Is the way we are trying to grow the church the reason the church is in decline?

We all want our churches to grow.  I know of no preacher that actually wants their church to be stagnating or in decline.  Nevertheless, the church in America appears to be stagnate.  We can debate the rate of decline or the slowing of growth, but I know of no one who would say that the American church is experiencing dynamic growth or a vibrant revival as a whole.

This is not for lack of effort.  To paraphrase President Eisenhower the “Church growth-industrial complex” has over the last couple of generations grown to be a colossus in American Christianity.  The size, number, and occasion, of “church growth” conferences, books, seminars, websites and blogs is truly staggering.  As an exercise, go to your favorite online bookseller and query the phrase “church growth”.  You may also use Google and see how many websites there are for that same phrase.   If the church is not growing it is not for lack of information, resources, or advice.

The scoreboard that we use to measure our churches and ministry is most often the number of people at given events, but what if that is the wrong score board?  Could using the wrong scoreboard be a part of the problem?  I am not opposed to large churches but our focus on congregational attendance is not something we see in the New Testament.  But it is the focus of most of American Christianity. 

In my years of ministry there was a repeating episode with which you might be able to relate.  Someone comes to me and saying, “I (We) are going to start attending XYZ church; they have thus and such a program and it really feeds me (us).”   In other words, “If you want me to continue to be a number on your scoreboard I have to have consistent sources of input that make me happy.”  I never served a church that could ever compete with mega, superstar church in town.   My sermons never had the polish of mega church preacher, our music team was never concert quality, our facilities never had a Starbucks, and the youth group was never large enough to rent a beach side conference center for summer camp.  In other words, when based on services provided, the small churches I served never could compare positively with big churches as we competed for the religious consumer. 

And that is the rub, when we use attendance as the scoreboard we end up trying to attract people to our churches so that scoreboard looks good.  But by using presentations and programs to attract crowds we end up creating religious consumers with an insatiable appetite for new, more, bigger, better shows and experiences.  And there is always a bigger show some where in town.  At some point this religious consumerism will eclipse discipleship, sound doctrine and may replace Christ with a cult of personality built around a dynamic pastor.  The pattern for most of our churches is a model of high knowledge and high entertainment coupled with low obedience.  The result is we have created connoisseurs and consumers, but not Christian workers. 

In the Gospel of Matthew there is an often-repeated word, poiew, it translates “to do”.  Jesus came “to do” the will of the Father, that was one of His constant themes.  “To do”, to be obedient, is a theme painfully absent from the life of much of the church.  Our people need not be experts and scholars “to do”.  After the Gerasene demoniac was healed by Jesus he wanted to follow Jesus.  The Lord would not allow it, but instead sent him to tell his people what God had done for him.  The man had a very low level of knowledge but expressed high obedience.

Our growth strategy of high entertainment and high knowledge while expecting low obedience and commitment, especially as it relates to the Great Commission, while not universal is wide spread in our churches and is, in my opinion, the reason the church is in decline.  We must change the very way we think of being the church.  We must think in terms where obedience regardless of knowledge level is expected to be the prevailing pattern of the life of a disciple.