McGavran on Adventist church growth

Hudson:  Dr. McGawan, what's the church all about? What's its main work?

McGavran: The New Testament says that the church is here as a fellowship of believers, continuing in the apostles' preaching and teaching, in prayers, in the breaking of bread. It's the body of Christ, and it's to do Christ's work.

Hudson: What is Christ's work?

McGavran: Christ's work is a very big work. It's holy living, it's worship of God; it's being constantly concerned to do what our Lord did. Now, among the many things that He did, a prominent thing was to seek and to save the lost. Any church that does not engage constantly in seeking and saving the lost is an immature church. If the Lord Jesus were to walk into it in bodily form He would say, "Hey, why aren't you doing what I spent My life doing?"

Hudson: A common observation regard ing the Church Growth movement is that it is numbers conscious. Would you agree?

  McGavran: Yes, I would say that it is numbers conscious in the same sense that any mother is numbers conscious. If seven of a mother's eight children were going astray and only one was an obedient and loving child, she wouldn't say, "Well, I've got one. I don't care about the others. I'm not interested in numbers!" She wouldn't dream of saying that! And neither should the church.

Hudson: So, to be faithful to Christ's commission, we also must be numbers conscious?

McGavran: We are numbers conscious. Numbers of the redeemed are never mere. Numbers of the lost are never mere. They're God's children. And the lost are out there feeding the pigs!

Hudson: So a number is a person.

McGavran: Yes, a number is a person. Now, numbers in the other sense, that I want my church to be bigger than your church so that my name goes up in the denomination that, of course, is reprehensible.

Hudson: Can we go the other way and say, "We'll leave it all to the Lord; we'll just occupy till He comes," and not be numbers conscious at all?

McGavran: No, I don't think we can. The clear testimony of the entire Bible is that God wants all peoples of earth saved. Church Growth advocates are simply saying, "God is doing it through us. God tells us to do this. Who are we to say, 'We won't do that, Lord'?"

Hudson: One of the controversial aspects of the Church Growth movement has been the emphasis on the ' 'homogeneous unit.'' Could you define that principle and tell us how it relates to church growth?

McGavran: I was talking to a Seventh-day Adventist minister some years ago in Philadelphia. He was telling me that in Pennsylvania the Adventists grew very well about a hundred years ago. But in the past thirty or forty years their growth has been limited to those born into the church. He had the big problem of how to reach the multitudes "out there," those not at all in contact with Adventists.

Increasing the church by the growth of Christian children is good, but it's very limiting. If the only Christians on earth were the descendants of the twelve apostles, we'd be a rather small church! We must constantly reach out.

Now, those multitudes out there don't exist just as people. They exist as separate units. They are French Canadians or Portuguese immigrants or blacks or Chicanos or Colombians or Chinese or Japanese. And each of the groups I've just mentioned has many subsections. There are many kinds of Japanese: laboring-class Japanese, highly educated Japanese, and on and on.

That's why the Scriptures say we are to disciple panta ta ethne. (I'm quoting Matthew 28:19.) Panta means "all"; ta ethne, "ethnic units" of mankind- So the homogeneous-unit principle simply says there are a lot of ethnic units out there. We Christians are to recognize that they're there. We must see the many pieces of the mosaic of mankind. We must bring all the ethne to Christ. He commands it.

Hudson: How does that work in an outreach strategy?

  McGavran: Each ethnos is not just a unit of mankind. Each is a unit of some definite segment of society. Sometimes it's a racial unit, sometimes a linguistic unit.

If you go to French-speaking people in Louisiana and preach to them in English, they won't understand you. And if you would invite them into a church where only English was spoken, they wouldn't feel at home. But if you start a church in which their form of French, Acadian French, is spoken, and where most of the members are Acadian French, and where there are Acadian French deacons and elders and pastor, they'd feel right at home. In that church, the chance of them becoming Christians is very much greater. That's all the homogeneous unit principle says.

There's an African who has recently written a book entitled A Place to Feel at Home. What do you suppose he's talking about? The church! The church is a place to feel at home. But if you go into a congregation made up of people of a totally different sort, you're not likely to feel at home.

Hudson: Let's shift for a moment to the world mission scene. With your knowledge of the Adventist mission system worldwide, how would you rate its effectiveness? What do you see as its strengths and weaknesses?

