The major thesis of this chapter is that some outcomes

            of ‘church growth’ thinking and practice can be destructive

            rather than redemptive for pastors and their churches.

                 A couple of years ago I lunched with a leader of one of

            America’s best-known evangelical denominations.  He told me

            ‘Most of the clergy leaving our ministry say the church

            growth movement is the major cause of their frustrations.  If

            their churches aren’t growing, they feel they’re a failure.

            Interestingly, a disproportionately high number of these

            pastors go into the construction business – either commerc-

            ially, or they build a holiday shack somewhere.  Presumably

            they can see in this vocation something tangible for their

            efforts’.
                 A pastor of a neighbouring church came into our office

            at Blackburn, sank wearily into a chair, and said: ‘You guys

            are making it hard for me.  You’ve got seven pastors, two

            administrators, but I’m battling on my own.  But when some of

            my people ‘play truant’ and visit your services, they come

            back wanting similar things to happen in our church.  I’m

            frustrated and they’re frustrated because I just can’t

            deliver the goods’.
            The following encapsulates the key church growth principles:
            * The growth of the church – everywhere – qualitatively and

            numerically is God’s will for his Son’s Church.  * The New

            Testament is full of metaphors, examples, and celebrations of

            the church growing.  * The modern church growth movement has

            found that churches are most likely to grow where the pastor

            is a possibility thinker, where the laity is well-mobilized,

            the church is big enough to provide varied services, there is

            a proper balance of ‘celebration, congregation and cell’, the

            membership is fairly homogeneous, effective evangelistic

            methods are used, and whose priorities are biblical.  Both

            pastor and people have to be willing to pay the price for

            growth.  * An important factor is assimilation of new members

            and their involvement in the church’s programme. (1)
                 Pastors and their lay leaders are bombarded with exhort-

            ations to grow their churches, such as this one, from the

            Office of Evangelism of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.:

            ‘God wants this parish to grow… It is biblical and what God

            wills… Growth is holy, healthy, normal and to be expect-

            ed… Church growth is not an option.  It is central to our

            gospel task.  If we are not growing, we are not doing what

            God wants.’ (2)
                 It’s easy for researchers to identify the main factors

            in a church’s growth as ‘local contextual, national

            contextual, local institutional, and national

            institutional’, (3) but, as Peter Wagner expresses it:  ‘I

            would personally rather believe differently, but I cannot

            escape the mounting evidence that the pastor heads the list

            of factors common to growing churches in America.  Show me a

            rapidly-growing church, and I will show you a dynamic leader

            whom God is using to make it happen.’ (4)
                 That is, when it comes to ‘the crunch’, the first key

            church growth principle is still ‘the Pastor must want the

            church to grow and be willing to pay the price.’
                 This statement is affirmed again in Wagner’s Leading

            Your Church to Growth. (5) However, Wagner no longer (fort-

            unately!) asserts that any church can grow anywhere (‘other

            than in Death Valley or Antarctica’).  ‘In the early years of

            the church growth movement, we made such statements as “Any

            church can grow”.  We now know that statement to be invalid.

            But I do think our methods – the state of the art – now

            address themselves to the complexity of the situation.’ (6)
                 Our church-people may not understand fully such complex-

            ities.  Over and over again lay leaders tell me:  ‘Our church

            will only grow if we get a dynamic pastor, who will attract

            new members.’ ‘If we could only get a Good Man here, things

            would be different…’
                 The research into clergy stress (7) indicates that

            clergy are feeling these pressures very keenly indeed.  They

            are human, too, and aren’t generally interested in ‘backing a

            loser’.  And they are leaving the ministry in very large

            numbers.  I haven’t seen the hard statistics on this, but

            several well-informed observers in North America assert that

            the attrition rate from the parish ministry throughout the

            Western world is higher than from any other professional

            group.  Graeme Goldsworthy notes that if the Australian

            company B.H.P. lost as many executives in a year as the

            church loses clergy, a top-level enquiry would be instituted

            immediately.  ‘For some reason most denominations of the

            Christian Church seem prepared to accept the wastage of

            clergy before retirement age as one of the facts of life that

            we learn to live with.’ (8)
                 Of the 20 or 30 pastors I know personally who have left

            the active ministry, about half are not worshipping regularly

            in a Christian church at all.  (9)
            THE KEY FACTORS
                 What has church growth thinking and practice got to do

            with the clergy’s ‘not being a happy lot’?  I believe there

            are at least four ‘presenting problems’:
            (1) ‘Numerolatry’
                 I have yet to meet the healthy pastor who is not grat-

            ified by an increase in his or her congregation, nor disapp-

            ointed by its decrease. (10) McGavran’s Understanding Church

            Growth is a passionate defence of the idea that numerical

            growth is the only really valid criterion of church growth.

