Church Growth Modelling

Enthusiasm and the Presence of God

2011-12-30T14:20:00.000-08:00

I love enthusiasm! It may be a crowd enthusiastic for their sports team, an academic passionate for their subject, or a child in raptures over their latest toy. It is a joy to watch, because the enthusiasts are so happy and their enthusiasm is infectious.

However the best enthusiasm is the one that is for God. If people can get enthusiastic over sports teams and the like then surely Christians are allowed to be enthusiastic for God! It could be that believers are caught up in worship, singing and praying with passion and fervour. Or they could be on mission, zealously telling others what Jesus Christ means to them.

It is in this latter sense in which the word “enthusiast” is used in the church growth models. They are the believers who contact unbelievers and lead them to conversion whether directly or indirectly. They have what Dean Kelley called missionary zeal (1), an enthusiasm specifically directed towards activities that grow the church. Clearly the more enthusiasts then the more the church grows. However it is also true that the more enthusiasm the more growth will occur. Thus a church needs to ask not just how it can make more enthusiasts, but also how can it increase their enthusiasm. Put another way: how can those enthusiasts increase their missionary zeal?

Clearly the more general enthusiasm there is for God then the more likely it is that the enthusiasm specific to missionary zeal will increase. But it still leaves open as to how that general enthusiasm increases, or is started. Christians have other names for this, “being set on fire”, “being filled with the Holy Spirit” etc. Whatever the name, it gives the Christian a direct experience of God himself, often described as the “presence of God”, or his glory. In this experience the things that make God who he is become directly felt. Often it is the person of Jesus Christ who is encountered. Sometimes people say Jesus reveals himself to them. The presence of God is at the heart of revival.

Of course such an experience of God leaves the Christian longing for more. The full intensity of the experience does not last. Thus the Christian is driven to seek the experience again, because having once tasted of the Lord so directly, life is just not the same without him. Earlier in the year a worship-evangelist named Roy Fields was in Cardiff near where I live. One of his songs sums it up “I am thirsty, hungry, desperate for Your Presence.” The Christian is full of enthusiasm for God and the means of seeking him such as worship. This enthusiasm then spills out in missionary zeal

So the process goes like this. Some Christians gather to worship God. He draws close and they are caught up in his presence. In order to seek more of this experience they now pursue him more enthusiastically. Their whole life is characterised by enthusiasm for God; their actions are all set to this end. Most importantly they want others to share their experience. Thus missionary zeal follows and they become the “enthusiasts” of the Limited Enthusiasm Model and are seeking new converts and to pass that zeal on to them, as well as seeking to enthuse existing Christians. The original “enthusiasts” causal loop of the model remains:

The more enthusiasts, the more converts, thus the more enthusiasts.

Additional there is now an “enthusiasm” loop:

The more enthusiasts, the more the presence of God is felt, thus the more enthusiasm, the more missionary zeal, the more effective the conversions, thus more enthusiasts.

The result is a revival increasing in strength and the accelerated revival growth of the church.

This is what happened in the 1730s in Northampton, Massachusetts, under the ministry of Jonathan Edwards and others. Through his preaching the presence of God was felt to such a degree that a number were converted and made enthusiasts. Both the presence and the level of enthusiasm increased. Edwards wrote, "The town seemed to be full of the presence of God: it was never so full of love, nor joy, and yet so full of distress as it was then… it was a time of joy in families on account of salvation being brought unto them; parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives'' (2). The “presence” was subsequently communicated through the joy and love of the converts, whose zeal to see others converted knew no limits. Thus both the number of enthusiasts, and their enthusiasm, rose.

Thus if the church wants to grow, make converts and fulfil the great commission, then it not only needs to produce more enthusiasts, i.e. reproducing Christians, but to increase their enthusiasm, i.e. to seek revival. It is imperative then that seeking the presence of God is of the utmost importance to church growth. This passion for the presence can be seen in a number of contemporary revival-like movements: charismatic renewal, the Jesus People, Vineyard church, the Toronto Blessing and the Pensacola outpouring. In most cases a moderate amount of church growth has resulted and in some, revival growth can be measured, e.g. UK restoration churches.

