Why does church growth matter?
A sermon from the Rt Revd Philip North, Bishop of Burnley, Blackburn.
Recorded on 10 November 2014.
When I was at school, I had the most intense and profound possible loathing of
homework. The whole concept seemed so unfair to me. You spent the entire day
sitting at a desk, sweating over long division or French verbs. And what did you do
when you got home? Was there a chance to relax, take it easy, kick a football or
watch Blue Peter? No, it was still more long division and French verbs. Where is the
justice in that? I detested it.
And because I hated it so much, I became extremely adept at inventing excuses.
‘You’ll never believe it, sir,’ I would say. ‘My homework was all done, but then my
little sister accidentally spilt milk all over it and the cat ate it. And we didn’t have a
pen in the house. And it was my grannie’s birthday. And our home blew up in a freak
accident involving an unexploded war time bomb. So I’m afraid I haven’t quite
finished yet, sir.’
In fact these excuses became so ingenious that, along with a friend, we set up a
small startup whose core business was to sell homework excuses to any feckless
and lazy contemporaries who found themselves in a similar scrape. 20p for an
excuse was the going rate. Only many years later, when reflecting on all this, did it
occur to me that we put an awful lot more effort into avoiding the homework than we
would ever have expended in doing it.
It is interesting, though, that the less you want to do something, the more creative
and numerous your excuses become. It’s true of homework, it’s true of washing up,
it’s true of cleaning the car and sadly it’s true also of church growth. Because for
many Anglicans, church growth is the bit of church life we like the least.
We’re fine with most of what the Church asks of us. Worship is great and gives us
time with God and a chance to see Christian friends. We love prayer and the
opportunity it affords to relax in God’s company and tune in to his will. Community
ministry is for many another easy win because we enjoy service and volunteering
and want to see the church make a real difference in its community. All of these
aspects of church life are enjoyable and relatively uncontroversial.
But Church growth? Now that is scary. It feels like hard work. It can be disruptive. It
might involve all sorts of embarrassing things like sharing our faith or challenging the
beliefs and values of others. We don’t really like the sound of it. So out come the
excuses.
There are the category one excuses which involve simple avoidance. We might
argue that sharing faith is not appropriate in a multi-cultural context. It’s insensitive.
It’s up to people to decide their own faith and values and we shouldn’t be ramming
ours down their throat.
Then there are the category two excuses which are all about displacement, or in
other words passing the buck. These excuses argue that Church growth is someone
else’s job. It’s down to Vicar. Or the PCC. Or the evangelicals. Or people who have
gifts in that area. Or it’s God problem not ours. Those who proffer these excuses
may well think that Church growth is important. They just don’t see it as their
responsibility or vocation. Here I am Lord. Send him.
And next we have the category three excuses which are all about delay. We agree
that Church growth matters, we agree we’ve got to do something about it. But we’re
just not quite ready yet. This year we’ve got the roof to repair, so we’ll get on to
Church growth next year. Or the year after. Or perhaps the year after that. Who
knows?
Or if you can’t be bothered with the sophistication of any of the above categories,
you can always drag out the good old chestnut, ‘It’s not all about bums on pews you
know.’ If I had a cup of tea for every time I had heard that one, I think I would by now
have died of tannin poisoning.
So why are we so sophisticated in making excuses for avoiding for church growth? I
think our fear in this area of church life is based on two major misunderstandings.
The first involves what Church growth is. The second involves why we do it.
So what is church growth? We tend to think of it in very stark and simplistic terms as
the increasing the number of people who attend church on Sunday. And actually that
is very important. Bums on pews really do matter, because the thing about bums is
that they are attached to people who, if they are sitting on pews, could well be
encountering the life saving power of Jesus Christ in the worship of his Church. But
Church growth is about so much more than that.
When we think about this in my urban Parish in central London, we consider two
aspects of what it means to grow. Growth in quantity and growth in quality. Or in
other words, growth in number and growth in depth of believing. You can’t have one
without the other. In Acts 9, 31 we read of the early Church that, ‘Walking in the fear
of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it was multiplied.’ Through growing in
depth of believing, they grew also in number.
