Transforming Church

First of all, focusing on worship attendance has created a desire to grow big churches. Today we have more large churches in the US than ever before (attendance over 1,000 per weekend) – many more than we had 30 years ago. The problem is that the percentage of the U.S. population involved in church has actually declined over the last 30 years, not increased. One would expect that with this many new large churches we would have seen overall growth in the U.S., but this has not been the case.

Apparently, the growth of big churches in the U.S. has not come by increasing the number of conversions to Christianity, but from transfer growth as people leave small churches for large churches. Research by George Barna (see the book “Revolution”) and others bears this out.

While I’m sure that conversion growth is the desired outcome of large churches, particularly those intended to be “seeker friendly”, we have not seen the desired results (I’m not speaking of any specific church, but of the American church in aggregate). Thus, it can be said that the emergence of large churches has resulted more in migration of Christians than actual Kingdom growth.

One can make a comparison with the almost parallel emergence of Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers with big-box churches. Wal-Mart became the largest retailer in the world starting in small town America. The average “mom and pop” store could not compete with the enormous size, selection, and lower prices of Wal-Mart, causing many to simply close. A similar process appears to be taking place with American mega-churches in relationship to small churches.

As pastor of a small church in urban San Antonio, located in an area with some of the highest crime, unemployment, illiteracy, and poverty in our region, the idea of growing a mega-church is laughable, if for no other reason than the massive amounts of resources required for such a church.

Mega-churches typically thrive in suburban areas of high population growth among middle and upper income people. The problem is that most people do not live in this sort of demographic context. What of churches serving impoverished areas? What of churches serving rural areas where populations are often in decline? I would argue that the large church model is too contextually constrained to be of broad value.

Aside from the contextual issues, it seems to me from a reading of scripture that Jesus’ primary concern was not for the growth or expansion of the synagogue/church, but for expansion of the Kingdom. These are not necessarily the same thing.

Borrowing language from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, the ultimate desire is “that every knee will bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”. This is the objective of the resurrection, affirmed in the Great Commission, which calls us to “go make disciples of all nations”. The 30-year focus on creating larger churches does not appear to be getting us any closer to this outcome. In fact, the opposite may be true.

So, how do we move from the current state of transfer growth to the preferable outcome of Kingdom growth? How do we raise up models of ministry that are accessible to people in a greater variety of contexts? How do we grow effective, Kingdom growing churches that do not require massive amounts of capital investment in property/facilities?

Perhaps what is required is not a church focused on “attendance”, but on “deployment”. Look for Part 2 of this article next month, titled, From “Attendance Thinking” to “Deployment Thinking”.