What makes churches grow? What recent Adventist research reveals

What factors need to be present for a local congregation to grow, and for the global body of Christ to develop and produce? Recent studies in North America suggest some interesting answers, and this article reports on what these studies revealed about this question.

Church growth is central to the life of the local church. A healthy, vital congregation is a growing congregation. This is also true when it comes to the church as a global organism. Creating a dynamic and appropriate witness in all nations, people groups, and communities is basic to the life of the church.

Research about church growth is not new among Seventh-day Adventists. Pioneering research by Gottfried Oosterwal in the early 1970s was published under the title Patterns of Seventh-day Adventist Church Growth in North America.¹ Later, in 1981, a major study was conducted by the Institute of Church Ministry at Andrews University, directed by Roger Dudley and Des Cummings, Jr. The results were published in Adventures in Church Growth.²

The Dudley-Cummings study provided a widely accepted paradigm for outreach and church ministries in the Adventist Church. The study also broke ground in the field of church growth research across all faiths because it used sophisticated statistical tools to identify items correlated to growth in a random sample of local congregations. Most of the other literature on church growth is based only on anecdotal stories, case studies of exceptional churches, or cor relations selected on the basis of a particular author's interests.

A major opportunity to update this research after two decades came when the Adventist Church decided to participate in the Faith Communities Today study (FACT), the largest interfaith study of congregational life ever conducted in the United States.

More than forty denominations and faiths participated, collecting a random sample of information from more than 18,000 local groups covering a wide range of topics. This article reports only data from the random sample of 412 Seventh-day Adventist churches in the U.S. that responded to the survey.³

To see how the items correlating with church growth may have changed over the past two decades, key items from the 1981 study were included when the Adventist version of the FACT questionnaire was prepared. An analysis of the resulting data has been done that replicates the statistical methods used in the 1981 study. The results proved to be, in part, unexpected.

Measuring church growth

There are a number of ideas about how to measure church growth. The most common idea is to use the official membership of the congregation as reported to the local conference through the denomination's statistical reports.

Unfortunately, these numbers can be inflated by adding new members while not removing inactive members from the list. In some cases, local churches with significant growth in membership actually have a decline in the number of people attending worship and other church activities.

In recent years, worship attendance has become recognized as a much better measure of church growth and vitality than the factor of membership alone. A number of conferences began to require that local churches take a headcount during worship services and report this number along with other growth statistics, such as the number of baptisms. In 1988, the North American Division added headcounts to the denomination's official statistical reports, although only about half of local churches are fol lowing this new policy.

To do an analysis of church growth with the FACT data, it was first necessary to choose dependent variables that serve as indicators of growth in the statistical equations. Roger Dudley (research director for the project) and I selected four items for this purpose, based on different definitions of church growth:

(1) the number of regularly participating adults as a percentage of the book membership, which means that a higher percentage of active adults is equivalent to a growing church;

(2) the number of regularly participating youth as a percentage of book membership, which is the same as the first item but includes only teenagers and children;

(3) the change in the number of regularly participating adults over the last five years, which means that an increase in the attending adults equals a growing church; and

(4) the percentage of adult participants involved in activities outside of worship that strengthen their faith, an item that seeks to measure the qualitative aspect of church growth instead of just the increasing numbers in the congregation. . . .

It is certainly possible to make a case for using other measures to better define church growth. In our analysis, of course, we are limited to the more than 200 items in the FACT data.

An index to growth potential

We used a statistical tool called "regression analysis" to construct an index of church growth indicators. In other words, this algorithm produces a cluster of items that, together, correlate most strongly with growing congregations.

We did not use all 200-plus items in the FACT data in running this analysis simply because of the overwhelming amount of information, much of it use less, that would result. We used as independent variables, or possible predictors of church growth, only items from the questionnaire related to worship, congregational identity, evangelistic out reach activity, community service, education, and growth.⁴ Included were the items that correlated to church growth using the same methods in the 1981 study.

The results of the regression analysis are displayed in tables 1 through 4. Of the 15 items displayed in the four regression clusters, the largest number, nearly half, are items that have to do with community involvement. Five of the 15 items are related to attitudes about church growth, including a few of the items that correlated in the 1981 study.

Three items touch on the spiritual and relational environment within the congregation. Only one item is from the long list of evangelistic activities included in the questionnaire. These results were surprising and initially difficult to believe.

I first shared these results with a group of Adventist Church administrators, and they suggested that we do an additional survey just to double-check our findings. They also recommended that we use several well-known lists of church growth indicators.⁵

This additional survey was sponsored by the Columbia Union Conference and conducted by the Center for Creative Ministry in an eight-state region where the demographics duplicate the demo graphics of the Adventist Church throughout the United States. The additional study confirmed the FACT findings reported here.⁶

A paradigm shift

There has been something of a paradigm shift in Adventist church growth over the last two decades. Community involvement and visibility have become key issues for church growth. The grow ing churches are those with significant, nontraditional community services and active relationships with the neighbor hood, among other less dominant factors revealed in the study.

