Gospel growth vs. church growth
While preparing for and promoting the Gospel Growth vs. Church Growth conference next month, I've often been asked by people, “So what is the difference?” I've come upon some words by David Wells from Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2006) which explain the difference quite poignantly.
No doubt all churches are trying to reach the infamous ‘postmodern’ generation. Wells defines these people as ones who
inhabit a psychological world in which Good and Evil have no real objective status but typically dissolve merely into good and bad feelings ... [T]he search for spirituality today frequently takes a therapeutic direction and moral reality is most commonly only in the far-off distance ... [T]his search allows people to develop their own spirituality in their own way. (p. 119)
Wells says that seeker churches (aka ‘church growth’ churches) are “brilliantly exploiting this spiritual search”. He continues:
[The spiritual search] is producing a seeker's culture. America is tuned in to spiritual matters but not to religious formulations. This makes it very easy to gain a hearing for what is spiritual but hard to maintain a genuinely biblical posture because that becomes a part of “religion.” It is very easy to build churches in which seekers congregate; it is very hard to build churches in which biblical faith is maturing into genuine discipleship. It is the difficulty of this task which has been lost in many seeker churches, which are meeting places for those who are searching spiritually but are not looking for that kind of faith which is spiritually tough and countercultural in a biblical way. (p. 119)
Wells seems to be implying that church growth strategies and ministries are giving the postmoderns exactly what they want: empty spirituality. Alternatively, a gospel growth church focuses on ‘genuine discipleship’, which is biblical and countercultural. To many, this just isn't flashy enough or attached to enough group-dynamic jargon to be considered helpful. But this is what Jesus called his followers to do (Matt 28:16-20).