The story of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is largely a success story. In 1890 there were 19 Adventists per million of world population. One hundred years later there are more than 1,000. In 1940 we baptized an average of less than 100 per day. Fifty years later we are approaching the 2,000-per-day mark.
We've been praying that during the five years of Harvest 90 (1985-1990) we'd add 2 million to our church: We reached that goal in September 1989, nine months early, and are now working and praying for a great overflow. Harvest 90 has demonstrated our success, under God, in reaping.
Problems in keeping
The most miraculous thing about Pentecost may not be, that 3,000 were baptized in a day, but that "they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship" (Acts 2:42). Obviously, with the Holy Spirit's aid it is possible to enjoy both quantity and quality in church growth.
But the Seventh-day Adventist Church is not doing as well as the early church in retaining its members. In 1988 the number of apostasies and missing members the church reported amounted to the equivalent of 20 percent of its accessions. For every five who came in, one left.
Serious as that statistic is, the problem may actually be much worse. So long as the organization measures its church growth success by membership and numbers baptized, it will tend to baptize many and admit to losing very few.
In 1988 one division reported losing to apostasy an amount equal to 47 percent of its accessions. Another division reported an apostasy rate of only 3 percent. Over a four-year period one conference reported 6,365 baptisms and only 15 dropped from membership. Either these parts of the church that have lost so few have a discipling plan we should all be following or they are not accurately assessing their losses.
Solving the apostasy problem is not a matter of personal preference, but of fulfilling Christ's commission. He said, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them . . . and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you" (Matt. 28:19, 20, NIV). In the original Greek "go," "baptizing," and "teaching" are all participles. They get their force from the verb make disciples. Neither going, baptizing, nor teaching are ends in themselves; they are all means to the end of discipling.
We hear much about going, and that is good. We need a Global Strategy. We'll never disciple people unless we go. We hear a great deal about baptizing. Harvest 90 has emphasized baptisms. Actually, the 2 million baptisms it suggested constituted just one of the goals of that campaign although it's the only one we've paid much attention to.
We talk about teaching true Bible doctrines, but even propagating right doctrine is not the final purpose of the church. None of these activities are the ultimate ends of the gospel commission. They are merely means to the end of discipling.
Let's say a car dealer's business is selling cars. To do so, he needs a showroom in which to display the cars, he needs car salesmen, and he needs to advertise. But displaying cars in a showroom, retaining salesmen,- and advertising are not his business. If any of these become ends in themselves, if he ever concentrates on any of them and doesn't sell cars, he'll soon be out of business.
Jesus said the church's business is making disciples. To make disciples, we need to go. We need to baptize. We need to teach. But these are not our business. If these become ends in themselves, if we ever concentrate on any of them rather than on making disciples, we'll soon be out of business.
Finding a better measure
At the present our church cannot even measure discipling well. Our traditional measures of church growth (membership and numbers baptized) are valuable, but they have little relevance to discipleship. In some parts of the world, head counts taken during Sabbath morning worship services indicate that only about half the membership attends church on a regular basis.
We must find a new way to measure success in church growth. Options include measuring Sabbath school attendance, church attendance, involvement in soul winning, and stewardship, as well as membership and baptisms.
The views of our church leadership and our laity as to what constitutes success in church growth tend to differ. Leadership tends to measure a church's success by how many are on the books and in the baptistry; the laity, by how many are in the pews. These differing perspectives may be driving a wedge be tween laity and leadership. They comprise one more reason the formula that we use for measuring our church's success must include discipling.
I will continue my discussion of this topic in another Pastor's Pastor.