            (11) He makes the a priori claim that all other areas of

            church life – evangelism, ministry, cultural adaptation,

            stewardship, etc.  – are tied in an absolute way to the one

            overriding factor of numerical increase.  The essence of

            church growth thinking is to research the factors which help

            or inhibit such increase.  So whether we like it or not,

            ‘church growth’ connotes numbers, quantity.  Is this idea

            biblical?  Church growth protagonists affirm that the Bible

            is ‘full of numbers.  It’s full of counts.  Twelve apostles,

            70 disciples, 5000 fed, 500 meeting after the resurrection,

            and so on’.  David Pawson goes on to say:
                 ‘The Book of Acts is particularly striking here.

                 Somebody on the day of Pentecost was so full of the

                 Spirit that they counted heads.  And do you notice

                 the progression in the Book of Acts?  At the

                 beginning they count individuals.  At the end

                 they’re counting in churches.  At the beginning

                 they’re counting men, women and everybody.  But

                 pretty soon they found that counting the men only

                 was the quickest way.  There is an intense interest

                 in growth.’ (12)
                 Similarly, Orlando Costas notes that throughout the New

            Testament there are numerous references to growth. (13) ‘The

            idea of growth is therefore basic to the experience and

            missional expectancy of the first Christians and to the

            biblical theology of mission.’ (14)
                 David Pawson says every major denomination in his

            country (Britain) has been reporting a decline for sixty

            years…
                 and we have not only accepted the decline, but we

                 have begun to justify it, psychologically, theol-

                 ogically, ecclesiologically.  We have developed the

                 kind of remnant theology which can even lead to a

                 certain satisfaction, psychologically, in being a

                 despised minority. (15)
                 Certainly, numerical growth may not mean that the church

            is really growing: it may, in the words of Juan Carlos Ortiz,

            be simply getting fat.  Orlando Costas has given us, in my

            view, a devastating illustration of this in his analysis of

            the growth of Chilean Pentecostalism, 1910-1975.  (16)
                 An accretion of individuals into the ‘church’, as

            history has witnessed in some of its mass movements, may

            indeed be ‘Christendom in the making, and not Christianity

            breaking through’.  (17)
                 Are quantity and quality antithetical?  Is ‘getting the

            numbers’ always to be thought to militate against ‘better

            relationships?’  Certainly, some evangelists, in their zeal

            for ‘numbers’, have neglected qualitative follow-through with

            those who have made ‘decisions for Christ’.
                 I believe we need three cautions here.  The first has

            been expressed by Erich Fromm:
                 Our age has found a substitute for God – the

                 impersonal calculation.  This new god has turned

                 into an idol to whom all may be sacrificed.  A

                 new concept of the sacred and unquestionable is

                 arising:  that of calculability, probability,

                 factuality. (18)
                 The second must be an affirmation that numerical growth

            is not everything; it is not the only way to measure vit-

            ality, although it may be one way.  Numerical increase ord-

            inarily and ideally, ought to be an index of quality. Cert-

            ainly, in the Acts of the Apostles, numerical increase was an

            occasion for celebration rather than (as unfortunately exists

            in some Christian circles today), an occasion for cynicism.

            (19)
                 Thirdly, and, I believe we must understand the psych-

            ology of either an obsession with, or depreciation of,

            ‘numbers’.  Such attitudes either cater to our egos, or,

            conversely, we lose sight of the fact that ‘numbers are real

            persons, for each of whom Christ died’.  The danger of the

            first attitude is that of ‘triumphalism’, of the second, that

            expressed in the unbiblical dictum, ‘Proselytizing is a

            non-Christian activity’. (20)  Further, as I try to point out

            elsewhere in this book, any notion which produces ‘winners

            and losers’ has to be examined very carefully indeed. Per-

            haps ‘numerical growth’ is like the motor car:  it’s alright

            in principle, but in the wrong hands…!
            (2) Selectivity and the Homogeneous Unit Principle
                 Here we are linking two related church growth princ-

            iples, one a corollary of the other.  The principle of

            selectivity simply says the church should concentrate on the

            responsive elements without crossing racial, linguistic or

            class barriers. (21) A homogeneous unit is simply a group of

            people who consider each other to be ‘our kind of people.’

