Church Growth in One's Own Strength

Dear pastors and Christian leaders!

What would you say if I asked you why it is that churches do not grow?

Many of you would probably say, "It's because of the general resistance to the Gospel," or, maybe, "The Good News has never been popular in the secular world!" Take a look at the cartoon: a wagon with four square wheels, loaded with perfectly round wheels, pushed and pulled by two men. They are devoted and hard-working, but their job is tedious, slow and frustrating.

For me this is more than a cartoon. It is a prophetic description of a large part of the body of Christ. The church is moving, but at a tediously slow pace. Why? If you ask the two workers, they would probably say, "It's because of the stiff resistance we encounter," or, maybe, "We're pushing this thing uphill, that's why!" - and would not be totally wrong. However the true cause of the chronic frustration lies in something else - the square wheels. Removing the windshield factor and other external conditions would not make the wagon move much faster. This illustration shows us that God has provided everything we'll ever need for church growth, yet we do not always make proper use of it. instead of using God's means, we try to do things in our own strength, with much pulling and pushing. This is what is called "technocratic church growth." It is not that the workers in this picture are unspiritual, or their goal — to get the church moving —  is in any way wrong. The problem is that the methods they are using are insufficient, because they are inconsistent with God's plan.

Demythologizing Church Growth

A look into church growth literature can be quite confusing. An entire array of programs claim, "Do what we do and you will get the same results." Unfortunately many of these concepts contradict one another. One group pushes "megachurches" as the most effective way to reach the community with the Gospel, while another suggests that the optimal church size is a small group. Some suggest that the key to success is a worship service targeting non-Christians, while others emphasize that the goal of a worship service is exclusively worshipping God and equipping the saints. One group is convinced that marketing strategies must be integrated into church planning, while another enjoys healthy church growth without even having heard of such methods.

It appears to me that in the past discussions too little distinction has been made between "models" (= concepts, with which some church in some part of the world has had a positive experience) and "principles" (= that which applies to any church everywhere). Thus some models parade as universally valid principles. At the same time, proven principles with universal application are sometimes mistaken for "one model among many."

Principles or Models?

I have attempted to illustrate the difference between these two approaches in the diagram on the right. When I talk about following a model, I mean a church's attempt to transfer the methods of a single successful church to their own situation. This approach is especially fascinating because, to a certain extent, the vision one hopes to realize for one's own church is already visible in real life in the model church.

The principle-oriented approach is different. It also assumes that model churches have much to teach us. Yet rather than limiting itself to one extraordinary model, hundreds of model churches, both large and small, are researched to discover which elements turn out to be universal principles that are relevant for all churches, and which elements are, perhaps, interesting factors but not generally valid principles for effective church growth. The principles are obtained by abstraction, i.e. by stripping the observable models of all their specific, local and cultural flavor. In the second step, the principles thus gained are individualized for the concrete situation of a specific church. This principle-oriented approach (abstraction plus individualization) goes far beyond simple one-to-one imitation of a successful church and helps us transfer the reproducible elements into our situations.

«The "Biotic" Alternative

The NCD Program has its own approach to church growth. We have chosen to call it "natural" or "biotic" church development. "Biotic" implies nothing less that a rediscovery of the laws of life (in Greek, "bios"). The goal is to let God's growth automatisms flourish, instead of wasting energy on man-made programs.

"Natural" means learning from nature. Learning from nature means learning from God's creation. Learning from God's creation means learning from God the Creator. To illustrate this let us consider this picture. It depicts several principles of organic growth. Most church growth authors would confirm the value of learning from these principles, since church is a living organism. The problem of many popular concepts, however, is that they fail to go deep enough. They are literally superficial. They overlook the underground realities which influence life, focusing primarily on the visible fruit. Natural Church Development focuses on that which happens below the surface: like the composition of the soil, the workings of the root system, the role of worms etc.

Applying observable laws and paradigms of nature to theology is highly controversial. We concede the difficulty here. This type of theological reasoning, called "theologia naturalis," can create massive problems when applied to theology proper, i.e. the knowledge of God. It fosters the illusion that we can perceive and understand God on our own, without Christ, without the Cross, without revelation. Here, however, we are dealing with principles of church growth, not with questions about the character of God. It seems to us that in this context, learning from creation is not only legitimate, it is a must!

Тhree Key Terms

Natural Church Development means bidding farewell to superficial pragmatism, to simplistic cause-and-effect logic, to a fixation with quantity, to manipulative marketing methods, and to questionable "can-do" attitudes. It means leaving behind man-made prescriptions for success and moving on to growth principles which are given by God Himself to all of creation.

In order to clarify the difference between natural church development and the predominant approaches, we will be using three key terms: the «technocratic», «spiritualistic» and «biotic» paradigms.

The International Research Project

How does one discover universally applicable church growth principles? Answering this question is not a matter of intuition, nor of studying a limited number of model churches. There really is only one way to find an answer to this question, namely, scientifically sound research of churches around the world.

This realization provided the framework for our research project. In order to accumulate a sufficiently large data base to make scientifically significant assertions, a minimum of 1000 different churches on all five continents was required. We needed large and small, growing and declining, persecuted and state-subsidized, charismatic and non-charismatic, prominent models and entirely unknown churches. We needed a cross-section of churches and regions, where spiritual awakenings are occurring (such as Brazil and Korea), as well as areas which, in the light of world-wide standards, qualify more as "spiritually developing nations" (such as Germany).