From Evangelism to Church Growth

So I have been really frustrated lately about the programming of churches to where they are more country clubs than communities of believers. While in class today the transition from evangelism to church growth was explained to me. The professor that is teaching the class is writing a book on Pastoral Theology which includes some of these thoughts.

At some point the Church (meaning churches, all, the whole community of faith) started to make a move from a descriptive to a prescriptive mode of ministry. Basically, they moved from being defined as a community of love and grace to an institution with programs and rules. Programming became a means to grow the church. The more programs offered, the bigger the church.This prescriptive mode leads pastors to be managers rather than participants. Pastors began competing with one another, trying to offer more programs than another church in order to gain the people from that church. This created a consumerist base, people decided to go to church where they could get MORE. Sadly, during this time preaching changed from challenging the people to being "seeker-sensitive." Basically, pastors started preaching from the Bible, but not calling the congregants to live like Jesus. Seeker-sensitive preaching overtook the prophetic voice that once made its home in the pulpit.

Two major themes overtook the pastoral position. First is that of manager, which calls the pastor to manage the chaotic world, a world of competition and violence. So, the pastor in managing this kind of world is not speaking against it, is not trying to reform and/or restore it, rather is actually supporting it. Second is the therapeutic approach to pastoral responsibilities which says that the pastor is to help people cope with the chaos. The problem with this approach is that in dealing with the chaos, confrontation of the issues is avoided. Preaching should involve speaking a word that will break down the chaos in our world in order to rebuild the world.

The message that Jesus came preaching wasn't easy to hear, in fact the good news was bad news for a lot of people, especially for the rich and the religious leaders. Jesus told the rich to sell all of their possessions and give to the poor and he tore down the institutions of the religious leaders. When the church growth movement began pastors lost their desire to preach the gospel because they knew that it wouldn't allow people to be comfortable consumers. No wonder many sermons are shallow, pastors would rather build comfortable institutions of consumerism than call people to take up their crosses and be like Jesus.