Intentionality is still as important as it was in the 1981 study, but spirituality has become even more important. The strongest single correlation factor is, This congregation strengthens the member's relationship with God. And the most effective way to do public evangelism is through the worship service on Sabbath. This is the one item from the long list of evangelistic activities that correlated in the cluster analysis.

The strong evidence that community service is an essential element in church growth will be difficult for some Adventist pastors and administrators to accept. Frankly, I did not expect the results we obtained from the regression analysis.

Despite the fact that the founders of the Adventist movement were activists as well as evangelists, involved in the antislavery, temperance, health reform, and city mission movements of the time, many Adventist clergy today view community service as not our real mission and focus entirely on outreach that is shaped by traditional revivalism and traditional evangelistic methodologies.

The FACT data reveals what other studies have shown in recent years about Adventist congregations. They are all too often drive-in groups from out side the community where the church is located and have little meaningful con tact with the community surrounding the local church structure. The regression analysis shows that this is a significant drag on church growth, and that the few congregations that are more community oriented are those most likely to be among the growing churches in the denomination.

Of course there are always exceptions. That is the nature of research results. It is possible for any reader to call to mind local churches that have significant growth and are involved entirely in conventional evangelism with little or no community service. But this is not the same thing as a random sample and a scientific analysis of specific items from hundreds of local churches.

It is important not to misunderstand the findings from this analysis. The community service involvements that correlate with church growth are not the usual activities that pastors often think of as community services. Emergency food distribution, "Dorcas" clothing programs, and health education classes were not among the items in the cluster.

Holistic, nontraditional community involvement

Nontraditional community services such as job-finding and job-training programs, weekly or daily hot meals for neighborhood senior citizens, homeless shelters, family counseling services, and substance-abuse programs are the kinds of things that correlate with church growth.

There is another way in which these findings are different from the traditional idea of community services. Church growth correlates with doing a good job of communicating with the community as well as actually providing certain kinds of services. Thus church growth is more likely to occur when a congregation has a visible role in the community and when its service activities are seen as community-based rather than the traditional church-based community service paradigm.

Yet another misreading must be avoided. We must not jump to the conclusion that the growing churches in this analysis focused entirely on community involvement at the expense of evangelism.

In reviewing the results of the study, it became clear that growing churches are very active in public evangelism, small group outreach, and personal evangelism. They are also very involved in community service. The declining churches are the ones that eschew community service and focus entirely on evangelism, or eschew evangelism and focus entirely on community service.

In fact, what this information provides is not so much a new paradigm as it is an old paradigm re-emerging from its lost place in the nineteenth century history of the Adventist Church. The data supports Ellen C. White's paradigm for mission, which held that God wants a missionary strategy that includes social action as well as evangelism. "First meet the temporal necessities . . . and relieve their physical wants and sufferings, and you will find an open avenue to the heart, where you may plant the good seeds of virtue and religion."⁷ She did not favor an approach that focuses exclusively on proclamation. In fact, she wrote that preaching is a small part of the work to be done for the salvation of souls.⁸

The role of social concern and public service in the mission of the Adventist Church is no more clearly stated than in The Ministry of Healing and reprinted in "many other places." Christ's method alone will give true success in reaching the people. The Saviour, mingled with men as one who desired their good. He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then He bade them, "'Follow me.'"⁹

The five-step outreach approach described in this passage has been extensively discussed but rarely acted upon. If it was completely understood and thoroughly implemented, it would change much of the current outreach program of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Frankly, the recurring call for the outpouring of Holy Spirit power in the church cannot be taken seriously until we take seriously this more holistic vision of the mission of the church.

Church growth and evangelism

Why did such well-established methods as public evangelism and Bible studies not appear among the church growth indicators of the FACT study? These constitute the "tried and true" strategies, but they are used with almost equal frequency by both growing and declining congregations (see table 1).

For example, three out of four grow ing churches report they have had public evangelism in the last year, but so do 60 percent of declining churches. Consequently, evangelistic meetings do not correlate with church growth. But, that does not mean that a church that stops holding public meetings will have growth.

As noted above, what may be called a new kind of public evangelism does have a strong correlation to church growth worship services designed for the unchurched, including "seeker services" or special worship services aimed at nonmembers, such as Friendship Day.

There is also strong evidence in the FACT data that one of the most effective evangelistic methods in Adventist churches today is adding a second or additional worship service on Sabbath afternoon or Friday night. Fast-growing Adventist congregations are twice as likely to have two or more worship services, while declining and stable churches are more likely to have only one (see table 2).

