Church Growth Tactics Are Not Evangelism, Part 1

The most amazing part about evangelism is that we have a Biblical blueprint for it in the book of Acts. There, we find the early church’s multiplication strategy, and they were focused on church planting, itinerant preaching (missionary endeavors), preaching the gospel, and keeping up good works among fellow Christians and those in the community with needs. In planting churches, they were quick to train local leaders who could work autonomously in the absence of the apostles. Remember, in the first century, there were no vehicles, internet, phones, or extensive availability of printed research materials. 

Today, unfortunately, evangelism looks nothing like the early church’s efforts in Acts. After wrestling with my graduate education major for some time, I settled on attending theological seminary, even though I did not have a strong call to be a pastor. I did have a call to be engaged in missions, though I never had a call to engage in foreign missions. Eventually, I landed on a major in World Missions and Evangelism and graduated from Asbury Theological Seminary.

The textbooks and classes all centered around a unified theme largely classified under Church Growth. That was more than 20 years ago. In this series of posts will review the history, mechanics, outcome, and current manifestations of the Church Growth Movement.

The early pioneers of Church Growth include Robert Schuller and Bob Buford. Buford was never a pastor. Rather, he was a wealthy businessman who used his wealth to push ideologies be in which he believed. While they seemed to have worked independently, they separately became mentors of prostelytes who now have recognizable names. In a nut shell, their tactics were to identify the needs of the community, offer programs aimed at attracting the community, and use these programs to get the community into their churches during the week and maybe even on Sunday morning.

Some of the tools used in understanding the local community are surveys and demographic studies. Once you understand the demographics, you can tailor the programs to the population. This approach is discussed in detail in the books of Donald McGavran as well as others who have written books popular in Church Growth. While Robert Schuller helped to perfect the execution, Donald McGavran was key in perfecting the strategies for gathering information and interpreting the data.

Let me stop here and just say that the idea of the Church Growth Movement is innocent enough, except it isn’t really.

The outcome of the Church Growth Movement is that the programs become the draw. Rick Warren was a mentee in the Church Growth Movement, and he took it one step further by normalizing contemporary music in churches. In fact, the Church Growth Movement and Contemporary Christian Music Movement are intertwined, so much so that the two strategies feed off each other. 

Here’s the problem, though. If you are drawn to church by a secular-based program or by familiar rock music, what is your reaction when you are presented with an invitation to accept Christ? This is the great switcheroo, and it is dishonest. By engaging in Church Growth tactics, we are actually being dishonest with people. We want them to come for the programs and the music, and these are the real draw. But we are not telling them that they are really coming to hear about Christ.

All this has led to many churches watering down or toning down Biblical truths. It is, as it were, a slippery slope. None of the actual outcomes of the work of Buford, Schuller, Warren and others have led to a deepening in people’s commitment to Christ. The most notable admission of this fact was by Bill Hybels a number of years ago, himself being one of the most influential Church Growth Movement figures. Instead, since the rolling out of the Church Growth Movement and the Contemporary Music Movement, the American church has been on a steady downhill slide, only accelerating as time goes on. For “proof in the pudding,” so to speak, other Church Growth Movement and modern missions textbooks were written by C. Peter Wagner. He became the founder of the New Apostolic Reformation, which is a leading heretical and false teaching taking root in our churches today.

Schools and seminaries which used Wagner’s books as their Church Growth and missions textbooks should be ashamed of themselves, for they endorsed and encouraged all of their students to follow after him and his heresy.

 Stay tuned for part 2.