Church growth—we bump into these two words everywhere. Stories abound of how a pastor and 20 people grew to 20,000 in 10 years. Books, seminars, lectures, tapes, and workbooks on the subject have spawned like guppies. Church councils, commit tees, and boards have been preoccupied with it. Scholars armed with surveys, computers, and projection charts have baptized seminarians into the concept. While pastors are getting doctorates in church growth, churches are scrambling to find pastors who will make them grow. Somehow though, something about all this worries me.
In a summary in his 100-page report entitled "Religion in America—1984," George Gallup dropped a bombshell. He said that while religion is growing in importance in America, morality is losing ground. In his study he found that while many Americans maintain relatively high levels of religious involvement, the behavior of the churched and unchurched differs very little on a wide range of items like lying, cheating, and pilferage.
Why this paradox? Do we really have church growth if it does not "bring about the obedience of faith"? (Rom. 1:5, NASB). * Can the church claim growth without growth in Christlikeness?
Sometimes the church's rhetoric sounds more like corporate America or Hollywood than like Pentecost. When you study Pentecost what do you see? Demographics? Feasibility studies? No, Peter comes out talking about repentance. And the first church council under James emphasizes right living. Nothing is said about interdependence strategy or measurable goals.
I don't mean to downplay churchgrowth principles but to encourage their careful study in the light of Acts. In this godless, scientific age there is a tendency for even ministers to substitute surveys for prayer and flamboyant facilities for holiness. This church-growth move ment may be proving that we can get numbers by sparking our own fire, but we cannot get good behavior. That we can build great churches by our own genius, but we cannot build integrity. That we can fill parking lots with our skillful advertising, but we cannot fill hearts with respect for other people's property.
What we need to grow
What can Pentecost teach us about church growth? A boy's enthusiastic description of his first car may be full of chrome wheels, stripes, and metallic paint. But his father's main concern is likely to be, "Son, does it run?" While we may discover many church growth principles, when it comes to spiritual growth that really works, Pentecost leaves us with three nonnegotiables: prayer, repentance, and the Holy Spirit.
Addressing the church in 1903 about our need for reformation, Ellen White wrote: "When this reformation begins, the spirit of prayer will actuate every believer."1 But before prayer can move our churches, it must saturate us. Whether we like it or not the church reflects its leaders. If there is not revival and reformation in my church, I must ask whether the fault lies with me. Do I not have access to a miracle-working God? Are not His promises piled high as heaven? Does He not do what He says He will do? More facilities, education, and money will be a curse unless the church is married to holiness. That marriage can be consummated only by fervent, persevering prayer. 2
Christ's own ministry was saturated with agonizing private prayer. He wrestled with God until He locked up every agent of hell and set up a church that will conquer sin, sinners, and devils in a triumph greater than the Exodus.
The early church did not just happen; it was carved out by apostles who put themselves daily to fervent, self-crucifying prayer.
Prayer is the means by which a preacher puts God into his church. E. M. Bounds says of John Welch, a holy and wonderful Scottish preacher, "He kept a plaid that he might wrap himself when he arose to pray at night. His wife would complain when she found him lying on the ground weeping. He would reply: 'O woman, I have the souls of 3,000 to answer for, and I know not how it is with many of them!" 3 God's greatest men did not shirk spending two to four hours in prayer during the early-morning hours.
What would happen if each day, name by name, we bathed our families, our members, our interests, and our leaders in heartfelt, agonizing prayer? What would happen if every day by fervent prayer we crucified "the flesh with its passions and desires" (Gal. 5:24)? What would happen to us, our spouses, our children, our members, our baptisms? What would happen to our Scripture study, our prayer meetings, and our preaching?
What would happen if church leadership each day would pour hot, agonizing tears for the Holy Spirit over their pastors, teachers, and colporteurs? What would happen?
If we do less, what will we say to the King of kings, the apostles, and the holy men and women who have gone before us? What excuses are we going to give? Are we going to plead the twentieth century with all of its hurry? Will we plead the television, radio, newspaper, good books, seminars, continuing education? Will we plead sleep?
On us who stand under the brilliantly accumulated light of truth lies an enor mous responsibility. "In the balances of the sanctuary the Seventh-day Adventist Church will be weighed. She will be judged by the privileges and advantages that she has had." 4
Powerless truth
Somehow God must help us under stand that the light of truth cannot be diffused except through the prism of prayer. Truth is powerless without prayer. "A prayerless ministry is the undertaker for all God's truth and for God's Church. He may have the most costly casket and the most beautiful flowers, but it is a funeral, notwithstand ing the charmful array. A prayerless Christian will never leam God's truth; a prayerless ministry will never be able to teach God's truth." 5 Great men of God are humble men who have learned their helplessness. They have forsaken all earthly broken reeds and turned to God alone in prayer.
