Why church growth lends itself toward exceptionalism
True evangelism is looking for people who are looking for Jesus.
Over twelve years ago, I planted a church for Circle of Hope. I loved the experience of building community and making connections. I loved reaching out to new attenders and forming relationships with them. I cherish that time and I look upon it fondly. In that season, I made some of my very best friends.
The point of planting the church wasn’t to build community though, it was to grow. More fundamentally and foundational than essentially any other saying in our church was this organizing principle: “The church exists for those yet to join.”We argued that Jesus was best revealed incarnationally. That means that through community and relationships, people could get to know Jesus. I largely think this is true. But even if the Gospel may be transmitted “best” through personal relationships, a church that is organized around manufacturing those relationships essentially misses the wisdom in the saying and practice.
As a church planter, cell leader, and pastor, my goal was to develop as many personal relationships as I could for the sake of the church’s growth. Every relationship I formed was organized around helping others join. In fact, if relationships existed for other reasons, they were seen as less important or a waste of time. Every social gathering was an opportunity to include someone new – not a fundamentally bad idea – but it falls flat when those new relationships become old and then is discarded.
In this model, the primary end of discipleship was to develop members and leaders who organized their lives around growing the church. Cell leaders were to multiply their cells, circles of ten that met in homes, in six to eighteen months, or close them. The cell existed to multiply – it couldn’t have another form. I admit that I did this very thing, and the praise and affirmation I received was well worth the other social costs. People were suspicious of me and how I related to them, but the fathering I got from my pastors, the one I longed for so desperately in my youth, was worth that suspicion. After all, they hated Jesus, so they might hate me too.
Those who were committed to growing the church by any means formed a tight bond. The intense camaraderie insulated us from criticism. We were not necessarily mutually supportive, but often competitive, in a way siblings might be trying to gain their parents' approval. Numbers and names on lists became more important than relationships. The idea that relationships were how people were joining the church took a back seat to more efficient ways of getting the church’s name out there.
And lost in all of this was the point of the Gospel, the message of the Gospel, the very Good News itself. The goal was butts in seats. I couldn’t tell you what the greater purpose was besides growing this particular church, which saw itself as particularly unique, and with exceptional leaders. That sort of exclusive claim on the right way to deliver the Gospel made the culture of the church even more insular and demanding. People were compelled to either commit to the community or leave it altogether. This very tight-knit sense of self garnered our church criticism as noncooperative at best or combative at worst. It gave us the well-earned title of being like a cult.
Some of us resisted that assimilation and managed to form relationships and community despite this obsession with church growth. We were organized around compassion and social justice as an end unto itself, as opposed to a way to advertise all of the good things the church did to newcomers. It is not surprising that those who joined our church for peace and justice were the ones who criticized how we formed and organized the community around growth, specifically. I remember I was a defender of our approach, but also often in the “social justice camp.” I argued that our approach to evangelism was not unlike any approach to political organizing.
But as I observed and listened to others on the topic, I realized that was truly not a defense of the church growth and church planting machine. So often, peace, justice, and antioppression, in general, were seen as obstacles to evangelism. The goal was to grow the institution, not advance certain causes. If those causes got in the way, they were discarded. If people got in the way, they were discarded. The goal was to have numbers be ascendant. As the “stats guru” for our team, I reported the health of the church largely through a statistical perspective. I don’t think keeping an eye on the numbers is fundamentally bad, but I do not think it is a marker of health, on its own. For me though, if the church wasn’t growing, it was failing.
Growth of Christianity wasn’t the goal, growth of this specific church was. These priorities lend themselves to a lack of institutional change and stifles antioppression. Church growth lends itself then White Christian exceptionalism and supremacy, because it elevates our faith and our churches are better and more important than the rest. While growth may be an inevitable part of a healthy institution, an obsession with it can lead to counterproductive results for the Gospel itself.
Rather than trying to convince every one of our friends to join our church, I think Christians should hospitably offer themselves as inclusive and welcoming of everyone – especially racial and sexual minorities – with the conviction that we are looking for people who are looking for Jesus. I am moved to minister the Gospel in a way that makes all of us more like God, and thusly, more like ourselves.
The Gospel is Good News for the oppressed; it free us and liberates us. Churches should benefit the communities they are in, whether or not those communities worship with them. We want to help and bless people to rest in the grace and love of God. We want to be a refuge for the weary. We want to be available for when people need us, not coercing people to attend for the sake of the goals of vain leaders.