            (22) Win Arn summarizes the research:  ‘Churches grow, and

            grow best, in their own homogeneous unit… [and, in

            addition] people want their pastor to be ‘like’ them.  Not

            too far above or below, not too far ahead or behind.’ (23)
                 The practical outworking of these principles has very

            important theological, ethical, and strategic implications

            for pastors and missionaries.
                 Jurgen Moltmann has written:
                 The church of the crucified Christ cannot consist

                 of an assembly of like persons who mutually affirm

                 each other, but must be constituted of unlike

                 persons… For the crucified Christ, the principle

                 of fellowship is fellowship with those who are

                 different, and solidarity with those who have

                 become alien and have been made different.  Its

                 power is not friendship, the love for what is

                 similar and beautiful (‘philia’), but creative love

                 for what is different, alien and ugly (‘agape’).

                 (24)
                 So the homogeneous unit principle is a form of eccles-

            iastical apartheid.  Usually church growth practitioners have

            rationalized their adherence to this principle by saying that

            a monocultural approach is necessary in evangelism, whereas

            more mature believers can be encouraged in their koinonia to

            widen the circle.
                 But this ignores two important issues.  The first, and

            most basic, is that minority groups in all societies may

            offer, from their rich cultural and spiritual traditions,

            something of God’s truth hidden from the dominant group.

            But, more seriously, if the church-on-earth is supposed to

            exemplify in its life the unity-in-diversity ideals of the

            New Testament vision for the church, how can such selectivity

            be countenanced? Church-members ought to be encouraged from

            the outset to incorporate ‘kingdom values’ authentically in

            their individual and corporate living.
                 In response to these and other considerations, McGavran

            says, in effect, ‘show me’.  There’s some sort of ‘homogen-

            eous glue’ in every growing congregation (even if it’s a

            ‘charismatic’ or ‘prophetic’ glue in culturally heterogeneous

            churches such as that at Antioch, Acts 13:1-3).  He says the

            ability to transcend racial and ethnic barriers is a fruit of

            the Spirit reserved for those who have already made consider-

            able progress in the Christian way. It is not a virtue that

            can be expected of neophytes.
                 I believe a counter-argument can be made on other than

            pragmatic grounds (what strategy will win the most with the

            least effort and dollars?) to those who have trouble with

            this principle.  And it’s simply that the whole notion of

            ‘progressive revelation’ implies an adaptation of truth to

            the ability of the recipients to assimilate it.  God has been

            very selective in his covenantal dealings with the human

            race, and refuses to give rational reasons for this approach.

            Jacob yes, Esau no, and that’s that.  God ministers his grace

            to selected people, and sometimes, because of their hard-

            heartedness, stops striving with them, and even ‘gives them

            up’.  Christ himself operated selectively, he came not to

            call the (self-)righteous, but sinners to repentance.  The

            unproductive fig-tree is cut down.  Pearls should not be

            given to swine.  These messages are loud and clear: select-

            ivity is a function of responsiveness.
                 Perhaps there’s a strategic dimension here:  first, the

            responsive come, then later, and through them, the less

            responsive.  First the multitudes, then a large number of

            priests (Acts 6:7).  McGavran indicates that this is the

            right approach today too.  The best way to win the resistant

            is to win the responsive first.  Bishop Pickett reports that

            the only place in India in which any significant number of

            high-caste Indians have been won is Andhra Province, where

            multitudes of outcasts were won first.
                 Paul’s missionary approach is similarly ‘selective’.  He

            stays in Corinth, for the Lord has many people in that city

            (Acts 18:8-11).  He must tarry at Ephesus, because a great

            door for effective work has opened for him (1 Corinthians

            16:8-9).  And, so far as the homogeneity principle is conc-

            erned, he is quite clear:  to the Jew he becomes like a Jew,

            to win the Jews, and so on (1 Corinthians 9:19-23).
                 I would personally endorse the ‘homogeneous evangelism/

            heterogeneous koinonia’ idea.  However, there is a very great

            danger in a church’s becoming like a country club if its

            people’s values are not prophetically challenged.  There is a

            constant – and sometimes not-so-subtle pressure on preachers

            to selectively filter their message to reinforce the racism,

            sexism, or materialism of one particular group of people.

