you're kind of supposed to do. And yet the name of Jesus was never, like,  intentionally acknowledged, or, or lifted up. And I don't even think in the whole  sermon, the name of Jesus was even mentioned. So it wasn't in any way, like  proclamation or declaration of the good news. And so if we're so focused on our  methodology, we can really compromise and say, well, we're not we're going to,  we're not going to so much promote the Jesus piece than, than this other thing,  who we just put our focus in the wrong area. And one other thing. We touched  on this recently in another lecture, but an emphasis on growing a church making the church bigger, really began to redefine the pastor's role in pursuit of ever  increasing numbers. The pastor is not so much a holy man or a spiritual  shepherd of the flock, but he's more of an or she is more of an entrepreneur,  who can grow this institution and, you know, can say, well, we've grown by 12%, this year, or whatever. And as a result, and I would include myself in this,  hardworking pastors began to be, you know, spending a lot of time thinking  things, you know, like studying sociology, learning about marketing, and trying to market the church better. Rethinking or redeveloping worship our church, we got several demographic studies in order to be up to date on the, you know, the  latest movements and trends. And I read a ton of books on church growth  theories. And really, what that meant for me and for a lot of other people was  that the emphasis of what I spent my time on, really moved away from traditional pastoral duties, to, to things that would help grow a church, I was even on one  conference I'd attended. And the gentleman who was presenting there said that 

pastors if we're trying to grow our church, that we should just, you know, borrow  somebody else's sermons, or just download somebody else's sermons or just  have the church watch somebody else's sermon for the next year or two, while  we just grow the church. And that just never sounded right to me that I feel like  God calls me to preach, that's a big calling, to speak to my people about where  they're at, and what they need in God's Word in their life, not just downloading  something from someone else. So anyway, these are some of the problems that  kind of came out of the Church Growth Movement. Again, it was well  intentioned, and I was grateful that people were alert to what was going on, that  the church was in decline. But the way that they went about it really kind of  focused on statistics and drawing crowds. I think the, the kind of the theory  behind that leaves, definitely the church open to compromise and some  problems. And so let's talk about really what the scripture has to say about  crowds and numbers and statistics and all those kinds of things. Well, I would  say this, even though that that is often so much the focus of churches,  especially churches in decline, churches that are interested in doing  revitalization, we need to bear in mind that there is no direct command  anywhere. I mean, nowhere to increase attendance. nowhere in Scripture in the  Old Testament about getting more people to come to the temple. Nowhere in the New Testament in Acts or in any of Paul's letters. Is there anything that says,  you need to get more people. And this idea that drawing a crowd equates to  success is not only I would say inaccurate, it's even somewhat like antithetical to the ministry of Christ. Now we know with the ministry of Jesus, he spent three  years preaching and teaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God, he  commissioned His disciples to go to the ends of the earth, and to do the same,  yet, Jesus does not seek out the crowds. In fact, Jesus, when a crowd would  gather, he would often withdraw from the crowd, he would try to hide from the  crowd or he would dismiss the crowd. For those who are really interested in  language studies, in, in the Greek in the Gospel of Mark, the use of the word  crowds by John Mark is often used to describe like, those who are kind of  flipping flopping, kind of they're uncommitted. They're there for like the free  bread and fish sandwiches that Jesus is giving out, but they're not really willing  to follow Him. And so the term crowds is actually kind of a negative connotation,  throughout the gospel of Mark. So it seems to me that if Jesus was not about  drawing crowds, then we shouldn't be either. Now, of course, he did draw  crowds, he, his healing, the miracles he did naturally drew crowds, but he didn't  really want them to, again, he often dispersed them. When he would do  something he would even tell people now don't go and tell everybody what just  happened because he didn't want the crowds he wanted to spend time, either in  prayer, or time with the Father. Or he wanted to very intentionally disciple his,  you know, his inner circle of followers. In a gentleman who's a wonderful author,  and pastor, Carl Vaters, V-A-T-ER-S, who's written a number of wonderful things

