Why I Oppose The Church Growth Movement - by Randy White

Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. Originally found here. My comments in bold:

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(I'm a little surprised at this Dr. White, because his chief complaint seems to be that unnamed churches are engaging in unnamed heretical activities which result in unscriptural church growth. I've read the article several times, looking in vain for specifics on what these violators are doing, who they are, and why it's bad. 

It appears to me that Dr. White simply doesn't like churches with a different style. He doesn't cite any specific churches, specific doctrinal errors, or even quote any of the supposed perpetrators. All he succeeds in doing is imputing certain characteristics to amorphous bogey men, dismissing them as heretical, then retreating to the comfort of his own ideas. Read on:
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Church growth is all the rage. For pastors, the focus is on leadership. For laymen, on “reaching people.” In the church world, church-growth is the standard of success. If a church “reaches people,” and the pastor is a “visionary leader,” then the church will be considered a success. If a church makes it into somebody’s bogus “Fastest Growing Church” list, then the growth frenzy continues with the sheep flocking to check out what innovation has been initiated to reach the masses for Christ. Personally, I think the Emperor has no clothes. (Note the manipulative "scare quotes." The implication is that "reaching people" is bad. Let's see how he explains this.)

For at least four reasons, I reject the church-growth and church-health principles taught at almost every pastor’s conference, and expressed in almost every church. (This is the first indication of unhealthy thinking. It's Dr. White against "almost every church." You see, he stands alone, beating back the evils of church growth, standing for the truth, and fighting the battle against apostasy. It's a variant of a persecution complex, where he and only he has the truth, and only he is right because he rejects all the heretical stuff he will be writing about below.)

Our church will be different, because I reject these principles. Although different will likely mean odd, behind-the-times, and shrinking in size, I go there anyway. (A little bit of advance excuse making. His church will be withering away, he says, because he alone stands for truth at any cost. So if his church gets fed up with him, he will be able to claim that it's because he stood up for the Truth.)

I refuse to believe that a “Christian community” will save anyone.

(Who says that a "Christian community" saves people?) 

Community is the big word today (along with missional…and if you claim to be a missional community, you are really on the cutting edge). Churches work hard to design community. They do it through small-groups, centered around felt-needs, and gathered in living rooms across the country. These community groups gather for the bigger community in a weekly celebration of magnificence. (Note the pejorative language. "Celebration of magnificence" is a phrase chosen to diminish those with whom he disagrees. But he hasn't identified anyone specific. No specific practices, doctrinal errors, or errant churches. In fact, the charges he levels are something he couldn't possibly know about all these churches. 

So, according to Dr. White, churches that have home groups and Sunday gatherings are suspect, despite the fact that churches have been organized this way for ages. "Community" is the problem, apparently. But churches have always sought to be a community (A body, if you will), right from Acts chapter 2. None of this is new, but apparently it is now self-aggrandizing.) 

This weekly celebration has been carefully scripted, (My roots are conservative Baptist. Every Sunday we met at 11:00, sang four hymns, had an offering, listened to a sermon, and were out of there by noon. I've been to many churches that have done almost exactly the same thing in the same way, probably for decades. Sounds like it's also carefully scripted, doesn't it? How is this any different than what Dr. White is complaining about. Oh, and let's not forget about something called the liturgy. Is this offensive to Dr. White as well?) 

from the ridiculously silly and manipulative countdown screen, (How about the ridiculously silly and manipulative sign hung on the wall that tells the number in attendance last Sunday as well as the offering amount? Dr. White's criticisms ring hollow.)

to the last triumphant note of victory at which the community members are sent out to create a Christian society by building community within their neighborhoods. (Yes, yes, we certainly don't want people to go out and act on their faith. We don't want people, motivated by their church, to go out and act on what they've learned. It would be a shame if some of them decided to attend Bible school, become missionaries, or enter the pastorate!)