            The church should, by its preaching and example, be challeng-

            ing the prevailing non-Christian elements of its surrounding

            culture.  Its business is ‘culture tranformation’ rather than

            ‘culture affirmation’.
                One further word:  strategy-wise, I agree with James

            Engel that perhaps the selectivity issue in evangelism is not

            ‘either/or’, so much as selecting different strategies

            according to the ripeness of the fields.  To extend the

            agricultural analogy further, we need to ‘analyse soils’

            before we sow.  Perhaps various pre-evangelism strategies,

            using mass media, are called for, dependent upon levels of

            biblical awareness, attitudes, and propensity for persecut-

            ion, for some peoples, while employing more overt methods of

            proclamation with others. (25)
            (3) Scientific Analysis and the ‘Description/prescription’

            Syndrome.
                 Church growth people put great stress on the social and

            behavioural sciences, particularly social anthropology.  The

            dangers here are self-evident.  Sometimes these insights can

            be used uncritically:  some of the presuppositions widely

            accepted in these disciplines are naturalistic.  In practice,

            there can be a temptation by pastors and missionaries to look

            for ‘guidance by computer’ or technology rather than through

            the Word and prayer.  Such expressions as ‘growth special-

            ists’, ‘the business of witnessing’, ‘cost per person’, etc.

            are sometimes found in the literature of ‘elenctics’ (the

            ‘science of bringing people of non-Christian religiosity to

            repentance and faith in Christ’).  Rene Padilla has suggested

            that ‘church growth people assume that you make Christians

            the way you make cars and sausages.  Mass production, achiev-

            ed by having the machinery properly regulated, is the way to

            do anything’.  (26)
                 Having now read fairly widely in the literature, and

            attended several schools for pastors run by church growth

            experts (both at Fuller Seminary and elsewhere), my personal

            contention would be that the social sciences are not used

            widely enough by them.  Too much stress has been placed

            within anthropological disciplines and insights, and not

            enough in areas of contemporary sociology, particularly

            social psychology, and within that field, the dynamics of

            such areas of study as social class, communication theory,

            organizational theory, etc.  For example, the advantages of a

            dialogic approach to evangelism in some cultures seem not to

            be taken seriously.  Rather there is a somewhat blinkered

            view in the literature that proclamation and persuasion are

            the only viable or biblical modes.
                 But the issue goes deeper.  Basically, we have here a

            problem which is as ancient as philosophical analysis itself,

            namely the relationship between two levels of truth – the

            theoretical and the functional (ie. ‘what is orthodox?’

            versus ‘what works?’).  In religious contexts it is the

            question of the theological (Word) versus the methodological

            (the proclamation of the Word in concrete situations).  Put

            another way, it is ‘pure’ versus ‘applied’.
                 The polarization between theologians and the church

            growth people is a function of these tensions, I believe.  Of

            course, busy pastors and evangelists complain that they have

            little time for serious theological reflection (‘and what’s

            the use of all that anyway?’).  Conversely, very few highly

            skilled theologians are pastors of growing churches. Occas-

            ionally you’ll find a gifted preacher-theologian who preaches

            regularly to large congregations (James Stewart, Helmut

            Thielicke, John Stott), but it may be argued that such

            preachers have built their congregations around their own

            declamatory and other gifts, and such congregations are not

            fully functional in other respects.  (Witness the exodus that

            usually happens when the Great Preacher leaves or dies).
                 The danger of ‘purism’ is in its propensity towards

            irrelevance.  The danger of ‘appliedism’ is its preoccupation

            with ad hoc, pragmatic concerns. A purely utilitarian

            approach builds ministries out of needs, and its cousin,

            pragmatism, transforms ministry into a marketing strategy.
                 Partly, too, it’s a matter of temperament.  I find it

            hard to imagine some theologians running a sparkling

            talk-show:  they’re just not gregarious people.  (Eberhard

            Bethge says of Bonhoeffer: ‘Because he was lonely, he became

            a theologian and because he was a theologian he was lonely’).