McGavran: Its effectiveness differs very, very largely with the local church mission concerned and the society it confronts. The Seventh-day Adventist Church is the biggest Protestant church in the Philippines, bar none! And as it has approached a nominally Roman Catholic people, what it has taught has fit their system of thought very well.

On the other hand, in India it is not working among nominal Roman Catholics. It is evangelizing Hindus and animists and Moslems. And there it has not been very successful. You've been no more successful than nine-tenths of the other missions. And indeed, I don't think the Seventh-day Adventists in India have fathered a single people movement anywhere.

So I would be inclined to say that Seventh-day Adventist missions, like all missions, ought to spend a great deal of time and a considerable amount of money studying the populations they evangelize. Which are becoming Christian? Why are they becoming Christian? What methods is God blessing with the conversion of men, and what methods is He signally not blessing?

I also think that Seventh-day Advent ist missions would be well advised to make a careful graph of growth of the existing churches. Are the churches growing, and how are they growing? Are they growing by adding children of Adventists? Are they growing by converts? Or are they growing as Adventists won in rural areas move into cities? And are these new members won from animism or Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam?

Missions desperately need light as to what God is really blessing and what He is not blessing. Now, Church Growth is nothing but the study of what God is doing to spread the gospel. Instead of studying to find out, a great many missionaries do what they did back in America. "This is what worked back there. This is what good Adventists do!" So they go out and do the same thing, and it doesn't work at all! And they stay on year after year, sometimes decade after decade, but there is very little growth of the church.

Of course, there are those places where nobody's growing, where the missionary work is knocking on closed doors. It will continue to be that way for the foreseeable future. There the task is seed sowing, not harvesting.

Hudson: For instance, in some of the Moslem countries?

McGavran: If you were in Saudi Arabia, your work there would be simply to knock on closed doors and thank God if you were alive the next day!

There are places like that, and they must hear the gospel. We must send missionaries there, but we must not concentrate them there. We must concentrate missionaries where God is blessing the work.

So my advice to Adventist missions would be: Study the field very well and concentrate where God has opened the door.

Hudson: Traditionally, Adventist missions have relied heavily on our worldwide hospital network and school system (the largest Protestant school system in the world) for evangelism. Do you see them still being effective means of spreading the gospel?

McGavran: They're good "door openers." But they do not as a rule lead of themselves to very much communication of the gospel. So I would say, Thank God for them, but make sure that where a fine hospital work is going on and the Seventh-day Adventist hospital is known throughout the land, there is also a particularly vigorous, innovative pro gram of effective evangelism taking place.

Hudson: Does the world still need missionaries "sent from overseas"?

There are still, you know, 3 billion who have yet to believe. Most have never even heard of Jesus, or they've heard of Him in a way that does not lead to acceptance. The need for missionaries will continue.

One of the great mistaken opinions today is "We've got a younger church out there in the mission field, thank God; we'll leave it all to the younger church. They don't need anything. They're wonderful people. They speak the language, they're at home there. They could do far better than a missionary could. We'll just leave it to them."

That is the counsel of Satan!

Now, Christians overseas are wonderful people, and they're doing a very good job. I have the highest respect for them. As soon as a cluster of churches is founded, is self-supporting, and can look after itself, missionaries ought to be withdrawn. But what is needed is to get out to the people who haven't heard. We've got to break into new units of society.

Hudson: Let's come back to the local scene and Church Growth. Let's talk about a local church situation in North America, for example. Can any church grow?

McGavran: No, not just any church can grow. Some churches that for various reasons are in extremely difficult situations or have worked themselves into desperate problems can't grow. But, having said that, I would say that most churches can grow. The reason most churches are not growing is they are not reaching out. Their members are loving, caring people, and they form a very tight in-group. They have a good time and they look after one another. They are wrapped up in one another. But they don't reach out. Other people as they come to such churches say, "Well, we don't belong here." Even though the ushers shake their hand at the door and say, "Do come again!" outsiders are still outsiders.

Hudson: Being a loving church doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be a growing church?

McGavran: No, because most love is directed to people who love us. So a loving church tends to be an ingrown church. Now what we need is a loving church that's loving to outsiders and makes sure that visitors get introduced to groups with whom they feel at home, and where they like other people and other people like them. This is essential.

Hudson: Let's say that I'm the pastor of a church that isn't growing. What are some of the steps I might take to help turn it around?

McGavran: There are a number of steps. Here again it depends largely upon the circumstances. But in general I would say that everybody can do four things.