These community groups gather for “Bible study,” which is almost always a double misnomer. The only Scripture used (Only? Really? Another broad generalization.) 

will be out-of-context references that came from the latest book (Dr. White is an author. I wonder, do any Bible studies use his books? Would he condemn them if they did?)  

by the latest Hollywood-looks celebrity pastor


(Here's Dr. White. Not a bad looking guy...) 

who gathered his thoughts (from the internet?), (Irony alert. This very article is found on the internet.) 

and allowed a nameless editor to work them into something profitable. The group will neither study the passages, nor the book itself. They will simply read a chapter before they come, spend 45 minutes talking about the parts they liked, share how the chapter made them feel about themselves as well as any insights gained, then go away and tell their friends about their marvelous Bible study. It reminds me of when my dad told me we were having tube steak for dinner. I was somewhat disappointed when I found out he just used that lofty sounding name to refer to hot-dogs. Today much of the Bible study in missional-communities is the equivalent of tube steak. (Notice Dr. White's persistent rhetorical technique? He paints with a broad brush, leveling universally applied criticism against people he doesn't know, meetings where he wasn't present, and events he didn't witness. It's "almost always" happening in the way he describes it. No one, apparently, is having real Bible studies. Everyone is reading pop culture interpretations. And it's like this everywhere except his dried-up and shriveling church, where the courageous truth is taught. How does one argue against this kind of rhetoric?)

Following “Bible study,” the groups engage in fellowship time, then go on their way as biblically empty as when they arrived. (Which again, he knows for a fact.) 

Soon they will gather for a “mission project” in which they repair a home (painting the door red so all the town will know that this is one of the homes repaired by that missional community, and will rise up and call the missional community wonderful). (Oh, my. I'm having difficulty expressing my reaction to this overt meanness.)

If not a home repair project, it may be picking up trash for the city, or painting a dilapidated school, or providing shoes for shoeless children. The sermon will often be aimed toward raising up an army of Christians who adopt the orphan, visit the imprisoned, and blog for social justice. (No, we can't have Christians repairing homes, picking up trash, painting schools, or giving shoes to children. Can anyone explain to me why Dr. White is objecting to these acts of mercy and compassion? I will concede, however, that "social justice," as understood by political Leftists, is worthy of contempt.)

Even if I believed that these “missions projects” were as successful as the church websites claim (So these churches are apparently lying as well.) 

(“we had an awesome God-thing happen at our last gathering”), I don’t think it has any lasting impact. (Wow. Now he's apparently in a position to judge the duration and eternal significance of the impact of these activities to coming generations of people. Amazing chutzpah, Dr. White. You can't know this stuff. And it seems to be a perilous enterprise indeed to pass a priori judgment on the good works of others.)

As I see it, the Christian is not so much to engage his society, but to come out from it. (Hmm. At least Dr. White has the circumspection to admit that he has an opinion about what Christians should do. This is the most subdued we have seem him.)

The church today is filled with those who are both in the world and of the world, (*Sigh* Dr. White just goes on and on. There is no way he can know the hearts of these people. He cannot possibly know they are "of the world." Every single one of them. This is presumption and arrogance to think one could know the hearts of people, and large numbers of people at that.) 

and who are organized to change the world into a kinder, gentler place to be. (I guess we should not being going and making disciples of all nations.) 

The success rate of the mega-church missional-church movement has been an utter failure. (So this is his conclusion. Let's see how he arrived at it...)

Society is more liberal and godless than ever before, with no end to its decline in sight. The mega-missional church will gather in their multi-campus celebrations this weekend and slobber over themselves (Wow, he just cannot resist using hostile and dismissive language against his theological enemies.) 

for their victories, yet our society doesn’t display achieve a single victory. Not one. (Ok, so he's holding the "missional" church [if there is such a thing] responsible for failing to stem the tide of godlessness. May we ask, can this charge be laid also at the feet of "non-missional" churches? Or is it only the fault of those churches Dr. White disagrees with?)

Building missional community does nothing more than produce a feel-good complacency to the community members. (Wait. I thought they were repairing peoples' houses and shoeing the shoeless? Which is it, Dr. White?)

Although they live, assured they are going to be people of impact, as part of a community, they fail to really make any difference. (Again, Dr. White. Why single out the group you hate for the failure of the church at large? Or is your withering church actually succeeding based on your superior leadership?) They fool themselves into thinking the Emperor’s clothes are superb.

Have you noticed that I’ve not mentioned anything about the proclamation of the Word, and the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? That’s because there is not much to mention from the church today. (Who is he criticizing now? Has his rhetoric changed focus to the church at large?)

The church today does good works, has good music (in the ears of many), has a really good sound-system, and a pastor who could lead circles around Moses. What it doesn’t have is the backbone to proclaim that our world must reject humanism, social justice, poverty eradication efforts, and other white-washed measures of “expanding the Kingdom of God”—and, must find its only hope in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (This is becoming tiresome. He doesn't know any of this, for he cannot. Of course, there probably are godless, liberal churches who have lost sight of their heaven-sent calling, but Dr. White doesn't deal in specifics. He prefers to engaging in a general impugning of every other church [or alternately, every other "missional" church, as he brands them. 

