I'd really be interested to read your comments on what makes a Church "successful." Is it the size of the congregation? The influence in the community? A great deal of Biblical knowledge? The Building? Something else? Discuss please.
Update: In the next day or two I will post my view on this question, but I am still interested in hearing from as many of you as possible. Is there really any such thing as a "successful Church?" If so, what defines it as "successful?"
Update, Update: I have had a request to keep this question open for a while longer and so I have moved the post to the top of the page again.
10 comments:
I am no expert on what makes a church successful - but my theory on why our church keeps struggling for attendees is the old real estate adage.
LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION !!!
(That is my 2 cents worth.)
"Success" and "church" together makes for a whole lot of discomfort for Jeff. A resounding “NO!” to all of your questions as to what makes a church successful. I wish that word could be eradicated from the church’s vernacular. Yet, ours is an age of mission statements, vision statements, philosophies of ministry, core values, and whatever other innovation we might adopt from the business world. Our itching ears are dying to be scratched by all manner of false doctrine by men and women who have no business proclaiming from the pulpit, TV, or radio. Our god is our belly and our voracious appetites devour any and all stupid slogans, logos, and gimmicks. We slap on our WWJD bracelets and stupid FROG t-shirts, recite the Prayer of Jabez like a mantra, embark on a forty-day, purpose-driven journey of legalism and self-righteousness, and fall in lockstep with Happy Joel in a vain attempt to achieve our best life now. Oh Christian, why do you run so? In a most general sense, I think the answer is twofold: 1) to attempt to atone for one’s own sense of sin, alleviate guilt, pacify the conscience, and feel contentment for being a “doing” Christian; or 2) to chase some farce that is popularly understood as the “successful Christian life,” which usually includes doing any number of good things (Bible reading, praying, articulating your faith to others, listening to Christian radio) and refraining from things that are positively sinful (smoking, drinking, cussing, listening to secular music). In actuality, these two things are like opposite sides of the same coin. Well, just a bit of a digression; back to the (un)successful Church.
I hate mission statements almost as much as I hate the business model overall. Men who have been called to the Holy Office have become upper-level managers who offer weekly motivational speeches; the congregation has become the clientele (or the "end-users"), with a privileged few enjoying shareholder status. The introduction of this into the church has paved the way for all talk of success. Because the words of Christ do not suffice in spelling out our mission or vision, we must be called into account and given a positive or negative designation of success according to our explicit statements. Interestingly, the word “success” does not appear at all in the NT in the ESV; the word “succeed” appears only 3 times and never in the context of a church’s finances or its many members. Furthermore, for centuries the Biblical texts, creeds, and confessions were adequate. Maybe they just got too old, or worse, they became irrelevant. What’s great about those ancient and medieval statements is that they were merely professions of faith and doctrine, articulating the very substance of Christian belief: the triune God, the nature and work of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Church, the things to come, etc.
Unfortunately, for a church today to be considered successful it must bear the same marks as a successful business: a large and growing clientele, a surplus of funds, and replication/expansion. It also must judge itself in light of its own explicit goals and aims. Have we completed our mission or carried out our vision? Are we still doing so? It gets pretty difficult when the statements are vague and lack clear direction. As for me, I appreciate the simplicity of days passed, when it was understood what the church was: a place where the little lambs of God gather around their Shepherd to hear His voice and receive their sustenance from His hands; it’s Word and Sacrament. We confess that the church is where the Word is rightly proclaimed and the Sacraments are rightly administered. If indeed that is what is taking place, how can we call that unsuccessful? As with Paul and Apollos, you can do the planting and I can do the watering, but neither of us can do the growing; there is no incantation, no magic formula. Thanks be to God.
A churche's sucess can not be measured by one particular item attendence, building, worship. The "sucess" of a church is akin to ones health it is measured on a broad spectrum. One can have cancer but be physically able to do more push-ups than her cancer free neighbor who is obese. A church can have great low attendence but excellent preaching, or another church poorly crafted worship music with consistent tithes. Different aspects of a church can be determined as sucessful or unsucessful. However I think the cancer of church is complacency, overintellectualizing christianity, underintellectizing christianity,worldliness, and the fear of being set apart. I think christians can use God's grace as licsence for spiritually undisciplined behaviour, rather than viewing spiritual discipline as GOD's grace to us. Ultimately the key to achieving sucess in man's eyes is seeking GOD's face through the four food groups prayer, study, sacrements and worship. Individually and corporately. I believe those big and "spirit filled" churches do the above and appear sucessful to man, while seeking Christ.