First, the Bible should be preached in a way that lays God's ardent desire for His lost children upon the hearts of the members. They must believe that those people out there are lost. It's easy to say, but it's hard to believe. "What, my neighbor? He's a very nice guy. He lends me his lawn mower when mine breaks down. He takes me to work when my car's on the blink. He doesn't go to church, but he can't be lost!"

That secular American position has got to be combated by preaching the Bible. Whether it's my neighbor or my son or daughter, whether it's the people across the street or over there in that section of town, if they don't believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, aren't baptized in His name, and don't become functioning, dependable members of His church, they are lost.

Hudson: That needs to be preached.

McGavran: That needs to be preached and taught so the people really believe it. The second thing is we must create a task force, an evangelistic task force. If we leave it all to the pastor it's not likely to happen! We've got to get people out there pounding the streets, knocking on doors, and starting home Bible studies in which at least 50 percent of the people are not members of our church.

My colleague Dr. Peter Wagner says to try to enlist 10 percent of the church as the evangelistic task force. Train these members in evangelism. Let them meet regularly as a team to talk over their victories and defeats. They will discuss ways of presenting the gospel that are effective and ways they've found ineffective. I don't know if 10 percent is a good figure or not. But at least 10 percent!

In the New Testament when the Christians were driven out of Jerusalem, all of them went out preaching the gospel. We may not get "all of them" in most churches, but it might happen! At any rate, the goal is a task force out there evangelizing.

Hudson: So the second thing is to mobilize an evangelistic task force.

McGavran: Yes, to build up, train, and keep at work an evangelistic task force.

The third thing is to study the community to find out who are responsive, so that one isn't wasting his efforts. There are some people who are not responsive. Let's identify them and not spend too much time on them. Let's win the winnable while they're winnable! That's the third thing.

The fourth thing I would say is to plant new churches. As I've studied the denominations in the United States I find that the plateau in growth frequently starts when they cease planting churches. And growth vigorously continues as long as they are planting new churches.

Now, struggling new churches are a problem. But so are struggling little babies. And yet there's no way to get big, upstanding men without having squirming little boy babies who are problems. No way. And unless we plant many new churches we're not going to get the kind of growth we want to get.

Hudson: Should a wanting-to-grow church concentrate on its own growth, or should it be trying to plant new churches? Or both?

McGavran: Both. I would say that if the evangelistic task force is out there, they'll win some nearby people into their own church. But they will also win some people who have to drive ten or twenty miles to church. And if they have a group of people even five miles away who are coming, why shouldn't they start a church out there? It will be easier for the new church to win the people who have to walk five blocks to church than people who have to drive five miles to church.

Now, the objection is that we need some big, well-appointed churches to which people love to come. Americans are very advanced people, and they want things nice! And when they go to church they don't want to hear a wretched sermon, they want to hear a good sermon. They want to have smoothrunning services. They want to meet in a warm sanctuary that's not too crowded. That's all true! But on the other hand, the data is firm that when a denomination concentrates on making some nice churches, it plateaus.

Nothing is more effective than starting new churches. Some of them will die. But not too many. Small churches are tough, and they'll solve their own problems.

Hudson: Would you say that the future success of the church depends to an important degree on its ability to plant new churches?

McGavran: That's certainly a factor. I wouldn't make it the only factor.

Hudson: Dean Kelley has said that having unusual or characteristic doctrines, like the Sabbath, for instance, may not be a hindrance but actually a help in church growth. Would you care to comment on this?

McGavran: If the church is sealed off, and the Seventh-day Adventists are known as those peculiar people who meet on Saturday, then keeping the Sabbath is a hindrance. If, on the other hand, the church is growing, and people are finding new life (leaving their sins and coming to Christ) and much joy in the Lord, then, I think the fact that they're meeting on the Sabbath, and that they defend meeting on the Sabbath as what the Lord Himself and His apostles and the early Christians did, and as one of the obediences that is required, would help growth.

Hudson: One last question. In a recent Church Growth class here at Fuller, taught by your colleague, C. Peter Wagner, the largest representation from any single denomination was Adventist (seven out of about fifty). Why is it that the Church Growth movement has stirred such an interest among Adventists?

McGavran: I suppose it's because the Adventist Church is an obedient church. And as the members read the Scriptures they say to themselves, "We cannot be obedient Christians without being interested in church growth. We cannot be obedient Christians without finding the lost. We cannot be obedient Christians without leading them to accept Jesus Christ, be baptized, and continue as members of the body."

That's probably the reason.