on healthy churches and being a small church. He's got a line that I really love.  And he says, Jesus never told us to gather a crowd, he told us to make  disciples. So that's the thing is, what is really our focus, what are we trying to  do? We're trying to make disciples, wherever we are. And I think the idea of  drawing a crowd. For some of you, this is just going to almost be an impossible  task. If you're in a really rural area, like, and there's, you know, 1000 people who live in your county or within 20, or 30 miles of your church, like, you're not going  to get a crowd. Some of you may be in other kinds of situations, where just this  notion of drawing a crowd is not going to happen, maybe you're around the  corner from a mega church may have 10,000 people coming. And there's no  way that you're going to, you know, really kind of be able to do something with,  with, with the location you're in. So what I'm just saying is, if we say that drawing a crowd is really the standard, there's so many of us that are going to be in  really difficult situations. Maybe you're live in a town that's dominated by a  company or an industry, and that that industry or that company has shut down,  they've left. Well, now, what are you supposed to do? I mean, how do you draw  a crowd when there aren't, there isn't a crowd to draw. So kind of knowing that, I think we need to think a little bit differently. What does scripture say? I mean, in  terms of what should churches do, what should churches do? What should our  focus be directed towards? Well, we've discussed this already, that, instead of  trying to add numbers the biblical command for the church, is to be  strengthened, right, we've talked about this word sterison before about being  like standing up and strong and healthy and built up. Now, we've discussed this  already in some other lectures, I'm going to just touch on it really, really quickly.  But if you remember in Jesus's letter to the church in Sardis, he commanded  them to be strengthened, he didn't say get bigger. He didn't say get larger. He  didn't say attract a crowd. He didn't say double attendance, he said, strengthen  what remains in the sense of strengthening is, is indicative and kind of the other  letters he sends to the churches in Revelation as well. Now strengthening can  certainly include adding numbers and getting bigger. But it's, it's a way you can  do that. Let's think about Paul. We've talked about him as well that Paul's  ministry was certainly planting new churches. But so much of Paul's ministry  was about going back to the places he had been and strengthening them. We  think about Paul's letter writing another part of his ministry, obviously, a huge  part of his ministry was the letters he would write. And that was to strengthen the churches. So what was Paul's focus when he was writing letters? Is there any  letter that Paul wrote where, where he's telling Timothy or Titus, or you know, a  community of elders? Say, You know what, guys, I've got the statistics here, and you're running a little behind, I noticed the attendance is down. You guys are  trending towards. He never says it's not even like the remotest sense that Paul  ever says anything like that. But he does try to strengthen the church. So what  does Paul focus his energy on? He says, In Galatians, he talks to them about 

you've lost the sense of the gospel, right? They were thinking the gospel was  more about something that they did, rather than something that Christ did for  them. They had to like add on to what Jesus was doing. And so Paul was  saying, no, no, no. It's all about the work of Jesus Christ and Christ alone that,  Paul, as we talked about a few lectures ago, Paul is just like making it gospel  first, you know, what is the first importance, okay. That's what Paul was dealing  with. There wasn't about the size of the number of people who were coming to  worship in Galatia. It was that their theology was off the rails. I Thessalonians.  They're disheartened, and he's so what does he do? How does he strengthen  them? He encourages them. He, you know, reminds them of, you know,  throughout that letter of, you know, who they are and the great testimony they  have in other churches and how much Paul loves them and, and what awaits  them at the end. The end of all time, and Titus, we know that there's a struggle  going on there, that the work is not complete Paul sends Titus there and to  install godly leadership, right? What is it? It's like they're all liers and brutes. I  mean, Paul's really direct about what's going on on the island of Crete. And he  says, okay, Titus, this is what you need to do, you need to get some godly  leaders. And that's where we get so much of our instruction on what are the  qualifications of elders and leaders in the churches. Paul, again, wasn't  concerned saying, hey, Titus, I've noticed that the attendance in Crete is down  10%, he's not worried about that. He's worried that they don't have godly  leaders. That was his first concern. We want to think about here in the church in  Corinth, moral standards had really kind of like gone out the window. Corinth  was like, even in the pagan world, Corinth was considered like as pagan as it  can get. It was, it was kind of the center of prostitution and perversion, and it  was just as disgusting kind of Sodom and Gomorrah kind of place. And so the  Christians who are coming out of that were struggling with what does it mean to  be a Christian, and coming out of that background, still living in there, and some  of them did not really follow what Christ had in mind for them, they were still kind of stuck in that way of life. So Paul's like, again, he's not worrying about, you  know, the last month worship attendance has been down. He's saying, you have to stop doing these things, which are of a great offense to the body of Christ,  okay, they don't represent your salvation. And then just one more, we see Paul,  promoting spiritual disciplines, you know, to strengthen the church, this is the  sort of thing you need to be doing. So all this kind of coming together. The idea  is, we look at what Paul did to strengthen the church. And that's kind of the  approach I think, that we need to take. Paul was trying to strengthen the church  by making the church healthier by calling it back to really what the design of the  church was. And for those with the knowledge of church history, that's what the  Reformation was in the 16th century, it was about strengthening the church was  about pulling it back to what the Lord had designed it to be. It wasn't about the  problem was not enough. People were showing up to mass. The problem was 