            (27) Conversely, it would be hard to imagine a ‘productive’

            pastor being reclusive!
                 I would want to encourage pastors not to avoid the

            creative tension between dogma and experience, contemplation

            and action.  In fact, these days, if we don’t learn both to

            be effective with people and walk with God, to be good

            practical stewards of the ministerial trust given to us, and

            to ‘centre down’, we’ll never win the battle against

            distress.  A pastor these days – and, indeed because he/she

            wants to all things to the glory of God – has no option but

            to strive for excellence, both theologically and

            methodologically, both in exegetical and experiential fields.
                 Back to the question of ‘integration’:  there’s a burg-

            eoning literature on this subject from North America.  In

            essence, I believe that the Holy Spirit – God at his most

            empirical – guides us into all truth.  That truth can be

            theological, based on a study of the Word, or sociological,

            based on a study of God’s creatures, human beings.  If our

            presuppositions are biblical, in both areas, I see few real

            problems.
                 Re the description/prescription issue:  as Peter Wagner

            openly suggests, ‘church growth science’ is not merely

            analytical.  It
                 helps us maximise the use of energy and other

                 resources for God’s greater glory.  It enables us

                 to detect errors and correct them before they do

                 too much damage.  It would be a mistake to claim

                 too much, but some enthusiasts feel that with

                 church growth insights we may even step as far

                 ahead in God’s task of world evangelization as

                 medicine did when aseptic surgery was introduced’.

                 (28)
                 Like the world missionary movement on the eve of the

            Edinburth 1910 Conference, McGavran sees ‘Afericasia’ ready

            and waiting for the gospel, so the task is essentially that

            of finding the correct methodology for maximizing the opport-

            unities.
                 Thoughtful critics have found a couple of problems here.

            First, there seems to be little emphasis in the New Testament

            on a self-conscious strategy for church growth.  (However,

            Paul does seem to suggest some intentionality in his

            focussing upon the entrepot cities of the Mediterranean,

            leading ultimately to Spain).  Second, there is the problem

            of ‘manipulation’.  Australian theologian Graeme Garrett

            writes:
                 It is true that ‘scientific sociology’ includes

                 amongst its many achievements the study of

                 techniques and strategies for the manipulation of

                 social groups toward certain predetermined ends.

                 The highly skilled exploitation of such techniques

                 in the realms of marketing, commerce and politics

                 is notorious if not scandalous in contemporary

                 Western culture.  I do not wish to suggest that the

                 Church Growth writers intend deliberately or

                 cynically to engage in blatant forms of mass

                 manipulation.  My only point is that it is

                 dangerous for the church to give even the appear-

                 ance of using disguised forms of manipulation

                 to ‘persuade’ people to become church members.  The

                 Gospel allows no warrant for such action.  Not by

                 any subtleties, but by ‘the open statement of the

                 truth’ are we to ‘commend ourselves to everyone’s

                 conscience in the sight of God’ (II Corinthians

                 4:2).  Techniques may bring people to the church,

                 they cannot bring them to faith in Christ. (29)
                 Here we come up against the difficult problem of the

            distinction between ‘persuasion’ (which Paul says he does)

            and ‘propagandizing’.  Is it possible to conceive of a kind

            of persuasion which does not ‘bend wills’ to some degree?
                 I believe a more cogent criticism was advanced by Orland

            Costas, when he points out that church growth is a sign, not

            an instrument of mission.  A sign, he says, is something

            which points beyond itself, so ‘multidimensional growth’ is a

            sign pointing to the presence of the kingdom.  An instrument,

            on the other hand, is ‘a means whereby something is achieved,

            performed, or furthered’ (Webster).  ‘In God’s mission, it is

            the church, not its growth, that is the instrument by which

            the mission is furthered and fulfilled.  Multidimensional

            growth witnesses to the church’s faithfulness in the exec-

            ution of its task.’  (30)
                 This is a good reason, I believe, for aiming at ‘church

            health’ rather than ‘church growth’.  If God grants an

            increase, well and good:  if not, still well and good. Liv-

            ing organisms grow anyway, but growth is a by-product of

            life, not its cause.  A church’s growth is not like that of a

            business:  the church is to be evaluated, not by its profits

            or institutional success, but by its adherence to its Lord’s

            will and mandates.
            (4) The ‘Success’ Orientation
                 For church growth theorists, the parable of the talents

