Issue
The Malling of Mission: How Suburban Values Control the Church Growth Movement
Vol. 9, No. 3 • May/Jun 2000
In October of 1999, a group of missiologists, missionaries, and church leaders gathered in Brazil for an important event sponsored by the World Evangelical Fellowship, based in Singapore. These leaders from fifty-three countries, many of them from the two-thirds world, rallied to the cause of world mission-but with a somewhat surprising twist. As Christianity Today […]
All Articles (10)
The Ethnocentricity of the American Church Growth Movement
In October of 1999, a group of missiologists, missionaries, and church leaders gathered in Brazil for an important event sponsored by the World Evangelical Fellowship, based in Singapore. These leaders from fifty-three countries, many of them from the two-thirds world, rallied to the cause of world mission-but with a somewhat surprising twist. As Christianity Today […]
Who Do the Mega-Churches Say They Are?
Beginning especially with the 1995 Peter Jennings special report on religion in America and the August 1996 Atlantic Monthly cover story, “Welcome to the Next Church,” seeker-driven megachurches have received a great deal of secular media attention. Perhaps most interesting about these reports has been the way these pragmatic churches-and their leaders-present themselves and their […]
Growth Mentality That Is Biblical
Church growth as it is described in Scripture might be best explained by a three-tiered formula. (1) It begins with spiritual vitality, which then leads to functional effectiveness, which in turn often leads to statistical increases. Statistical increase is the result of functional effectiveness and functional effectiveness is the result of spiritual vitality. The goal […]
How Has the Church Growth Movement Changed in the Last Two Decades, and Where Is It Headed?
MR readily admits that we do not entirely understand the church growth movement; we are suspicious of the possible syncretism involved in borrowing so heavily from marketing methodology. At the same time, we understand that there are differences within the movement-though these variations are often difficult to see from the outside. As such, we asked […]
Industrial or Pastoral?: The Techniques of Church Growth
When the Apostle Peter wrote of his desire for the Church to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18), did he have in mind a bevy of megachurches, filled with American suburbanites, providing spiritual resources for every aspect of middle-class life, from Christo-centric ceramics classes to […]
How Christian Worship (not Consumerist Worship) Forms a Missional Community
“You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last….”John 15:16. What would happen if everyone in our pews for worship on Sunday morning departed afterward with a deep understanding of all that Jesus meant by the sentences above? For that to happen, […]