However no movement/revival have become so big that the presence of God has affected the whole town, as in Edward’s days. This may be a simple matter of population size. It is much easier to affect the whole community in a smaller interconnected population, than in a larger one. It may also be that there are now much stronger “social fields” such as television and the Internet which, because they are either apathetic, or negative to the revival, hinder the communication, of zeal, enthusiasm and the presence.

What started as a short article has ended up a ramble! My eyes are now on the current batch of Christian movements who are seeking the presence of God and seeing enthusiasm generated. I mentioned earlier Roy Fields, whose meetings in Wales were very powerful, especially in the worship, definitely an experience of God’s presence, but it has not make us enthusiasts in the sense of missionary zeal. There is also the Bay of the Holy Spirit revival which adds a healing ministry to the enthusiastic worship. I have no personal experience of this yet to get any sense of enthusiasts being generated. Finally there are the New Ecstatics I wrote about two years ago. Again there is no doubt about the presence, but there does not appear to be any huge growth. Somewhere in the enthusiasm loop there is a broken link in all these movements. This needs more research and reflection.

Why Conservative Churches are Growing: A Study in the Sociology of Religion, Dean Kelley, Mercer University Press (1986).
A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, Jonathan Edwards, (1736). Contained in “Jonathan Edwards on Revival”, Banner of Truth, p14. Also in “The Works of Jonathan Edwards volume 1”.

The Strength of the Christian Church in the USA

2011-09-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

It is often remarked by sociologists of religion that the Christian church is much stronger in the USA than in the UK. This is reflected in the figures where in many places in the UK the church has less than 10% of the community in attendance. Compare the USA where it can be up to 30%. Likewise the majority of the UK denominations are declining, most to extinction, whereas even the declining ones in the USA are not declining so fast, and there are many which are stable or growing.

On a recent visit to the USA I found additional evidence to support the claim that the USA church was stronger than the UK. These evidences showed the impact the church has on that society and is thus an indirect indicator of its strength. That strength will come from its numerical superiority, but it may also come from a more robust spirituality as well. I present here 6 pieces of evidence.

Evidence 1: There were well-kept churches everywhere.
I was in the Bible belt; Virginia and North Carolina. However, wherever I travelled, each community, however small, had numerous, large, well-kept churches from across the denominations. In the case of the Baptists there were many of those in each town! In some ways it reminded me of my native Wales, but these days many Welsh chapels are near derelict, or converted to other uses. Those that are still open have no glossy advertisement boards, like their US counterparts, as there were few people left in attendance. In the US the churches looked an integral and essential parts of their communities.

Evidence 2: Grace in public.
Staying in my first hotel the family next to me said grace at the breakfast table. Such open displays of faith are almost unknown in the UK, but as I found out, more common in the USA. The suggests a Christian faith with more confidence than the UK.

Evidence 3: TV adverts.
There was one advert in particular, on a local TV station. The firm built large pre-fabricated buildings quickly. The manager/owner was speaking in the advert: "If you need to extend your business, build a warehouse, or a new church facility, I am the man to see!" In the UK no-one would mention a new church in the advert because there would not be enough taking place for it to make commercial sense, especially locally. But in the US churches are often needed to build bigger buildings for growing congregations, and new churches start frequently. On another occasions there were TV adverts for a new church starting that Sunday, describing its worship and ethos.

Evidence 4: Sales talk.
In one place I was staying at a time-share and they tried to get me to one of their sales presentations. It was on the following day, a Sunday, but there were different timeslots throughout the day. The lady asked me what sort of person I was: "are you the sort who likes to laze around and have a late morning, was I a get up and get out early person, or a person that would spend the morning at worship". No-one would have asked the third type in the UK, there are not enough Christians to make it a common occurrence. And most of the UK Christians I know skip church when on holiday and away from their own! But in the USA even a hard sell timeshare has to take the church into account.

