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Grow a Healthy Church
By Alan Weinacht
I cut my church growth teeth on Donald McGavaran’s 1970 book, Understanding Church Growth. McGavaran was an astute observer of culture and how the Spirit of God moves through channels natural to diverse cultures. By the late-1980s church growth had become a dirty word for many Friends, having been hi-jacked by the Christian marketing industry. In 1996, Christian Schwarz published Natural Church Development that reconnects church growth concepts to their organic roots. According to Schwarz there are six “biotic principles” that govern the health, vitality and longevity of living beings. By looking for the presence or absence of these six principles in your local meeting and yearly meeting, you will find places of health or sickness. These six biotic principles are multiplication, interdependence, symbiosis, multi-usage, energy transformation and functionality.
Multiplication
“Every form of organic growth sooner or later reaches its natural limits. A tree does not keep getting bigger; it brings forth new trees, which in turn produce more trees. This is the biotic principle of multiplication, which characterizes all of God’s creation…The principle of multiplication applies to all areas of church life: just as the fruit of an apple tree is not an apple, but another tree; the true fruit of a small group is not a new Christian, but another group; the true fruit of a church is not a new group, but a new church; the true fruit of a leader is not a follower, but a new leader.” (page 68)
Although multiplication is as basic as Jesus instructing the disciples to go into the world and make disciples, it has become a foreign term in many congregations. In stagnant and declining situations, the tendency is to retreat into a survival mode of thinking instead of asking how we can prosper through multiplication.
Discussing church growth in terms like multiplication rescues us from the pressure to jump into the latest ministry fad. It challenges us to order our organizational structures and mindsets to allow new birth to be a part of the ongoing process of life.
Interdependence
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ…Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” I Corinthians 12:12, 27
I was a freshman in high school when the nation was caught up in a gas scare. Lines of cars spilled out of the gas stations and onto the street. OPEC was controlling supply and the best science of the day told us that we would be out of fossil fuel by the year 2000.
Out of the chaos of fuel fears and concerns over chemicals, like DDT, there emerged a new concern for the environment. An Ecology Club sprang up on my high school campus. Conservation and the interconnected nature of the ecosystem were a foremost concern.
That was 35 years ago. Although we obviously have not run out of fossil fuel, those who continue to wave the banner for the environment have one truth on their side: Disrupt the interconnected nature of living systems long enough and they will sustain damage that cannot be repaired. Species will go extinct. Grasslands will become desert. What is true of the planet and the creek that runs through your town is also true of your church.
Interdependence is the recognition that “the way the individual parts are integrated into a whole system is more important that the parts themselves.” (page 66) One of the goals of Natural Church Development is to increase the church’s ability to assess how decisions or priorities in one area of the church’s life impact the whole and to make decisions that enhance the life of the entire body.
Symbiosis
About a decade ago Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People took the management and leadership world by storm. One of the habits Covey describes is a commitment to win-win relationships. In the extremely competitive world of business, successful people are not those that are out for themselves but those who make others winners also. The win-win habit is comparable to what Christian Schwarz calls symbiosis.
Webster defines symbiosis as the “intimate living together of two dissimilar organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship.” The opposites of symbiosis are destructive competition and monoculture. In agricultural terms, competition is the summer grass that magically appears in your vegetable garden and threatens to choke out the green beans. Monoculture is growing tomatoes in the same place year after year. Disease will eventually wipe out the crop.
For Christians, symbiosis means a willingness to work with our different personalities, spiritual gifts and callings in ministry. When practiced carefully, Friends business methods enhance symbiosis. Failure to nurture win-win relationships between people and ministries leads to monoculture thinking— in this church we allow just one kind of music or we only practice unprogrammed worship. Failure also leads to competition— ideas and leadings are only seen as threats to cherished programs and customs. A commitment to symbiotic thinking is a habit of highly successful churches.
Multi-usage
Picture a bright October afternoon. The sugar maple tree in your yard is on fire with color as the reds and pale yellows dance in the breeze. The next step for these leaves, which spent the summer turning sunlight into food, is to drop to the ground. We tend to forget about them, but their work continues. Through decomposition, the leaves return nutrients to the soil and again energize the tree.
This is a very different picture from many church ministries and programs where we continue to invest time, money and energy but see little or no return to the church. Multi-usage gives a group permission to ask how a project, ministry or financial commitment will in some way give back to or enhance the meeting. Will it become part of a self-sustaining organism or be a constant drain of life and energy?
Sunday School has fallen on hard times in many churches. By and large it has been treated as a stand-alone event. Few congregations ask how Sunday School gives life to the rest of the church. Is it a stand-alone event at 9:30 one day a week or our primary place for equipping leaders for the church, beginning by training future teachers?
Energy Transformation
If you made a list of the events and challenges in our churches that we brand as negative, it might include some of these items: The financial challenges of a shifting economy. Pastoral changes burdened with problems that tap into destructive, congregational dynamics. Shifting demographics, job-related moves, illnesses and of course, the two trustees that refuse to get along.
Energy transformation is the biotic principle that teaches that even destructive energy can become productive. Consider how your body fights a virus. “Viruses generally make us sick, therefore they are bad. A few viruses, however, cause the body to counteract and strengthen its immune system. This is the principle used in vaccinations. Health-destroying energies are transformed through the vaccination process into healthpromoting ones.” (page 70)
In one biblical example of energy transformation, Paul used an obvious idol (the altar to the unknown god) as the launching place for his evangelistic message (Acts 17). Persecution of Christians often produces a stronger church rather than a weak church; hostile energy is transformed into holy energy.
One of the disciplines of Natural Church Development is to ask how a present, negative situation can be used to advance God’s kingdom. One of the fundamental differences between healthy and conflicted churches is how they harness all energy, even the negative, to take the church forward.
Functionality
“All living things in God’s creation are characterized by their ability to bear fruit. Inherent to the nature of this fruit— be it an apple, a chestnut or even a baby—is the preservation of the species. Where there is no fruit, life is condemned to death.” (page 76) Think Shakers, who condemned themselves to museum status.
Functionality is simply the discipline of asking if the organization, programs and ministries are bearing the intended fruit. Unfortunately, careful evaluation is considered unspiritual in many Christian circles. But sometimes we get it right. I am deeply grateful to the elders at Haviland Friends (Mid-America Yearly Meeting) who moved me from youth ministry to associate pastor. They were willing to say what I was not yet able to articulate—after two years there was no fruit. It hurt and was embarrassing; no one enjoys failure. But their move was very freeing.
Freeing for fruitfulness is what Natural Church Development is all about. It captures in a disciplined, thoughtful way the spirit of what Jesus intended when he said, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit.” John 15:1-2 NASB
All non-scripture quotes are from Natural Church Development, by Christian A. Schwarz, ChurchSmart Resources, 1996.
Alan Weinacht is the General Superintendent of Indiana Yearly Meeting. He plans to return to pastoral ministry in 2005.