What about the emerging relational approach to evangelism that is being adopted by an increasing number of Adventist churches? Specifically relational methods such as friendship evangelism and small group ministries did not correlate in the cluster analysis, although there is evidence that they are related to growth. Again, both growing and declining churches are almost equally likely to report that they encourage friendship evangelism and have small group ministries. Consequently, these items do not correlate strongly enough to be in the cluster.

Does this evidence prove that the relational approach to evangelism is a mirage that should now be dropped? No, it simply means that the relational approach appears to work for some congregations, while it does not produce much growth for other congregations.

The significant difference between these two groups is found in items in the cluster correlation: community service, spirituality, intentionality, and worship services designed for nonmembers.

In other words, no matter if your church is one that uses traditional methods of evangelism or one that is moving into a relational approach, it is equally important that your church get involved in community service, provide a strong spiritual experience for members, develop an intentional strategy for church growth, and have worship services (at least occasionally, or a second service) designed for nonmembers.

Spirituality and church growth

The strongest item in the cluster of church growth indicators is how well the congregation does in helping members deepen their relationship with God. This is strong evidence that spirituality is key to church growth. There is further evidence in other items that did not make it into the cluster of key indicators.

Congregations that place an emphasis on teaching spiritual disciplines are more likely to be growing churches (see table 3). This is true to a larger degree for the more spiritual disciplines than it is for those practices that relate more directly to health.

Spirituality cannot be ignored when church leaders seek expanding congregations. Any church growth strategy that is not bathed in prayer and does not emerge with the guidance of the Holy Spirit cannot be expected to attain authentic, lasting growth.

Despite the importance of spirituality, it is a mistake to conclude that because spirituality is crucial to growth, a congregation will grow if it ignores the question of growth and focuses entirely on spirituality. The New Testament clearly gives specific atten tion to numerical growth (John 17:20; Acts 1:15; 2:41; 4:4; 5:14), and the FACT data indicate that growing churches focus intentionally on growth.

Three items in the cluster analysis are specifically about being intentional. Growing congregations are more likely to believe in their potential for growth, to welcome innovation and change, and to focus every phase of church activity on growth.

Two other items in the cluster relate to positive attitudes among the members. The members of growing churches are more likely to be excited about the future of their congregation and to describe their church as spiritually vital and alive.

There is further evidence of the importance of intentionality among items that did not make it into the cluster of key indicators. Local churches that adopt goals for growth are more likely to be growing churches. Congregations that quickly make follow-up contacts with newcomers who attend worship are more likely to be growing churches.

Conflict in the congregation seems to distract from growth. Among Adventist churches, the growing congregations are significantly less likely to report significant conflict. This is surprising because the interfaith FACT data indicate that most religious congregations that report growth also have higher levels of conflict. In fact, many experts claim that healthy resistance is a necessary element of growth.

Church growth and pastoral staffing

Growing Adventist congregations are more likely to have less turnover and longer tenure among their pastors (see table 4). The statistical relationship is significant but not strong. This may be evidence that long-term pastors are key to growth in some sectors of the church and not as important in other settings. Further analysis is needed to pin down the precise factors involved in this widely discussed question.

The same is true about funding to increase local church staff. Crowing churches are more likely to budget funds for church staff, while declining churches are more likely not to provide funds for this purpose. Again, the statistical relationship is significant, but not strong. Until further study is completed, it is impossible to know if added pastoral staffing is relevant for some types of congregations, while counterproductive in other kinds.

More important is the fact that growing churches spend more money on local mission work than do declining churches. Nearly half of the growing Adventist congregations spend $5,000 or more each year on local outreach ministries, while more than four out of five of the declining congregations spend less than that. Many declining churches spend less than $1,000 a year on local outreach.

Bottom line

What works for Adventist church growth today is a congregation that gets involved constructively in its local community, providing significant services outside of its own self-interest, as well as providing a growing spiritual experience for its members and becoming intentional about a strategy for growth. The most effective arena for public evangelism is worship services designed for the unchurched.

It is wrong for a local church to conclude that if it stops doing conventional public evangelism, and such outreach activities such as Revelation seminars or Bible studies. . .and begins to concentrate on community services projects, that they will begin to grow. These tried-and-true soul-winning methods enhance the process in most growing congregations. At the same time, these methods by themselves cannot be expected to produce growth.

There are other details that may serve to fine-tune an effective church growth strategy. These include a relational approach to evangelism, increased resources and pastoral staffing, as well as reduced internal conflict. These factors need careful attention, but they do not yet have the strong correlation to church growth that is present in the combination of community service, spirituality, intentionality, and worship services designed for nonmembers.