            (Matthew 25:14-30) provides a rationale for success being a

            correlate of faithfulness.  Wagner, for example, asks, ‘Why

            were the two servants who put their talents to work faithful

            and the one who did not unfaithful?  Very simply, because

            they were successful’.  Costas counters that the point of the

            parable is not the money they made, but, rather, the fact

            that they did not hide it away.  They were faithful not bec-

            ause they were successful (made money) but rather, because

            they faithfully put to work the resources the Master had

            entrusted to them. (31)
                 I believe both Wagner and Costas are half-right.  It

            seems to me that the essence of faithful stewardship is that

            a steward does what his master wants him to do with the

            money:  that is, he increases it. The wicked and faithless

            steward has nothing to show for his stewardship.
                 Notice, however, that the man with two talents is not

            denigrated because he’s not a five-talent person.  I have the

            feeling that the main problem is not with ‘success’ per se,

            but with the sort of sick competitive spirit we in the church

            have inherited from the commercial world around us.  I

            believe there’s nothing wrong with being successful, provided

            our yardstick is between our ‘actual’ and our potential;

            provided we live A W Tozer’s dictum:  ‘God may allow his

            servant to succeed when he has disciplined that servant to a

            point where he or she does not need to succeed to be happy.

            The one who is elated by success and cast down by failure is

            still a carnal person.’ (32)
                 In other words, some successful pastors preside over

            churches with growing memberships, and other successful

            pastors have churches with a static or declining membership.

            Let us not forget that the New Testament offers us a vision of

            the church in the books of James, Peter and Revelation that is

            quite different to the celebrating church in Luke-Acts. The

            church also suffers. It is faithful not because it is succ-

            essful evangelistically, but because it is innocent, and hope-

            ful in its life-and-death struggle in a hostile world.
                 Probably the major problem with the notion of ‘success’

            is not biblical or theological but psychological.  It’s

            interesting that the country most ‘success-oriented’ (the

            U.S.) is, in my view, the Western country where the church is

            most dynamic.  Other nations eschewing the notion of success

            have the poorest church attendances.  I believe there’s a

            connection there somewhere.
                 A related notion has to do with hope’ and ‘optimism’.

            In both his books The Humility of God and Christian Hope,

            John Macquarrie draws a sharp distinction between the two:
                 …there is a great difference between hope and

                 optimism.  Hope is humble, trustful, vulnerable.

                 Optimism is arrogant, brash, complacent.  Hope has

                 known the pang of suffering and has perhaps even

                 felt the chill of despair.  The word hope should not

                 be lightly spoken by people who have never had any

                 cause for despair.  Only one who has cried de

                 profundis can really appreciate the meaning of hope.

                 By contrast, optimism has not faced the enormity of

                 evil or the results of the fall of man and the

                 disfiguring sin that affects all human life, both

                 personal and social.  What drives some people to

                 atheism is not a genuinely biblical hope but the

                 spectacle of an insensitive optimism, masquerading

                 as such hope. (33)
                 Now I do not have any problem with Macquarrie’s central

            thesis that ‘Our God is great enough to be humble.’  But I’m

            wondering why I can’t find words like Paul’s ‘I can do all

            things through Christ who strengthens me’ in his argument?  I

            believe the biblical idea of hope says something to us both

            in good times and bad, when our opportunities are apparent

            all around us, and when the going’s tough.  Macquarrie, in my

            reading of him, limits his discussion to the latter.  The

            main idea is, surely, God is with us in all our times and our

            testing – when we abound, and when we are abased.
                 Probably the words ‘effectiveness’ and ‘godly confidence’

            might be better in this context.  ‘Effectiveness’ is the

            appropriate embodiment of faithfulness in given human

            contexts. (34) It involves the appropriate coordination of

            means and ends for the sake of the overall purpose – the

            extension of God’s kingdom (not ours).  One is unfaithful if

            the aims are misdirected.  One is ineffective if the goals

            are disembodied.
                 But winning isn’t everything!  As Vernon Grounds put it,

            we need ‘the faith to face failure’.  In the church of the

            crucified Lord, one’s esteem should not be a function of

            ‘better’ or ‘smarter’ or ‘bigger’.  For some congregations,

            faithfulness and effectiveness will issue in growth; for

            others it will not.  For others, it may mean decline, without

            that church’s having a pathological or terminal illness!
                 So let us not avoid the creative dialectic between being

            faithful in our love for God and others, and being as effect-

            ive as we can be in ministry and mission.  The dangers of

            either deriving status and self-worth through ‘success’ or

            becoming bitter and cynical through ‘failure’ must be avoided

            at all costs.
            Conclusions
                 There are many other issues we could have looked at.