Evidence 5: Wal-Mart.
The local Wal-Mart was selling a range of "I love Jesus" baseball caps among their hats. I mentioned this to a lady in a nearby Christian bookshop and said that a UK supermarket would not sell things like this, as they would be afraid of offending people. The lady said, it does offend some people in the US as well. The difference is there are enough Christians that Wal-Mart can sell plenty, and their profit outweighs the problems cause by any offense that might be caused! They would not be sold in a UK supermarket, not because of the offense, but because they would not sell sufficient to make it worthwhile.

Evidence 6: Christian books in the supermarket.
In one local supermarket there was a selection of Christian books in the book section. I was particularly struck by one entitled "101 Bible characters you need to know." I am not sure I would find that in Tesco’s! All the supermarkets had Christian music and worship as labeled categories in their CD sections.

That is it. 6 pieces of evidence to suggest the church in the USA is stronger than that in the UK. This might just be a social strength due to numbers, but it may also be due to an underlying spiritual strength, as reflected in the life I witnessed in the churches I have attended in the US. This suggests the question: is the church in the UK small because it is weak, or is it weak because it is small? Talking with older people I am not sure these types of open display of Christianity would have existed in the UK for most of the 20th century. I therefore tentatively suggest that church decline in the UK is due to its inherent weakness, socially and spiritually.

Community & Relationships in Church Growth

2010-10-13T04:27:00.000-07:00

I recently had an email from someone who wondered if the limited enthusiasm model of church growth implied that the church should give more attention to building relationships within the community, and that the church should also become a stronger community itself. These comments really made me stop and think as it raised issues I have assumed rather than looked at in depth. To address these issues let me start with quick summary of the church growth modeling work

The main claim of the limited enthusiasm model is that conversion growth is driven by a subset of the church, whom I call enthusiasts, who do not remain enthusiastic in their recruitment indefinitely. This conversion growth depends on contact between the enthusiasts and the unbelievers in the community. This loss of effectiveness can be for spiritual reasons, but more often than not it is that their enthusiasm gets more and more directed towards the church and they lose their contacts in the wider community.

The amount of growth that comes through the enthusiasts, and how long that growth lasts, depends on their effectiveness in reproducing themselves, either from new converts, or from existing Christians. However, additionally, the growth also comes from the amount of the unbelieving community they are in contact with. If either their effectiveness or their community contact is reduced, the growth will be less, and cease quicker. Because of the increased effort needed as the unbelieving pool gets smaller, growth ceases before all the unbelievers are converted.

Of course there will be church growth through the children of believers becoming believers themselves. At one time this kept the church sustainable regardless of conversions, but not these days in the UK. It meant there were times in the past where churches could be successfully large even though they had little success in mission.

Also for the local congregation there will be transfer growth as Christians move into the community, and some Christians choose to change churches. For churches on growing housing estates, and churches with growing reputations, transfers can be the main source of growth, giving success for the church as an “organisation” with little success in seeing the world converted!

Now one of the biggest mistakes a church can make is to assume it has effective contact with all the unbelievers in its community. In terms of my models it means that the people I class as “unbelievers” are merely the ones who are in contact with the enthusiasts of the church. I suspect in many cases the church only has any serious contact with a minority of its wider community. In that case conversion growth is going to be much harder. So a conclusion of the limited enthusiasm theory is that a church must work on building effective links with the community in order to make conversion growth easier to achieve.

This is hardly rocket science and I think many church leaders know this. What they may not realise is the massive difference it might make to their conversion growth if they only increase their contact with the community by a small amount. If the community they are in contact with is increased by 10% say, then that has the same effect as increasing the effectiveness of the enthusiasts by 10%. However that can have a disproportionate effect on growth. If the enthusiasts’ effectiveness is a long way from the revival growth threshold then a 10% increase would make little difference to the church’s growth. However if it were near the revival growth threshold, such a small increase could easily double church growth over the long term. This is a case of small things can make a big difference.

The same argument applies if the enthusiasts are to reproduce themselves out of existing church members. There needs to be a strong spiritual community among the church, rather than a loose collection of individuals, or church of largely non-overlapping interest groups.

