Page 4 - November 2018 Traveler

From the Pastor’s Study…

As a pastor in the church I am often the recipient of scholarly articles on various topics having
to do with church and ministry. Recently I was sent an article called: What is church growth?
Before I read the article, I took the question seriously and tried to think through what my re-

sponse would be if I was actually asked that question.

Here are my thoughts:

I think first and foremost we need to define what we mean by church growth. The author of
the article contemplated and then espoused upon how one would quantitatively determine
growth. He applied a numeric threshold as to how a leader might determine whether growth

was happening in a church and his numeric variable had a lot to do with context—in other
words where that church was located. Anticipated growth was variable depending upon
whether the church building was located in a rural setting or an urban setting. The more ur-

ban the geographic area the church was located the author contended, the more one could
and should expect a significant increase in numbers—much greater numbers than he con-
tended one would expect in a rural setting. I found this quantitative approach fascinating
from an intellectual perspective, but at the same time wholly misguided and unhelpful in our

modern world. The presupposition in his research was that the church is defined by the
boundaries of a building structure and its location, as well as what transpired within the
building—namely worship on a Sunday morning. While I will not argue against the church

existing within the confines of a church building, it is not the whole of the Church (please
note the capital C). It is in fact a microcosm of the Church. What he was really talking about
is growth in church attendance and that is very different than thinking about growth within
the Church universal.

As disciples of Christ, I believe we are called to think about Church being defined as a people
in relationship with God our creator. This seems to me the biblical definition we encounter

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