How To Grow A Church

Step number one:  Hire a team of surveyors to canvas the community and ask people what they want and expect from a church.

Step number two:  After studying the results, build a church that meets these wants and expectations of the community.

    That’s all there is to it!  It isn’t rocket science!  It’s a proven success formula that’s being used to build mega-churches and their satellites, and the method is being adopted by many mainstream denominations, and thousands of “Peter Pan” churches.

    I’m reasonably sure though, that anyone with the slightest bit of spiritual sanity can recognize a problem with this method.  Those surveyed are “un-churched,” worldly-minded, and have a near total ignorance of inspired Scripture.

    The Thursday edition of our local paper contains the weekly religious section.  Reading through this section prompts various emotions from frustration to sadness, and sometimes even indignation.  It reminds me of a pedophile offering a child a piece of candy; once the bait is accepted, they become “two-fold more a child of Hell” (cf. Matthew 23:15).  The reason for this is that people think that any connection to any church equals salvation.  Even a superficial reading of Matthew 7:21-23 shows the fallacy of this line of thought.  Yet, once people *think* they’re already saved, it’s twice as difficult to teach them the Truth.  [Satan is a brilliant and formidable enemy]!

    We should be concerned with church growth, but not at the expense of the Truth.  Noah preached righteousness for over a hundred years but converted no one.  After three and a half years, the most powerful, loving, miracle-working preacher that ever walked on earth had only about 120 followers.  In His letters to the seven churches of Asia, Jesus commended none for church growth.  His commendations were only for those things that were in harmony with Scripture, and He told them to “repent or else” of those things that were not in harmony with Scripture.

    While the true church may appear as a “grasshopper” in the sight of worldly churches, let’s not become discouraged.  Remember, only two of the hundreds of thousands that were originally led out of Egypt entered the promised land.  The reason these two were able to enter, was because they maintained their absolute faith in God’s Word.

--Toby Miller