Earnest, persevering prayer produces life-changing repentance. This was a key factor in the success of Pentecost. Ellen White says, "The disciples were gathered ... to make humble supplication to God. And after 10 days of heart search ing and self-examination, the way was prepared for the Holy Spirit to enter the cleansed, consecrated soul temples." 6 The disciples' prayers and repentance brought the Holy Spirit's power that "pierced to the heart" (Acts 2:37). People were changed by the supernatural power of God. If Christian work began with a wholesale return to primitive godliness, will it not end that way?
Peter could have promoted revival the way some churches and television gospel shows do. He could have had the 12 disciples, dressed in look-alike $500 robes, advertise tooth pick-sized pieces of the cross for $10,000. He could have had their wives, eyes heavy with false eyelashes, tell tearful stories about heal ing. He could have had the rest of the 120 sing Christian lyrics to the beat of a rock band. He could have gotten results and called it church growth; yet it would not have been worth a speck of dust on the scale of history.
Any growth that does not make repentance and holiness the nails and lumber of its building has a structure as flimsy as a Hollywood styrofoam back drop. The church's most urgent and important work is not to add to its ranks, but to provide an atmosphere in which the Holy Spirit can transform unholy people into holy people, bad ones into good ones, and sinners into saints. When we get objectives like those of the original Pentecost we will get results like those of Pentecost. If this becomes our uppermost concern, the numbers will come. Why? Because the desire for self-glory will be replaced with a desire for souls.
We have so little concern for souls because so many of us are caught up in the Last Supper mentality instead of that of Pentecost. At the Last Supper the disciples were planning church growth. They had put together plans to conquer the world. All that was left was deciding who was going to receive the most power and prestige. The spirit that moved them was the spirit of self-exaltation and supremacy. The spirit that moved the disciples at Pentecost was a spirit of self-abasement and repentance. One spirit came because of a lack of prayer, the other from much prayer.
The temptation to trade a heavenly kingdom for an earthly one is almost irresistible. The carnal heart loves power and recognition. Jesus was crucified because His teachings were a threat to Jewish dreams of an earthly empire. We must never be driven to add members to the church in order to be respected in the community. Nor should we desire to build institutions that will rival those of other churches. We should not seek media recognition or political clout; nor should we hope to reap the prestige that comes from being perceived as the dispenser of wisdom for the ills of the world. Why? Because these are temporary gifts from a dying race. Today many denominations are using their numbers to reap such worldly benefits. We can make the same tragic mistake if we insist on growth in size without growth in holiness. The issue is not how many we get on the church books, but how many we get to the kingdom.
Avoiding both ditches
All roads have two ditches. In this case, if one ditch is growth without holiness, the other is holiness without growth. Both spring from selfishness. One is dug with pride, the other with laziness. Both masquerade as something they are not. Church growth without holiness is not growth. And holiness without growth is not holiness. The only way to stay out of either ditch is to drive with a consuming passion for God's glory alone. Such drivers can be trained only by prayer.
In place of the cathedrals our own grand plans envision, we must erect altars of prayer, obedience, and self-sacrifice. We must learn, as did the disciples, that "ambition," which "lusts after praise and place, cannot preach the gospel of Him who made Himself of no reputation. .. . Can the proud, the vain, the egotistical preach the gospel of Him who was meek and lowly?" 7
The return to apostolic prayer and holiness will bring a return of the Spirit. It is our privilege to have that unction now. More than it needs anything else, the church growth movement needs the Holy Spirit. Why? Listen to Bounds. "Earnestness is good and impressive; genius is gifted and great. ... But it takes ... a more powerful energy ... to break the chains of sin, to win estranged and depraved hearts to God, to repair the breaches and restore the Church to her old ways of purity and power. Nothing but holy unction can do this." 8
Never before has a church been faced with such satanic technology as ours faces. Never has so much wickedness masqueraded under so little goodness. Never has a church been presented with such grand opportunities for unprecedented victories. Jesus promised that His followers would do greater works than His own. Past victories are small glimpses of the possibilities our miracle-working God offers. As floods of evil roll in, where are the ministers who will cut a dry path for the people of God by their rod of prayer? If we stretch out our rod, we will see the winds of the Holy Spirit blow.
The time has come to study and use the real forces behind church growth—prayer, repentance, and the Spirit. Of church growth John Wesley said, "Give me 100 preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth. God does nothing but in answer to prayer."9
Degrees, surveys, demographics, and such certainly have their place. But what we need is a generation of preachers who will lay themselves out in prayer for their people, not that those people "might be saved, simply, but that they be mightily saved." 10
1 E. G. White, Testimonies for the Church,
(Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Publishing
Assn., 1948), vol. 8, p. 251.
2 E. M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer (London:
Marshall Brothers, Ltd., n.d.), p. 127.
3 Ibid., pp. 50, 51.
4 White, p. 247.
5 Bounds, p. 105.
6 E. G. White, Evangelism (Washington, D.C.:
Review and Herald Publishing Assn., 1946), p.
698.
7 Bounds, p. 77.
8 Ibid., p. 93.
9 Ibid., p. 100.
10 Ibid., p. 103.
