Scott Green - 3/3/2007 "How the Church Grows"

I noted yesterday that Lynne and I had just flown back from Sacramento—the 2007 Northwest Leaders Retreat hosted by the local church there. Actually, the entire Seattle and Tacoma staffs were there, along with leaders from Vancouver B.C., Calgary, Edmonton, Spokane, Rogue Valley, Ore., Boise, Missoula, and Anchorage. Together, we call ourselves the “Northwest family of churches.” While each congregation is self-responsible, we cooperate with one another in basic ways because we recognize we aren’t self-sufficient. The same interdependence we see within a congregation is something needed between congregations.

In that spirit, we met under the theme, “All By Itself?” Our time together featured a deep and stimulating discussion of Christian Schwarz’ book, “Natural Church Development,” more discussions on gift differentiation within congregations and within our NW leadership circle, and needed doses of free fellowship time. We welcomed new leaders to the group: Jake Jensen, Chris and Joy Weeks from Missoula, and Ed (I’m forgetting his last name!) from Edmonton (he is the new campus minister).

I just can’t say enough about the blossoming unity of this group. This was easily the very best time we’ve ever had together—as the Psalms say, truly “how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.” We spent the first session in confession: what were our leadership and personal needs? What did we hope to obtain from the time together? That night, we met with the Sacramento church, led by Drew and Kathy Nitchoff. We each shared with that congregation what God was doing in our cities and we feasted on the musical leadership of Jon Augustine!
Thursday, we had our book and gifts discussions. The unity in that room on issues of maturity and missions was so inspiring. We all want to see our congregations grow in numbers, in depth of insight, in maturity, and in joy. We seemed to have no defenses with each other and were truly able to “spur one another on.” We made decisions on when to meet together and how to use our collective resources—especially in using M&M to start or revive campus ministries all over the NW—to strengthen one another.

The Schwarz book addresses head-on the paradoxes of church growth we’ve all been trying to better understand these past few years—I wish I could’ve gotten my hands on this when it was written in 1996! The crux of the conundrum is this—churches that get addicted to “quantity goals” tend to lose their way and joy over time (“did we make our quota this year?” Yecch!), and yet, at the same time, clearly the Gospels and Acts unapologetically highlight a tale of quantity growth. How do we keep our zeal for advancing the gospel (which will include being measured in numbers) in our cities and regions without falling into a “numbers motivation?” I agree with Schwarz’ prescription: 1) Goal-setting is crucial, but we need “quality goals,” far more than quantity goals, and these quality goals must resonate to the individual Christian servant; when we sow with quality, quantity victories (souls saved, for example) will come as God’s miracle as well. 2) We should observe quantity indicators not as “goals,” but as indicators of what lies beneath in the congregation; 3) We may pray for Acts-like quantity victories (“God, let us see thousands baptized here”) but only God brings increase—we must stay concerned with the quality things we can each do to sow and water, being truly happy each day with doing our part.

Mark 4 tells the tale of the “growing seed,” and teaches us that the seed grows “all by itself.” And yet the farmer has a concrete role, doesn’t he? Let’s fulfill our roles, and God will be His own miracle grow.