His diatribe resembles a foaming-at-the-mouth gush of verbiage, with unsupported assertions, and blanket condemnations, and broad generalizations about people he obviously has not met or churches he has never visited. But he knows they're all evil and backslidden.)

I reject all manipulation and aim toward persuasion.

The second reason I’m leaving the missional-community church-growth movement is because I reject manipulation of all kinds. In fact, more than ever before, it disgusts me. The modern church is so built on manipulation that I’m convinced it could not continue without it.

I recently attended a relatively small Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church as a guest. (Hmm. Up til now I thought his church was the only one.)

I was refreshed to see that almost every participant had their Bible—and opened—during the sermon. This told me that the pastor regularly delivers enough verse-by-verse content that looking up one verse on an iPad just wouldn’t suffice. Bibles, for this rare congregation, were a necessity. I was also impressed by the music. It was bad…and that impressed me. It wasn’t polished. There wasn’t a carefully selected Praise Team who passed the “Sunday morning test” of looks and sound, dressed in color-coordinated clothing, closing their eyes and looking to heaven as if they were in an ecstatic moment (I’ve often seen these ecstatic moments turn on and off like a light switch). In fact, the song leader was clearly not a professional, and his tone was often off just a bit. But the people sang with joy. I was impressed with their prayers. They prayed for real and legitimate needs during a Sunday morning service. It would never pass the church-growth test, because it wasn’t seeker-friendly at all with random people from the congregation praying at-will over the needs of the members. As a first-time visitor, I felt out-of-place during that prayer, and I thought that was wonderful. After all, if I was looking for a church, I’d want one that really cared about the hurting people they knew, the flesh-and-blood people who sat in their pews each Sunday. (Which apparently is not what happens in the churches that have attracted his ire.)

Most churches (including mine) are not like this. (See? He's alone in the wilderness, with just a handful of brave compatriots scattered about.)

In most churches (not mine), I wonder if they would be able to continue the “worship” if the electricity went out. (It's these kinds of unwarranted pot-shots that cause me to bristle.) 

The service is so dependent on mood-lighting, electric instrumentation, sound amplification, and video enhancement that it would fall flat in a New York minute with no power. In my church, thankfully, if the electricity went out, we would give one another a quick glance and grin, and keep on singing or preaching. If the electricity-dependent “worship” of the modern church lost electricity, we would see quickly how much vast emptiness there is in these churches, and in short-order, the churches would be vastly empty. No show, no crowd. (Yes, yes. I'm sure there are churches like this out there. But Dr. White continues to hammer the little ol' us against the big evil them theme into the ground. He issues smug condemnation of "most churches" from his high perch of righteous judgment without offering a single bit of evidence that what he is saying is, true, relevant, productive, or of any value whatsoever. He is content to stand off in the distance and toss rocks at these supposed heretics.)

(Incidentally, I’m not a fan of the black-box architecture of the missional-community church. This is a total rejection of centuries of theologically-driven architectural principles of church design that understood a theology of aesthetics.)

Rejecting manipulation, I won’t do a countdown video before the service; it simply enhances the idea of a show that is about to begin. I refuse to only allow the A-team to “perform.” I don’t want soft music playing while I pray (or preach, or give an invitation). I don’t want “smart lights” that set the mood, changeable at the push of a button to fit the tone of the selected song. I don’t want to manipulate my audience into a certain feeling which will evoke a certain action. Doing so is sadly too easy, because our generation (as the Bible predicted) loves the tickling of ears. If you tickle, they will come. (His taste, which must be the model for all churches...)

What I do want to provide is persuasion. I want to stand before the congregation with a persuasive argument from Scripture. As a lawyer before the jury, I want to present a water-tight case that will change the thinking of those who have come to hear a Biblical message. I realize that I do this in a day in which feeling trumps thinking, and so my kind of persuasive preaching will often be rejected. Persuasive preaching doesn’t have enough stories, illustrations, and “you can do it” back-slapping grunts. (If his preaching is anything like his writing, he's in for a real let down.)