Thus there is a need for a church to be an integral part of the community it is contained within, and to be a strong community itself. The former is a big challenge in modern life where people’s community is often their work place, rather than their geographical location. The latter is a big challenge where church life is driven more by personal preference, i.e. consumer demand, rather than an army under central orders.

Of course people will always say “the Holy Spirit can override all of this, all we need is revival.” True. But generally speaking people respond to the good news because they hear it from someone who is sent. That implies a contact between communities not just enthusiasm on the part of the Christian. We can be as on fire for God as it is possible to be, but if we don’t have real contact with fellow believers and unbelievers the fire of the Spirit is not passed on. Such a scenario is about as alien one can get to New Testament thinking, which is all about building quality churches and going into the world.

Likewise it is not enough to have contact with the community if there is not a real fire of the Holy Spirit in the enthusiasts of the church. They must have something worth passing on.

In the current debate between the emerging church approach and the approach of those who seek revival it is easy to be so caught up with the need of the Holy Spirit that we forget to have contact with the community. Likewise some emerging churches are so taken with the need to be incarnational, i.e. being Christ in the community, that it is easy to miss the need for the manifest supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. There has to be something worth passing on, serving others, as noble as it is, is not enough. Unbelievers can do that. Believers have to have something specific to Christianity to pass on, the power of God to change lives through faith in Christ.

So the need to build relationships within the community is essential in order to drop the threshold of revival growth. And the need to build a stronger, spiritual, church community is essential to increase the enthusiasts’ effectiveness and take the church over that revival threshold. Both are in the limited enthusiasm model. And I don’t think we need to work too hard to find both in the Bible. The question is can we find both in our churches today?

A Word I Never Use

2010-09-21T12:17:00.000-07:00

In life all people have words they never use, usually things like swear words which are deemed culturally offensive. However in church circles different types of churches have words they never use, or hardly ever.

For example some churches never use the word "convert", either as a noun or a verb. I guess the word carries with it the idea of a sudden change. As people we fear change, especially instant and dramatic ones. Perhaps such churches are afraid if they use the word "convert" they will put people off, or perhaps they fear they will not find the evidence of such a change in their own lives.

I am not really sure why they shy away from the word "convert", but I do know the word captures the essence of what happens when a person becomes a Christian: an immediate change in their status before God (justified); and a change in the disposition of their heart (new birth). If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come. It needs a word like convert to do justice to that.

This is one of the reasons I use the word in my models, despite the inevitable objections each time I present my work, it reminds people that to be a Christian there must be a conversion. I should point out its use in the limited enthusiasm model simply means that people who were not classed as Christians are now classed as them. This could be because they start attending church, or because they have become a member of a church. There is no spiritual connotation implied in the model. But it is a good reminder to anyone looking at the modelling work that becoming a Christian is fundamentally supernatural, immediate and of enormous proportions. Oh that the word "convert" may be used more.

So what about the word I never use? I never use the word "journey". Often in church circles we hear someone say, "A Christian is someone who is on a journey", or "we are all on a journey together". At face value what is wrong with that? There is always a sense of progress in the Christian life, holy behaviour, knowledge of the scriptures and of God, responsibility in His service. This all sounds like a journey.

My problem is that it appears to fudge the region around the point a person becomes a Christian and thus undermine the idea of conversion. Now many Christians are not sure of the day they became a Christian, or the week, or even the month. Many appear to come into the kingdom gradually. However there was a point, a single point where they came in, and there then comes a point where they know they are in. That is they are convinced beyond doubt they are in a right relationship with God; they are sure they are saved. (Oops - another word many Christians do not like to use!).

Assurance is the birthright of the Christian, the most wonderful consequence of the gospel. We are no longer uncertain over where we stand, we know we are child of God. And we know it because salvation is given by God as a gift, not as something progressively attained on a journey. Once we are sure we have received this gift there is no fear of God, no fear of condemnation, an absolute certainty that He has converted us. This is black and white. Either we are right with God, or we are not. Either we are born again, or we are not. Either we have the Spirit, or we have not. Whatever our experience around the point that God converts us, and our uncertainty of WHEN it occurs, we can at some point be certain it HAS occurred.

