The Every Churchguide to Growth, Reaction Paper Example

Introduction/Summary

In his Preface to The Everychurch Guide to Growth, John C. Maxwell praises authors Elmer L. Towns, one of the co-founders of Liberty University at Lynchburg, Virginia, and Dean of the School of Religion, C. Peter Wagner, and Thom S. Rainer for having written an engaging and highly authoritative guide designed to help churches with small and medium-sized congregations to expand in size. As noted by Maxwell, most churches eventually reach a plateau or a certain limit in relation to the size of their church members, and because of this, they find it difficult to grow and to overcome certain barriers. Therefore, by applying the principles outlined in this book, churches will be able to overcome these barriers in order to better serve the spiritual needs of their congregations and local communities.

The book itself is divided into three separate parts with individual chapters. Part One, “Overcoming Small Church Barriers of 200 People,” explores why some small churches have such a difficult time exceeding 200 members, the cost associated with breaking or exceeding the 200 member barrier, and steps that can be taken toward breaking the 200 member plateau. Similarly, Part Two discusses how medium-sized churches can exceed the 400 member plateau and how to utilize Towns’ Ten Point checkup to help break growth barriers. And lastly, Part Three examines how a larger church with at least 1,000 members can continue to grow. At this point, Towns, Wagner, and Rainer explore the current trend toward creating mega-churches which generally have between 2,000   and 5,000 members and why these churches often find it almost impossible to exceed the 5,000 member figure. Also, Towns, Wagner, and Rainer assert that church leadership is the basic key to congregational expansion and that Mr. Towns is undoubtedly one of the best church leaders in the United States today, due to working for “one of the largest churches in America, the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg” and co-founding Liberty University, headed by the late Jerry Falwell. ² Towns, Wagner, and Rainer round out The Everychurch Guide to Growth with a complete bibliography which shows that they “did their homework” as church historians and theologians. But perhaps most importantly, Towns, Wagner, and Rainer admit that church growth does have upper limits related to congregation size and the ability to properly manage the daily business affairs of a mega-church.

Personal Reaction

After thoroughly reading The Everychurch Guide to Growth, what I found most intriguing was Towns’ premise and suggestions on how church leaders and administrators can overcome barriers related to expanding the size of their congregations. In his introduction, Towns states the following–“Whatever is alive will grow. And anytime growth takes place, barriers to growth will be present. . . Growth and barriers go together like a sock on a foot,” thus, both “must be studied together for understanding church growth.”

Although Towns is obviously discussing church growth, he also appears to be referring to the growth of a church as if it was some type of business. After all, businesses always encounter obstacles and barriers to growth which affects how large businesses becomes, their profitability, and place in the world market. Towns also declares that “Growth means the fulfillment of expectations” ⁴ which sounds very similar to what a business owner or entrepreneur expects to gain from starting a business, such as expecting quick business growth in relation to entering a particular market. Therefore, Towns is approaching church growth as a business with the market being an expansion in the size of a congregation, much like expanding the number of customers that buy a specific product or service.

This idea of a church being a sort of business enterprise is reinforced by Towns when he suggests that the pastor or minister of a church must possess leadership skills and abilities in order to “lead people through the tensions that come” when a church faces barriers to congregational growth. ⁵ The pastor or minister must also possess relationship  and management skills in order to convince congregations that growth is necessary in order to survive in a stiff market (being the accumulation of church members). In other words, the pastor or minister is a business administrator who uses his/her leadership and relationship skills to create a viable path to company growth and higher profits.

Chapter Nine of The Everychurch Guide to Growth advances the scenario that a growing church is much like a growing business, except of course, that a church is not suppose to be out for profit or personal advancement. For example, Towns, Wagner, and Rainer state that a pastor or minister must be an executive leader, especially when leading a church with more than 1,000 congregational members. In many respects, this is reminiscent of a corporate executive who runs a company with the main goal being to expand the size of the company and maximize profits.

Towns, Wagner, and Rainer then describe the five basic characteristics of good goals that all churches must attempt to achieve in order to guarantee church growth. The first characteristic is perhaps the most important of the five–good goals must be relevant, especially related to drawing new converts into the church, either through the influence of current congregation members or those from other churches, such as transferring from one Baptist church to another. A second characteristics is to diagnose the health of the church in question, a reference to making certain that the church can handle new converts which can be accomplished via research or studying the overall health or robustness of the church itself. ⁶ Once again, all business enterprises must set realistic and achievable goals in order to become successful and to sustain company growth and expansion, such as expanding into a foreign market which always requires research.

In the Epilogue “All Growth Has Upper Limits,” Towns, Wagner, and Rainer change course by discussing the chief end or ultimate goal of all churches regardless of whether their efforts to expand and grow the size of their congregations has succeeded or failed. This chief end is to “Glorify God and to enjoy Him forever” and to “obey God, serve God, and glorify God” during the growth journey or process of increasing congregational size, whether from a few hundred to a few thousand. Towns, Wagner, and Raines reiterate the importance of this ultimate goal by reminding readers that a church might be able to break the barriers related to growth, but “numerical growth is not the destination of a church’s journey, it’s the byproduct of carrying out the Great Commission,” being to bring as many souls to Jesus Christ and to spread the Gospel as noted in the Book of Mark which instructs all Christians to “Go out into the world and preach the Gospel to every living creature.” ⁷ Thus, when any given church obeys the will of God and places Jesus Christ at the center point of its existence, it will ultimately grow and expand, much like a business enterprise that practices moral and ethical behavior when it attempts to expand its sphere of influence in the world of business.

Concluding Thoughts

Certainly, by reading and studying the ideas and principles laid out by the authors of The Everychurch Guide to Growth, a church that desires to expand the size of its congregation will most probably attain some measure of success. However, Towns, Wagner, and Rainer do not discuss one area that could make the whole difference between growth and non-growth, being where a church is geographically located and its current budget. There is also the issue of space limitations, meaning that if a church wishes to expand its congregation, it must have the physical space necessary to increase the size of the church itself.

But what I found most troubling about this book is its apparent underlying theme that a church is a business. For sure, mega-churches could be viewed as a business, due to having thousands of church members who tithe funds to help keep the church functioning and “in the black.” I also suspect that this book has helped some church leaders and administrators to become wealthy. In my mind, this is not the goal of any church–the true goal is to bring converts to Jesus Christ and to preach the Gospel. But overall, I believe that this book will help pastors and ministers to achieve church growth in some capacity; I also feel that the Everychurch Guide to Growth should be mandatory reading for all church officials if for no other reason that as a guide or indicator of what can be achieved through hard work and the grace of God.

Bibliography

Towns, Elmer L., Wagner, C. Peter, and Rainer, Thom S. The Everychurch Guide to Growth: How Any Plateaued Church Can Grow. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1998.