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with a heavy stack of research. Both sides, he says, are at least in part wrong.

His research project itself is, to me, as interesting as its conclusions. The amount of data Schwartz gathered from his massive study of 1,000 churches in 32 countries is staggering: over 4.2 million separate responses provided by the thousands of church members who completed his survey questionnaire. The needle Schwartz was looking for in this haystack of data: “what church growth principles are true, regardless of culture and theological persuasion?”

Schwartz writes against the backdrop of the church growth movement, which begin in the late 1950’s and looked for sociological in addition to theological factors in conversion and church growth. Its advocates are motivated by spiritual concerns—the Great Commission and how to execute it—but also very willing to use research and statistical methods to seek out the best ways to get the job done.

To many people, this all sounds suspiciously worldly. As one detractor accused church growth advocates: “Forget what God wants—give the consumers what they want and they will be banging on the doors.”

Among International Churches of Christ the church growth movement itself had little influence, but we did often use something very familiar to church growth advocates: specific and extensive goal setting that was very results-oriented.  How many baptisms did we have this year? How many studies do we have right now?  Can each Bible Talk commit to bringing ten people to the next service? How many people did you share with this week?

Schwartz identifies this practice directly: “In many church growth books we met a stubborn myth: a church that wants to grow needs numerical growth goals such as, ‘By the year 2002 our worship attendance will have reached 3,400.’”  He finds two problems with this “stubborn myth”:

  • Almost 70% of the fastest growing churches in his study didn’t use numeric goals. In other words, it doesn’t seem to be necessary for growth.
  • The magic number itself isn’t motivating at all, and “a fixation on such figures can actually be counterproductive." Any of us who have been on the receiving end of a “quota” for a certain number of visitors or baptisms knows too well how the pressure of this kind of goal has the potential to hurt growth more than help.

But, Schwartz says, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things—measurable things, even—that we can do to create an environment where growth can happen.  Schwartz repeatedly comes back to the idea that church growth is much like the growth of a plant. We can’t make a plant grow. It grows “all by itself” (Mark 4:28). But we do have responsibility as a “farmer” to provide the best possible environment for the plant to grow.

This idea drives Schwartz’ search for natural growth principles that focus on quality. The idea is that quality really is something we can be responsible for, and that high-quality churches will naturally grow.

The key quality factors Schwartz finds through his research are 1) leadership that empowers other Christians, 2) gift-oriented ministry, 3) spirituality, 4) functional structures, 5) inspiring worship, 6) small groups that apply the Bible messages to everyday life, 7) need-oriented evangelism, and finally 8) loving relationships. Schwartz surveyed 30 members of each of  the 1,000 churches in the study, then used their answers to assign a “quality index” to each of these eight key quality factors.

What Schwartz calls “the most spectacular discovery” of his survey is this:

There is one rule, however, for which we did not find a single exception among the 1,000 churches surveyed.
Every church in which a quality index of 65 or more was reached for each of the eight quality characteristics,
is a growing church.

In other words, as long as a church maintains a high level of quality in these key areas, it will grow—“all by itself.”

This finding yields two important implications for goal setting:

  • We shouldn’t be adverse to numeric goals, but they should be tied to things under our control (quality) and not to what is ultimately under God’s control (quantity). So, instead of a goal to “have 3,400 by 2002” our goals will concern themselves with quality—for instance, that “80% of all members be engaged in a personal Bible study plan.”
  • We should still monitor those statistics that before had once been “the goal,” but now become monitoring instruments. We measure worship attendance, for example, not to see whether or not we met our goal but to indicate whether our “work on the quality of church life has borne fruit.” If attendance isn’t increasing, we don’t have an attendance drive; rather, we look for quality factors—maybe it’s spirituality? perhaps inspiring worship?—that need to be improved so that growth can happen “all by itself.”

Of course, none of this is possible without an underlying devotion to imitating Christ. The quality factors don’t happen because we measure them. They are built by great sacrifice and conviction. Then, having done our part, we watch in awe as God causes the church to grow “all by itself.”



Mission Memo
Updates on campus ministry, church planting, and innovative leadership among
International Churches of Christ and beyond
NATURAL CHURCH DEVELOPMENT
By Christian A. Schwartz
128 pp. Church Smart Resources, 1996.

Should the church set goals?

One side says no: let God lead. Anything we do that comes from the pressure of a goal is tainted by false motives. Goals lead to burnout and too much human effort. Goals put the mission’s needs before people’s needs—a serious problem, since the mission is supposed to be about people’s needs in the first place!

“Not so fast!” the other side counters, “no goals just means no direction.” After all, the church has a mission, and there are concrete ways we can measure success: new churches started, visitors at Bible Talks, baptisms, membership growth. Shouldn’t we push ourselves and aim for something? Otherwise, this side fears, we’ll just drift along.

With Natural Church Development, Christian A. Schwarz steps into the middle of this debate