I refuse to let my congregation be deceived by good feelings

Thirdly, I reject the missional-community church-growth movement because it is deceptive. Participants in these churches feel like they are stalwart conservatives in a Bible-believing, Gospel-proclaiming, Hell-reducing, Kingdom-expanding church. They consistently proclaim, “My preacher really preaches the Bible.” True, their preacher does hold up a Bible and talk about how true and authoritative it is. He even quotes from the Bible fairly consistently (“I know the plans I have for you…I will never leave you nor forsake you…I am come that you might have life more abundantly…(and, of course) bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse”). What these church members do not know is that they have adopted the leftist agenda (socialism) or neo-con agenda (reconstructing a Christian society) which is as empty as it has always been. (More of the same. I'll just stop for a moment and simply let him rail against all these lukewarm, evil, co-opted churches. He knows so much about them and what they do and how they believe and why they aren't saved. Ad nauseum.)

I will lose church-growth potential because I won’t allow a good-feeling production to trump reality. Do my church members know their Bible? Can they give a defense of the attacks against it? Can they rightly divide the Word of Truth? Do they have a Biblical worldview that understands creation (young-earth), eschatology (pre-trib), salvation (Jesus as propitiatory sacrifice), grace (free from the Law), and so much more? Have I developed a congregation that could, and would, stick with it through a months-long study of the book of Numbers? Or Leviticus? If I have not developed this kind of Biblical hunger, then I’ve just allowed them to be deceived by thinking they’ve had Bible study, experienced worship, and come away a better (and more Christ-like) person. Since I will stand before God someday to be judged for reality (not feelings), I will be satisfied to spend my time and energy developing a Biblically-literate congregation.

I reject the church as a program organization over which I am the CEO

Finally, the CEO model of Pastor has to go. (Finally, something I agree with. However, if you google his name, you will find it prominently displayed on his church website.) 

I know that almost every missional-community church-growth model pastor’s conference says this same thing, continually reminding pastors that they are not CEOs. (Hmm. Apparently the eeevil churches agree.)

Then, having given the obligatory rejection of CEO style leadership, they tell the Pastor that he should be known as the “Lead Pastor” (lead…short for leadership, a key CEO trait). They instruct him in the best means of vision development and “vision casting.” They Peter Drucker him to spiritual death. They study the Bible, not looking for Biblical truth, but looking for leadership traits of Moses (one of the worst leaders of all time), Gideon (zero leadership capability), Nehemiah (who was not a priest nor a pastor, but a government official), Jesus (who did nothing but follow His Father), or Paul (who said pastors should “preach the Word”). (Yeah, we don't want people to study significant personages in the Bible to examine the goods and the bads of how they approached the issues of their lives.)

Going further, these pastor’s conferences (or books) talk about all the programs and paradigms the church could/should implement to develop its missional-community. Of course, as soon as you create any kind of ministry (i.e. program) in the church, it requires some oversight, which requires the Pastor to leave his pastoral function and begin acting like the conference/book instructed him to act: like a leader.

Don’t call me Lead Pastor. Don’t call me Senior Pastor (been there, done that). Don’t call me Teaching Pastor (is there any other kind?). Just call me Pastor, and let me devote my life to prayer and the ministry of the Word, ministering to the flock under my care. I happen to believe that if a person attends a church where they cannot call the Pastor and talk to him, they don’t really have a Pastor. (I wonder what his view of "pastor" is derived from? I find a single reference to "pastor" in the NT:

Ep. 4:11-13 It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ.

Why does he call himself pastor, and why does he attach such importance to the "proper" view of pastor? Does he have any prophets, apostles, evangelists? It sounds to me like he, as the pastor, still sits on top of the pyramid in his church. Worse, he is not reluctant to promulgate his ideas about proper church to the entire body of Christ, viciously condemning those who do not line up with his views.)

Conclusion

I’ve just rejected everything that has become the favorite methods of the missional-community church, which it uses as it bows down to its idol called church-growth. I’m sure some have said “amen” all the way through. If that was you, you’ve probably struggled to find a place to worship and call your church home. Others have come to the end with a righteous rage, wondering how I could so “not get it.” Whichever side you are on, I encourage you to run to the Bible and use it as your only source of revelation about the will of God in church, society, and your own personal life. (And then there are people like me, who aren't in either camp. We are people who love the Lord, love the Bible, and love His work in the church, even in churches that don't suit our tastes. 

It doesn't bother me that he doesn't "get it." It bothers me that he issues sweeping condemnation on things he hasn't experienced about people he presumes to know the motives of. I am not in a "righteous rage" or any other kind of rage. I am actually somewhat saddened.)

Dr. Randy White is Pastor of First Baptist Church of Katy, TX, and ministers online at www.RandyWhiteMinistries.org.