Church growth? ‘That’s putting the cart before the horse’

en Reviews Editor John Woods talks to David Brown, an experienced church ‘revitaliser’ in France.

en: Thank you for speaking to us and thank you for writing Re-Connect Your Church: a practical handbook for church revitalisation. One of the words you use a lot in your book is ‘healthy’. What do you mean by healthy, and why is that such an important term for you as you think of the church?

DB: A lot of church thinking has been about church growth, but I think that this is putting the cart before the horse. For me the most important thing is that a church should be healthy, which is the main accent put into it by the New Testament. I would hope that a healthy church would grow by attracting others, but first of all a healthy church will glorify God.