            The church growth phenomenon bristles with them:  the notion

            of evangelising ‘people groups’, the lack of an adequate

            theological/ecclesiological base, a truncated notion of

            ‘mission’, the question: how can people who have ‘made a

            decision for Christ’ be effectively nurtured and discipled?,

            the ‘strictness principle’ enunciated by Dean Kelley (note

            the title of his book Why Strict Churches are Strong), the

            question of goal-setting (churches which aim somewhere are

            more likely to hit the mark, but are numerical goals –

            whether of people or money – compatible with an Australian

            ethos?) and so on and on.
                 McGavran has certainly started something!  It is

            important to recognise that his unique contribution to

            missiological thinking was originally as a counterforce to

            the ‘mainline’ sending agencies, which were stressing

            devolution, abdication from proclamatory evangelism, emphasis

            on the horizontal rather than vertical dimensions of mission,

            etc.  McGavran’s corrective was, I believe, truly prophetic.
                 However, in doing some things well, he and other church

            growth protagonists have done other things poorly.  In the

            area of mission, for example, they have committed themselves

            to making a part the whole: mission equals evangelism plus

            discipling. But mission in the teaching of the prophets and

            Jesus begins with justice (Micah 6:8, Matthew 23:23, Luke

            11:42).  But that was customary in the sixties and seventies

            among evangelicals.
                 It is a shame that we have so few theologian-evangelists

            in the modern church.  The books on church growth are saying

            something very valuable indeed, but sometimes tend to be guilty

            of residing in ‘simplicity this side of complexity’. Converse-

            ly, many of the critics of the church growth movement are

            wallowing in ‘complexity the other side of simplicity’.  May we

            all move to ‘simplicity the other side of complexity!’
                 The main issues, I believe, are not whether the church

            is growing, but whether we are authentically engaged in the

            mission of God in Christ, through the power of the Spirit.

            Is the church ‘transforming’ culture rather than being merely

            culture-affirming or culture-denying (to use H. Richard

            Niebuhr’s motif)?
                 Someone has said the biggest business in modern societ-

            ies is that of ‘anxiety reduction’.  Potentially, church growth

            thinking, if ‘baptized’, can become for pastoral leaders a

            redemptive rather than a destructive force in their work for

            the kingdom.
                 We need humbly to say, with John, ‘I am not the Messiah

            …  I am not the expected prophet.  I am a voice crying in

            the wilderness “Make straight the way of the Lord”.  I am a

            herald, clearing the way for the King…’
                 But we also can say confidently, with Charles Wesley,

            ‘faith, mighty faith, the promise seizes and looks to that

            alone.  Laughs at impossibilities, and cries, “It shall be

            done!”.’
                 A final word from David Pawson:  if you wait until the

            wind and the weather are just right you will never sow

            anything – and never harvest anything either! (36)
                                      ENDNOTES
            (1) Rowland Croucher, Church Growth Up-date, an unpublished

            paper, 1982.
            (2)  Quote from The Episcopalian, 1977, in Dean R. Hoge and

            David A. Roozen (eds.), Understanding Church Growth and

            Decline, 1950-1976, New York: Pilgrim Press, 1979, p. 293.
            (3)  Ibid, p. 297.
            (4)  C. Peter Wagner, What Makes Churches Grow?, an

            unpublished paper, p. 2.
            (5)  Regal, 1984.
            (6)  ‘Must a Healthy Church be a Growing Church?’, Leadership,

            Winter, 1981, p. 128.
            (7)  See Rowland Croucher, ‘Renewal in the Pastorate: An

