Let that sink in for a minute.
So here are a few of my observations for those who still want to prop up the church growth movement.
1. Statistics about church attendance really can't tell you much about a congregation's growth. I'm not saying that statistics are irrelevant, but what they do tell you probably isn't going to be told by keeping an accounting on some software (such as United Methodist pastors are now required to do).
Here's why.
If I had a lot of money, I'd bet a sizable amount that I could shift a congregation's attendance statistics simply by making clergy better preachers. Regardless -- for a minute -- whether they're preaching the Gospel, a false gospel, a social gospel, holiness or traditional sanctity, I've seen countless congregations improve the numbers of their attendance simply by improving the quality of preaching. So the first thing congregations who want to grow their memberships should do is insist that we recruit and train better preachers.
If you want to improve your attendance statistics, boost your preaching.
Notice, too, this says nothing whatever about the "culture wars". I don't give one flip about projectors in a sanctuary. Or the style of music you sing. If you're focusing there, you've already missed the boat. Because the people want to encounter Jesus, and quite probably the best way to have that encounter is to preach him.
But, there's more: Another way to encounter Jesus -- at least as Christians have rightly insisted for 2000 years -- is in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church. A God who we can encounter through touch, sight, smell, taste -- that's the God of the Gospel.
So, if you want to improve your attendance statistics, boost the sacramental and liturgical life of the congregation.
2. Rather than pointing fingers at any particular side -- the "traditionalists" or the "contemporary worship" folks -- we should recognize that there's room to learn how to pray and worship from one another by actually being with one another. It's significant to my mind that the number one sin Paul encounters in the Corinthian congregation is division. Before any worries about sexual ethics or worship decorum or proper theology of the resurrection. Division is the primary problem.
Therefore, congregations that want to nourish growth will attend to humility, deliberation, respect for difference, and determination to seek truth and to support desperately needy, injured, oppressed people, a very great many people opt to stand on sidelines waving pom-poms for one side and taunting the other side.
Take a minute to notice the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 again: "Love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control". And think about those in terms of a congregation's own identity.
3. Congregations who take their theological reflection seriously will invariably see growth. You can't prove quality theological reflection by numbers. You can't. Can't. CAN'T. If a congregation
adheres to what millennia of the saints have taught and believed, you're a least somewhat less likely to be found in error than if you decide that you're going to think it all up on your own, taking as fundamental a set of political and philosophical ideas developed over the last couple hundred years. That kind of Enlightenment theological reflection is bankrupt. I won't set myself up as a prophet to adjure against the Liberals and the Conservatives. Because I think both are the flip side of the other. Instead, I'm far more concerned to uphold the faith as it has been delivered by the saints to us. That means praying and working in the Kingdom just as much as it means talking about the content of our faith. (Prayer and work are also the content of that faith. Read James again if you need reassuring.) Pinning "intellectualism" as the sum-total of faith is a Very. Bad. Thing. So if you're still fighting this battle between Liberals and Conservatives, you're fighting the wrong battle. You're actually part of the problem -- one of the very reasons folks are leaving the Church in droves.
4. Finally, let me put this out there: The Church is the reason we're having a problem. We Christians are practical atheists in the way we attempt to make Jesus "relevant" to our culture. Jesus is already relevant. We're just not showing him in a way to make him believable. Because we're more invested in our programs than our Lord. This is something Hauerwas and Willimon argued much better than I might ever put it in Resident Aliens. Twenty-five years later, and that book should still be required reading for congregational leaders.