When I was a curate there, a new church started up in Sunderland. It grew
exponentially despite being located on one of the toughest estates but then after two
years it completely collapsed. That church had put plenty of effort into growing in
quantity, but not enough into growing in the quality of belief. Compare that to a
Parish I visited a few years ago in Leeds. They were all great friends, they had
wonderful worship and really good courses at Lent and Advent, but everything was
attended by the same small group of people. They were growing in depth but not in
number. We need to hold those two areas of growth – quality and quantity –
together.
A growing church asks of itself two questions. The first is, how are existing members
getting to know Jesus better? In other words, how are we growing in quality?
Because the more we grow in our own faith, the more we grow in our confidence and
desire in sharing it. When you look closely at the conversion stories in the Gospels –
the disciples at Emmaus, the woman at the well, the fishermen on the lake and so on
– the end process of conversion is always proclamation. The key sign of depth in
discipleship is the capacity to evangelise.
And then the next question is, How good are we at drawing new disciples into the
family? In other words, how are we planning to grow in quantity? What are the routes
in to Church life? How good are we at welcome? Where is the place where new
Christians can learn about Jesus and get to know each other? How confident are we
at sharing our faith and inviting people to church events or worship?
So Church Growth is about much more than statistics. But why bother with growth in
the first place? Why do we do it? It’s not to prop up a struggling church. It’s not to
save an institution or pay the Parish share or guarantee a clergy pensions fund. We
want to grow quite simply because Jesus tells us to. We do it because in Scripture
Jesus makes it clear again and again that this is what he wants for his body, the
Church. Let me just remind you of two Biblical images from many I could choose.
The first is the Vine. In John Chapter 15 Jesus, in one of the great ‘I am’ saying,
compares himself to a vine. And if he is the vine, we are the branches. Through
baptism we have been grafted into Christ so that we can bear fruit for him. This
wonderful, biological image reminds us that the natural state of the church is growth.
The church is designed to grow in just the same way that a plant is designed to
grow. Now I am the world’s worst gardener. I have the opposite of green fingers.
Every plant I touch soon dies. But even I know that we don’t have to make plants
grow. They do it naturally. And if they are not growing, we need to ask ‘Why not.’
It is the same with the Church. Growth should not be a freak phenomenon or
something that happens in a small number of churches of a particular tradition. It
should be the natural state of all our churches. And when it is not, we need to ask
why not? What is preventing growth? What is getting in the way of what should be
natural?
And then the second image is that of the pearl. In Matthew Chapter 13, Jesus likens
the kingdom to a priceless pearl which a merchant sells all he has to acquire. It’s
another simple image but one that conveys the utter preciousness of life in Christ
and so the indescribable value of what is entrusted to us as the Church. We have the
words of eternal life. We have access to the new life of the Kingdom.
What kind of person, when possessing something wonderful, would not share it with
those they love? That is what we are doing when we fail to prioritise growth. We are
taking hold of the only thing in all this world that can offer hope and we are keeping it
to ourselves. A church will only grow when its members realize the transcendent
power and significance of the Gospel that has been entrusted to them by Jesus
Christ. We are the labourers sent into the vineyard and without us there can be no
harvest. We are Christ’s ambassadors without whom the message of the Gospel
cannot be heard. As St Paul asks in his letter to the Romans, ‘How they are to hear
unless they have a preacher?’ Without us, the message of life will go unproclaimed.
How can we keep silent? How dare we keep silent? The pearl without price is in our
possession, so we must share it with the world.
My homework excuses always sounded great when I dreamt them up on the way to
school. But confronted with the harsh, unfriendly gaze of a teacher, they would
usually wilt away and sound weak and pathetic. It is the same with our excuses for
avoiding church growth. When confronted with the truth of the Gospel, they seem
just a bit weedy. How can we avoid when we have possession of the pearl without
price? How can we pass the buck when we ourselves have been baptized into Christ
and called to ministry in his name? How can we delay when souls are going
unsaved?
And anyway why do we need excuses? Church growth is not like homework! It is
neither dull nor repetitive Indeed it is the most thrilling and exciting area of ministry
one can hope to be involved with. Imagine new Christians coming to faith through
you. Imagine people growing in their love of Jesus because of what you have taught
them. Imagine your local church flourishing and serving and bearing fruit. This is not
a duty, it is a joy. And as we carry it out joyfully, so the world will be saved. Amen.