people didn't even know what they believed. All the abuses that were going on in the church, the wrong theology, so it's a return to a healthy church. Okay. So  now, the good news that we have here is that recent literature I'd say probably  the last 15 to 20 years, that's probably, I'd say that's fairly accurate 15 to 20  years, there's been In a much greater emphasis on churches becoming healthy,  not so much just growing and techniques on how to get bigger. Now this Church  Growth Movement, it is still alive and well. I am often inundated with emails and  conference, you know, flyers and stuff about if you do this, you can grow your  attendance by 70%. And if you do these four steps, you know, you're gonna see  the number of new visitors double and all this kind of stuff. So the Church  Growth Movement is alive and well in. And I think that we need to kind of just  shift and say, like, okay, that's not really what, what it's about, it's about  strengthening churches and making them healthier. And I hope that's an  encouragement to you. Because really, when I made the shift in my mind, about  health, not growth, it really made me free from this. There's a subtext in the  Church Growth Movement, that if your church isn't growing, you're a failure. And you're not being faithful in ministry. There's just, there's just that assumption that  comes along with it. And like, who is loving my people, I'm trying to do my best  and the church was not growing. And so it's like, I guess I'm a failure, I guess I'm disappointing the Lord, I guess I'm not honoring my call. And so moving back  towards health is like, those are some things I did have more control over. And it was a more biblical approach. And that just really freed me from a sense of like,  I am a disappointment in ministry. So really, the idea here with health is that  we're going to follow a prescribed set of biblical principles. Okay. That's our,  that's our primary focus. And if we do that, we will be more likely to, you know,  achieve some kind of growth, but that the growth is the is the is the result, it's  the end, it's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to get healthy. And if we get  healthy, there well may in fact, be some growth. But we're not really after some  set statistical outcome. Okay. Hopefully you see a difference there. So  somebody who I think did a really good job explaining this as Christian Schwarz, who is the founder and the natural church development, we've talked about  them with some assessments earlier on. NCD or natural church development.  They've got a bunch of books and all kinds of great resources on church  revitalization. And in the book, natural church development Schwarz talks about  this thing called the all by itself principle. And it's based on the parable of the  seed, which sprouts all by itself in Mark 4:26-29. And so what what Schwarz  contends is that the church cannot manufacture Kingdom growth, it can't do it, it  can't let you know, just generate that and make it happen. Rather, the church  must do what it can. And trust God for the harvest, just like the farmer in the  parable, you know, you can plant the seed, you can water it, you can put it in  good soil, but you can't make it grow. Only God can do that. And so what  Schwarz says is, if the church engages in healthy biblical practices, then God 

will release divine growth forces. And it will grow all by itself. Okay. So that's, it's  just this idea that the focus is on health. And if we do what we're supposed to  do, chances are it's going to grow, it might not again, depending on our context,  but that's not really the end goal. The end goal is that we're, we're making  disciples, we're becoming healthier and stronger. Now, if you recall, from one of  our very early lectures, we talked about this vitality paradigm, and this is from  my friend, Harry Reeder, in his book, embers to a flame. And this is the same  idea of the all by itself principle. So, in the bottom, the roots, we have a spiritual  vitality, we can think of that in terms of our ways we connect to the Lord's prayer, Bible reading, quiet time, devotional, worship, the things that fill us up with the  presence of God, the intimacy of a relationship with Jesus Christ that fills us with knowledge and all those kinds of things, all the ways that we kind of, are  nurtured in our faith. And then the trunk is the functional effectiveness and this  would be the organization and the systems that we have in the church. should  make us work together. This is like the bones in our body that kind of hold things together. And so what Reeder says, is basically, if you've got good roots, and  you know prayer, the word, worship, all those kinds of things. And you have a  fairly good organized system, and you know what you're trying to do and you  know what you're about, and you have the things in place to make it happen, it  doesn't have to be fancy doesn't have to be complicated. But if you've got a  good structure, you will see fruit, you'll see some kind of fruit, you know, so fruit  is just the byproduct of good, good roots, and a strong trunk, just like the regular tree. If you've got bad roots, and you've got a rotten trunk, you're not going to  get much in the way of fruit. But if you've got the good roots and the good trunk  and strong, healthy tree, you'll probably get fruit more often than not. And so  what Reeder sets up here is very similar to Schwarz's all by itself principle, you  do the right thing. You set it up in the right way you create the right atmosphere,  and you will succeed. Certainly, in the eyes of God, you'll succeed. And there's  most likely going to be some kind of measurable growth that comes with it. But  again, that's not the target. That's not the goal. The goal is health. So I'll leave  you with a quote from my again, my friend, Harry Reeder, from his book, embers to a flame. And this is what Harry writes. You do not need a marketing plan to  grow the church, you need a biblical fitness plan to promote its health. And you  should be preoccupied, not with programs designed to produce numbers,  nickels and noise, but with biblical principles by which the Holy Spirit can bring  health and vitality to the body of Christ. And while statistical growth is likely to be experienced, the functional ministry of the church is the REAL TESTIMONY of  spiritual vitality. So do the right things, folks. And we let the rest take care of  itself. That's really where we're going. So what are the right things? Okay.  Another big question. So what are the right things? What are the principles that  will that really define Church Health? We're going to hit that in the next lecture  really hit that right away. But first, let me just pray for you. Lord, thanks so much 

for this time, we've had together today to hear Your word. Lord, release from us  the burden of being failures because the numbers aren't pointing in the right  direction. Yet God, do not let us be complacent and just settle for the status quo. Lord, we pray that you would drive us to seek the growth of your church for the  growth and health and vitality and, Lord, we do pray that we might be a part of  your kingdom in the work it is doing in this world. Lord, bless all my friends  watching this, my partners in ministry, Lord, that they might have the sort of  success Lord, that'll bring delight to your eyes and glory to your name. We pray  this in Your name. Amen. All right, we'll come right back and we're going to talk  about what are the indicators that a church is really healthy? See you then.