Anonymous:
I am glad you responded. Hopefully, we can get others involved and have a good dialogue.
You wrote, "Ultimately the key to achieving sucess in man's eyes is seeking GOD's face through the four food groups prayer, study, sacrements and worship. Individually and corporately. I believe those big and "spirit filled" churches do the above and appear sucessful to man, while seeking Christ."
I am having a difficult time understanding these last few statements. Would you clarify your meaning for me?
Jeff Proctor
Ok Martin, here we go. Rereading my excerpt showed me why you may need some additional info. Let me reveal to you my frame of mind recently and especially when commenting on this blog. Size doesn't matter.I am very tired of the big church/small church tiffs!! Christian snobbery yuck! I suffer from it. From small churchers I hear put downs such as "those terrible seeker friendly churches, affording anomnimity, doing topical sermons, felt need minisries, programs catering to a consumer oriented model and watered down gospel." From big churchers "oh sure they have doctrine down, but their congregation consists of a bunch of comfortable, complacent, inward focused, cliquish, folks who don't ever get outta thier comfort zone and preach the gospel outside of church let alone a watered down version. I do believe the spirit can work through any means but the four food groups (embarassed by my dumb term :)) are paramount; I don't believe that all large churches are large because of programs or cool techy stuff used by them. In defense of small churches I think they can be totally seeking GOD and yet as far numbers are concerned not grow. I get tired of myself and others pooh poohing things based on preference rather than orthodoxy versus heresy. I certainly don't think there is a special formula for a "successful" church growth. Hope this is clear I am tired so it might still need more!! Much love brother!!
Well, I am glad to see that at least there has been some discussion on this issue of what makes a successful church. I know it sounds wimpy, but my own view on this is probably a combination of most of what has been said.
First of all, I think we must absolutely run away from defining the Church as successful based solely on the number of attendees and whether we're meeting the budget. If the Church's success were determined by numbers alone, I think Jesus would have been considered a great failure as His Church abandoned Him to crucifixion. The "numbers" as a matter of fact were against Him. This problem with the numbers continued for hundreds of years as Churches, rather than growing in prestige, were being eaten and burned alive.
On the other hand to say that numbers don't matter at all I think is probably a little silly. After all, the Church is made up of individual people and so there must be some people that gather around the Word and Sacraments in order for their to be a Church. We need not worry about this though since Christ said the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church. We know "The Church" will be here until He comes to take His bride home. Also, we must remember that numbers were recorded in the book of Acts, not because it was the only gauge, but nevertheless, they still mattered because those numbers represented people that were being saved as the Word of God spread.
So, numbers matter (no, not numbers, people) but they do not define success. This is very tough for us who are so driven by results to accept, but Christ's kingdom is different. We win through losing, become first when last, live through dying, and are called to the joy of picking up our cross, giving away our rights to our enemies. Our life is a cross before a crown.
So then success is found in simple ways in the Church. Not, "Are you buying a building?," but, "Was the Word of Christ preached?" Not "Is the budget being met?," but, "Did you receive the Saviors body and blood through the Sacrament today?" If a Church gathers together to hear the Word, and receive forgiveness through the Sacrament, that Church can be filled with great joy. That Church can say "Glory to God we are successful!"
Rather than searching for "success" (or its variants) in ESV or other English translation (as Jeff mentioned), I suggest studying a search on the word "gain".
If you would, please pray for my family according to God's Word.
Well, after a few lengthy drafts I think I will opt for brevity. Anonymous, I agree with your assertion that size does not matter. Our adversary would love for us to continually focus on things of secondary and tertiary importance. It's easy to slip into a kind of thinking that presumes full sanctuaries, eloquent sermons, overflowing coffers, quality musicianship, strong families, smiling faces, ferocious clapping, and an otherwise quantifiable sanctification are indicative of the Lord’s approval and blessing. If we solely employ these criteria for identifying successful churches, then what prevents us from concluding that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are also successful churches? Pastor Erick, with your permission, I would love to read some opinions on this one. Maybe you could bring this to the top again.
Anonymous, you made a comment about the Spirit working through means in your last post. That would make a great topic in itself. Got that, Pastor Erick? And if I may be so bold, I would love to see another one on the Theology of the Cross vs. the Theology of Glory. It seems so pertinent after all this talk of church and success.
Jeff
Looks like somebody needs to start his own blog!
Word.
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