This article first appeared in the Fall/Winter 2004 edition of In Touch Magazine. For reprint permission contact the Director of Public Relations at 1-800-251-6227.

By Ron Toews

Hardly anyone is talking about church growth these days. That was the rather obvious conclusion from a recent conversation with ten students in the Doctor of Ministry program at ACTS (the seminary consortium in Langley, BC of which MB Biblical Seminary is a member). Some time in the early 90s, most publishers stopped printing volumes with the words church growth in their titles. Churches are still talking about the importance of growth, but the new fascination is church health. An Internet search today uncovers a vast list of books, sites, courses, conferences, and tools devoted to the church’s newfound fixation. Everyone, it seems, is talking church health.

Is labeling church health as a newfound fixation too strong, too pejorative? Is church health—or even church growth, for that matter—a bad thing? The short answer is no. Jesus was deeply interested in ever increasing numbers of healthy disciples. Borrowing the vine as a metaphor, (John 15), Jesus says that unproductive disciples are to be pruned. And in his parable of the talents (Matthew 25), Jesus asserts that the man who buries his single talent must lose his kingdom servant status. In the book of Acts, Luke casts in a positive light the fact that new believers were added to the church. Paul, in I Corinthians 3:10,13 points to a coming fire that will test the quality of each one’s work. And in Revelation 2-3, John indicates that churches failing to measure up to God’s standards are censured in the strongest of terms. Growing more – and healthy – believers and churches is important in the Kingdom of God.

But “newfound fixation” is an apt description of the current shift from church growth to church health. To get a grasp of the Canadian context for this shift, the Doctorate of Ministry class divided the twentieth century into four quarters, and sought to identify driving societal forces and the response of the evangelical church. We also sought to determine dominant leadership styles of each era.

Now, as one might imagine, ten students representing eight different denominations might reasonably be expected to differ widely in their analyses. Yet, divergent though their analysis was, the exercise nonetheless provided the raw materials for some interesting observations.

Remaining True (1900-1925): The emphases of the Canadian church in the first quarter of the twentieth century had to do with establishing ethnic churches and maintaining cultural identities, promoting assimilation as a primary means of evangelizing, and maintaining the “true” church in the face of gains by social gospel proponents. Leadership in the church was largely male and often authoritarian. Any networking that took place happened within denominations.

Firmer Foundations (1925-1950): The emphases in the second quarter had to do with the laying of a firmer biblical foundation. The bible school movement picked up momentum in response to the concerns of biblical illiteracy and theological liberalism. A second major world war left people disillusioned over unrealized promises of social utopia. Within some churches, larger-than-life leaders stepped forward as spiritual guides and denominational spokesmen (they were all men). The church came to enjoy a higher status within society. Leaders often emerged from the church onto the Canadian political scene.

Diminishing Influence (1950-1975): With war behind, energies were poured into pursuits such as economic and technological advancement. Freedom of expression was highly valued. The retrenching church found its honored place in society diminishing, with many a pastor functioning as a caretaker. Generational divisions, a bias towards programs, and bureaucracy marked the church. There was a numeric plateau and decline in the church. The locus of missions shifted from the church to the para-church.

Postmodernism (1975-2000): The last quarter of the twentieth century was marked by an exponential increase in extant knowledge, individualism, pluralism, and relativism. The grip of rational thought and modernism was loosened by the onset of spiritual searching and postmodernism. Denominational distinctives remained but denominations found themselves giving way to new relationally focused think-tanks and networks. As church attendance declined, the church began to use the language of relevance and “church growth.” Establishing and directing the course of the church took on a new urgency. A language shift marks this transition: pastoral or agrarian imagery inherent in the word “pastor” gave way to “leader” imagery that is more at home in the business world. The search for new leadership had increasingly less to do with gender and more to do with leadership qualities and gifts. Churches continued to be largely program focused, however, and the number of departments and specializations in the church increased. Frustration with a fixation on numbers and concern over the theological veracity of the church growth movement gave rise to a new focus on church health.

What does history tell us?
This assessment provided a basis for several observations.
Addressing societal needs: First, while the language truly has shifted from church growth to church health, there were other emphases before either of these. Earlier in the twentieth century, true church, biblical church, and teaching church were dominant emphases. Each emerged as attempts on the part of the church to address real issues in society. It would appear that the church in every era attempts to fashion a new language “wineskin” in order to depict a new needed emphasis.

Meeting a changing world: The church was greatly affected by the prevailing national, international, societal and cultural winds. World War I, the Depression, World War II, the sexual revolution, the information age—it was not possible to remain untouched by these major movements. They colored perceptions, attitudes, and actions – even theology. Different theological agendas emerged in response to the pressures of the day, as the church sought to adapt to being and doing church in a changing world.

Anticipating further change: The class’s third observation was that if history teaches us anything, it is that the future will hold yet more change.

Leaning into our future
So, given that the church will continue to be affected by prevailing national, international, societal and cultural winds, what might be the emphases of the Church in the next decade or two?
Postmodernism is no longer a new emphasis. But postmodern Christians will profoundly shape the self-understanding of the church, and much of this for the better. The spiritual openness and hunger of postmodern seekers will provide new contact points with people who do not follow Christ and have no understanding of the nature and role of the Church. Disillusionment with virtual “community” will lead to a new desire for authentic relationships within local Christian community.

The missional church emphasis is already here, too. Tired of simply doing missions, the church is hearing with new ears the scripture’s call to be missional. Missions as an arm of the church is giving way to being missionary (witness the rise in popularity of Alpha).

A new emphasis will be the recognition that God calls the church to build forms that are indigenous in its local setting, in response to the prompting of the Spirit. This will be hard on pastors and churches that have grown dependent on copying forms that have worked elsewhere.

Another emphasis will be the rediscovery of the power of converging conversations. In the spirit of Philippians 4:3, where the apostle Paul urges his colleagues to help two disputing believers come to peace with each other, leaders will need to be engaging the church in converging conversations. Many a plateaued and declining church languishes, majoring on minor issues all the while. To leaders has been entrusted the responsibility of developing a Spirit-led unity in the church around her God-ordained mission. Developing a Spirit-led unity has less to do with telling and selling the leader’s vision, and more to do with helping believers to understand the priority of the gospel, their mutuality in Christ, and with recognizing their unique “one another” opportunities in our time.

A high degree of discontinuity between eras may well be the order of the day. Without disparaging history, such discontinuity is important, for it forces each new generation of believers to listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit and hear anew the scriptures in community for our time. And though each new generation likes to think it has discovered new movements and innovated in ways more profound than previous ones, this is often not the case. Gospel proclamation mediums change, but the gospel message cannot. Church structures change, but not the theological basis of the church. Leadership models change, but not the need for leaders to function as foot washers and shepherds. A lesson that needs relearning in our time comes from the metaphor of the pump—it is the water that is sacred, not the pump that delivers it.

In an age marked by a variety of prevailing winds, the church will need to carefully discern the structures and methods that will best convey the message. This will require a deep corporate reliance on God, matched by the development of healthier churches. It will require a bias on the part of the church toward examining and understanding the environments in which the local church finds itself.
It is therefore incumbent on the church to lean into the future, creating faithful methodologies that will facilitate the sharing of the Good News of Christ with postmodern people, and the post-postmodern people who will follow them.