Deserting its Missiological Call: When Mass-Marketing Method Drives Mega-Church Message

Preface:

This is an edited and reduced version of the final paper that I wrote for graduate school. I had the blessing of writing on a topic about which I am most passionate. My paper will be posted in six parts.

Part One: Historical Antecedents

Part Two: Introduction to the Problem: Marketing the Church or Marketing the Gospel?

Part Three: Business Principles vs. Biblical Principles

Part Four: Quantity vs. Quality

Part Five: World-Centered Entertainment vs. Word-Centered Truth

Part Six: Returning to its Missiological Call

Note: Unless you are an enthusiast of the study of modern Church Growth, the first section may appear to be a dry historical analysis of the movement. However, it lays the important groundwork for the implications of mega-church marketing in the following sections.

PART ONE: HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS

Two thousand years ago, followers of the teachings of Jesus Christ gathered in homes, “devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”[1] These fundamental components of early church worship were informed from the apostles’ interactions with Jesus. They embraced His method of incarnational teaching, emphasized the importance of Christian community that Jesus first modeled in meeting with the twelve disciples, remembered His sacrificial death through celebrating the Lord’s Supper, and devoted themselves to prayer as Jesus had exemplified throughout His earthly ministry.

By modern standards, the methods of the early church were simplistic and unsophisticated. The apostles relied exclusively upon the clear proclamation of the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit to regenerate the heart of the unbeliever and sanctify the soul of the believer. The message they proclaimed was life itself. The method of meeting in homes and informally discussing the doctrinal foundations of the faith was unpretentious. And yet, Scripture records the affect of their obedience in proclaiming the Gospel: “And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common.”[2] As their lives were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit, they began selling their belongings and sharing with those who had need. They gathered together daily, and gratitude overflowed from their hearts. Though simple, their methods were attractive. They had “favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”[3]

Two thousand years later, the church continues to grow as the Gospel spreads throughout Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.[4] The landscape of the church has emerged over the past two millennia as it adopts a different personality and distinctiveness informed by the current cultural milieu. In twenty-first century North America, the mega-church movement has become normative. Mega-churches report a weekly attendance of at least 2,000 worshippers.[5] In 1980, there were fifty mega-churches in America. This number increased to 1,210 by the year 2005.[6] By 2006, a new mega-church was being established every three days.[7] These indicators suggest that the North American church is growing and flourishing.

Examining the growth of the American church through a more critical lens, some surprising statistics surface. In 1937, an average of 41 percent of the population attended church. By the year 2006, this percentage rose slightly to 46 percent, an increase of only 5 percent in nearly 70 years.[8] These statistics take into account the exponential growth of mega-churches. Much less highlighted is the statistic that every eight days, another non-mega congregation permanently closes its doors.[9] And it is these smaller congregations that account for nearly 50 percent of the churches in America, numbering “fewer than 75 attendees on any given Sunday, and only 5 percent attract more than 350 [attendees].”[10] Meanwhile, 50 percent of all churchgoers attend the 10 percent of the largest mega-churches in America.[11] This suggests that reached individuals have moved from smaller churches into mega-churches; larger churches are not necessarily attracting the unchurched.

Prior to the rise of the mega-church, the waning of church attendance in 1960s America created a high level of concern among ecclesiologists. Research in the field of Church Growth escalated with statisticians and practitioners such as George Gallup, George Barna, and Lyle Schaller contributing their expertise.[12] The Church Growth movement, however, traced its roots to a much earlier time. Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676), a Dutch missiologist, laid the framework for the views that have been adapted by modern Church Growth specialists. Voetius was convinced that “the first goal of mission is the conversion of the heathen; the second, the planting of churches; and the highest, the glory of God.”[13]

Donald McGavran (1897-1991) is the father of the modern Church Growth movement. McGavran served as a third-generation missionary in India, where he developed a passion to see the spread of the Gospel through the growth of the Indian church. Concerned that the church of India was stagnant, McGavran investigated the deterrents to church growth.[14] While in America as a student, McGavran attended a convention of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, an initiative instigated by Dwight L. Moody. Commenting on the impact of the event, McGavran wrote, “There it became clear to me that God was calling me to be a missionary, that he was commanding me to carry out the Great Commission. Doing just that has ever since been the ruling purpose of my life…. That decision lies at the root of the church-growth movement.”[15]

