Dear Sir
The article ‘Rethinking church for growth’, in the May issue of en, provoked a plethora of thoughts. It is a joy to hear of church growth: especially when it comes from conversions rather than transfer growth.
However the article also raised a number of concerns.
First, it implied there are only three options for a growing church – expand, move, or add services. Are there no other options? For example, planting, or (as my previous pastor regularly did) encourage those who drive past smaller churches to consider membership there instead?
Second, the stratification of services surely pulls against the very fabric of church. ‘Do you go to the discovery or the dis-cipleship service?’, someone asks. Where do we find such segmentation in the New Testament? Do we not want those ‘discovering’ to do so amongst Christians, rather than in their own silo?
From what I can tell multi-service seems to be a relatively modern phenomenon. Historically our (non-conformist) forebears saw gathering as integral to the very essence of a church. Benjamin Keach defined church as, ‘a congregation of Godly Christians… who give themselves to the Lord, and to one another…and do ordinarily meet together in one place.’ Multi-service churches fall foul of this definition at two points because, firstly, they don’t meet together which means, secondly, people can’t properly give themselves to each other. How can I live out the ‘one-another’ commands in the New Testament in a structure that necessarily precludes me from knowing them?
The argument for gathering together isn’t just historical, I believe it is biblical. In Matthew 18:19-20 Jesus identifies himself with the gathering of a church. This identification is locative (‘I am there among them’), and so to benefit from this promise requires Christians to be gathered together. Doesn’t this verse alone preclude the possibility of a long-term multi-service ‘church’?
It is interesting how Bible-believing churches are seemingly quick to turn to pragmatism when it comes to ecclesiology – especially when increased attendance is involved. Indeed is it even a valid undertaking to ‘rethink church’ as the headline states? Imagine if the headline had been, ‘Rethinking marriage for growth’!
Surely one corollary of a robust doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture is that God has told us in his word how his church should be structured. We mess with this at our own peril.
Yours faithfully,
Jim, Surrey