            Analysis of Modern Clergy Needs’, unpublished paper, 1982
            (8)  ‘Clergy Morale’, Clergy Health, Vol 1, No. 3, 1979.  My

            hunch is that church officials have the same attitude towards

            this phenomonon as doctors have to death and dying:  it’s too

            stark an attack on their whole raison d’etre, so the research

            isn’t publicized too much.  There was an interesting spate

            of letters in the British Catholic weekly, The Tablet,

            a few years ago, wondering if the correct number of Catholic

            priests leaving the active ministry during the past 20 years

            is 40,000 or 100,000!  A couple of Southern Baptist leaders

            told me they lose 1,000 pastors every year.
            (9) One concomitant of the denominational ‘blind eye syndrome’

            in this whole matter relates to the lack of on-going caring and

            support of these pastors.  A Catholic priest told me he receiv-

            ed no help whatsoever from his superiors in his struggle, and

            has yet to get anything other than a complicated, very personal

            questionnaire, from the Vatican.  A Baptist minister in Aust-

            ralia received no communication at all from his denomination’s

            headquarters – and only two letters of encouragement from his

            peers.  When Charles Davis, the eminent British theologian,

            left the priesthood and the Catholic church he complained

            bitterly about the lack of love in it.  (See the essays by

            Desmond Fisher and Jerome Herwin in On the Run, Spirituality

            for the Seventies, ed. Michael F. McCauley, Dove Communic-

            ations, East Malvern, Vic., 1974, pp. 134ff and 144ff.)
            (10) A few years ago the Melbourne Age had this ‘Odd Spot’ on

            its front page:  ‘Secured to his church steeple by a safety

            belt, the Reverend Gary Burgess of East Millstone, New

            Jersey, ate a hearty meal of roast lamb and angel food cake

            as he promised his congregation he would if 200 or more

            attended a service’ (14.6.84). Such antics are an outcome of

            the hype inevitably associated with too great a preoccupation

            with numbers.
            (11) McGavran insists that ‘a principle and irreplaceable

            purpose of mission is the (numerical) growth of the church’

            (Understanding Church Growth, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm B.

            Eerdmans, 1970, p.32).
            (12) David Pawson, ‘Let My People Grow’, BUZZ Magazine,

            November 1976, pp.26-27.
            (13) Matthew 5:16; 9:37-38; 10:1-40; 13:1-8, 18-23, 31, 47;

            Mark 1:17; 4:1-8, 13-20; Luke 8:5-8, 11-15; 10:2; John 8:12;

            9:5; 14:21-24; 15:5, 8; Romans 8:15; 1 Corinthians 3:9-11;

            Ephesians 1:5; 2:22; 4:14ff; 1 Peter 2:2,4ff.  Orlando

            Costas Christ Outside the Gate: Mission beyond Christendom,

            Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1982, p.46.
            (14) Ibid.
            (15) Op.cit., p.25.
            (16) Op.cit., pp.48ff.
            (17) George W. Peters, A Theology of Church Growth, Grand

            Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1981, p.23.
            (18) Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope, New York: 1968, p.54.
            (19) See Ralph D. Winter in Crucial Issues in Mission

            Tomorrow, ed.  Donald McGavran, Chicago: Moody, 1972,

            pp.178-187.
            (20) Marjorie and Cyril Powles, ‘The End of the Era: Further

            Thoughts on the Church and Mission’, Japan Christian Quarterly,

            Winter 1968, pp.38ff.
            (21) McGavran, op.cit., p.198.
            (22)  C. Peter Wagner, Your Church Can Grow: Seven Signs of a

            Healthy Church, Glendale, California: Regal, 1976, p.110.
            (23) Quoted in Graeme Garrett, Church Growth: Some Questions,

            an unpublished paper, p.2.
            (24) Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 1973, p.28.
            (25) James Engel, ‘Church growth strategies plus …’, Evang-

            elical Missions Quarterly, January 1976, pp.89-98.
            (26) Quoted by John Yoder, in ‘Church growth issues in a

            theological perspective’ in The Challenge of Church Growth,

            ed. Wilbert R. Shenk, Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press,

            1973, p.29.
            (27) Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Collins, 1970, p.23.
            (28) C. Peter Wagner, Your Church Can Grow, Glendale,

            California: Regal Books, 1976, p.41.
            (29) Op.cit., pp.2-3.
            (30) Op.cit., pp.52-3.
            (31) Ibid., p.57.
            (32) Quoted by John Yoder, in ‘Must a Healthy Church be a

            Growing Church?’, Leadership, Winter, 1981.
            (33) John Macquarrie, The Humility of God, London: SCM, 1978,

            p.13.
            (34) Robert A. Evans, in Hoge and Roozen, op.cit., p.95.
            (35) Op.cit., p.27.