McGavran’s ideas of Church Growth were not widely disseminated until the 1970s. During this time, he wrote Understanding Church Growth, “which became the foundational textbook of the movement.”[16] He also founded the Institute for American Church Growth, which developed into the School of World Mission of Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary. McGavran organized a band of scholars within the School of World Mission who met together to discuss their convictions and broadly propagated their theories of Church Growth.[17] McGavran identified four key questions that guided the Church Growth movement:

1. What are the causes of church growth?
2. What are the barriers to church growth?
3. What are the factors that can make the Christian faith a movement among some populations?
4. What principles of church growth are reproducible?[18]

At this point, Church Growth was not dissociated from missiology. Church Growth specialists explored the reasons why select populations within a given culture were unreceptive to the Gospel, and the ways in which ministry practitioners might transcend cultural barriers in order to reach more people with the message of Jesus Christ.[19] At its core, the Church Growth movement was nothing revelatory; it was simply a proclamation of the Great Commission and establishing practices that would bring about its fulfillment. What became the precursor to the explosion of the modern mega-church was rooted in an externally-focused, missiological theology.

Thus the Church Growth movement operated under three assumptions. First, evangelism is not an ancillary purpose of the church, but the foundational mandate for the life of the believer. The church is called to incarnate the message of the Gospel, thereby impacting the surrounding community in the name of Jesus Christ. Second, the church must critically evaluate the obstacles to the advancement of the Gospel and report these findings for further analysis. Third, in interpreting these facts, the church must formulate practices that will enable growth and change to take place. As a result, any plan of action should include both the salvation of souls and the planting of new churches.[20]

McGavran’s focus was on applying principles of Church Growth internationally on the mission field. His colleague at Fuller, Peter Wagner, first applied Church Growth practices to the North American church. He published Your Church Can Grow, which became “one of the most influential books in spreading Church Growth thought in North America.”[21] During this time, Fuller tapped into the expertise of Wagner and developed a Doctor of Ministry program. Wagner contributed classes in Church Growth targeted not at international ministry leaders, but targeted at North American pastors and ministry leaders. Local ministry practitioners flocked to this program. Many of the graduates from the program successfully implemented Church Growth practices into their ministry contexts, and they began training other church leaders in these principles. Noteworthy alumni from Fuller’s Doctorate of Ministry program with an emphasis on Church Growth include Rick Warren, John Maxwell, Leith Anderson, Elmer Towns, Bill Sullivan, and Kent Hunter.[22]

Two models of Church Growth resulted: classical and popular. The classical model consisted of two schools: McGavran’s international focus and Wagner’s domestic focus. When the Fuller Institute for Evangelism and Church Growth closed its doors in 1995, the popular model of Church Growth replaced the former classical model.[23] The popular model includes the incorporation of Church Growth principles into the North American church and the reproduction of these theories by Church Growth specialists and statisticians, such as George Gallup and George Barna; church consultants; and training churches, the most prominent examples of which include Saddleback Church pastored by Rick Warren and Willow Creek Church pastored by Bill Hybels. Those interested in Church Growth shifted their gaze away from the declining influence of the classical model and onto pastors of thriving, flourishing churches.[24] Saddleback and Willow Creek, in particular, have laid the foundation for the modern mega-church movement.

Footnotes:

[1] Acts 2:42 English Standard Version
[2] Acts 2:43-44
[3] Acts 2:47
[4] Acts 1:8
[5] Mara Einstein, Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age (New York: Routledge, 2008), xi.
[6] James B. Twitchell, Shopping for God: How Christianity Went from In Your Heart to In Your Face (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 48.
[7] Ibid., 230.
[8] The Barna Group, “Church Attendance”; available from http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=Topic&TopicID=10; Internet; accessed 26 April 2008.
[9] Twitchell, Shopping for God, 48.
[10] Dr. Gary E.Gilley, This Little Church Went to Market: The Church in the Age of Entertainment (Webster: Evangelical Press, 2005), 40.
[11] Twitchell, Shopping for God, 230.
[12] Paul E. Engle and Gary L. McIntosh, eds., Evaluating the Church Growth Movement (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 19.
[13] Ibid., 9.
[14] Charles Van Engen, “Church Growth Movement,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 538.
[15] Engle and McIntosh, Evaluating the Church, 10.
[16] Van Engen, “Church Growth Movement,” 538.
[17] David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 68.
[18] Engle and McIntosh, Evaluating the Church, 12.
[19] Van Engen, “Church Growth Movement,” 538.
[20] Engle and McIntosh, Evaluating the Church, 15-16.
[21] Ibid., 17.
[22] Ibid., 17-18.
[23] Ibid., 21.
[24] Ed Stetzer and David Putman, Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 2006), 46.