So the word "convert" often appears in my models, but the word "journey" will not. Church growth models do not just reflect the social situation of church growth, but the underlying spiritual and ultimately more real growth of Christ's kingdom. The words are chosen to emphasise this.

Types of Church

2010-09-14T04:33:00.000-07:00

For some months I have been helping to facilitate a church growth modelling workshop in Cardiff. The Church Growth Cafe has been set up though CICC, the Cymru Institute for Contemporary Christianity, and aims to produce a church growth model or models that will help inform growth strategies for churches in Wales. The real eye-opener for me has been the wide ranging views of what is meant by church! Even church leaders cannot agree on what a church is, let alone what constitutes growth.

This led me to try and identify the types of churches that they are talking about. Not wanting to generalise, I think I can get it down to three: those that want to change the individual outside church to bring them in, those that want to change the church itself to include those outside, and those that can sustain themselves without any new people outside of their own families. I have named them, conversionist, contextual and generationally sustainable respectively. Of course real churches are a mixture of all three and each raises other issues. But it is a start.

A conversionist church is one that sees the world and the church as clearly distinguished: unbelievers and believers, unsaved and saved, going to hell, or going to heaven. It will generally have a clear way of identifying itself, such as a main Sunday meeting that is a reasonable representation of who belongs to the church. It will also have additional activities that will clarify who are the committed and more spiritually mature members of the church. Conversion is mainly through an initial contact, maybe something like the Alpha Course, with subsequent stages to deepen the faith towards maturity.

The conversionist church's strategy is to see individuals outside the church converted. I.e. it works to change individuals to fit the church norm.

A contextual church is one that seeks to draw people in from a surrounding community through a sequence of phases, each of which could be an end in itself. These act as bridges between the context of society and the context of church. The idea for this came out of a route suggested to me that went from mums and toddlers to messy church, then to family service, then to full Sunday attendance, and finally Eucharist. However it could also represent situations common in emerging church where the definitions of what is meant by church is blurred as even the central core of church changes its context to fit society. For example the church in a pub or in a night club.

The difference between this type of church and the conversionist is that the phases are ends in themselves; they do not necessarily need to lead to the next stage. They could all be viewed as an expression of church in some way. Additionally it may not be clear to the participants that the church may be using one phase as a bridge to the next.

Seeker friendly churches may also come under this category, as do some of the attempts in Victorian times to "lure" people to church through gentle and more secular entertainment style meetings outside of church. A popular strategy even today - the barn dance as a way of bringing people to church!

The contextual church's strategy is to change church to fit the societal context with the intention that individuals are included immediately and will then gradually change.

A generationally sustainable church is one that can sustain itself over long periods purely through the physical offspring of the church members. This is more like church would have been in previous generations when there was less social mobility and may also reflect situations in some non-western cultures. If the birth rate is not less than the death rate and people do not leave then it must survive. Some groups such as Jews and Catholics could lose people and still grow because there were times when the birth rate exceeded the death rate by some way. Indeed this is the main way most subcultures last many generations.

A generationally sustainable church has no strategy other than to survive. It does not seek converts, or to change society, or change itself to include others.

That is where I have got to today. We will see what happens after tonight's meeting! Must post now - typos and all.

John

Church Planting

2010-03-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I was at the Cardiff Men’s Convention, a day for Christian men. Great day, excellent talks, good worship etc. There were also some interesting round table sessions, where we got to speak with people running churches and missions. The one that intrigued me was the radical church planters. One of those threw out the provocative claim to challenge our thinking: “More church growth comes through church planting than any other form of mission”.

Now no evidence was offered to back this statement up. That is the point of a provocative claim! It is there to make us think of the evidence for or against. I can think of anecdotal evidence.

My friends in Uganda plant churches in un-churched areas. In a 3-week mission they saw about 1000 people become Christians of who at least 500 have stuck the course in 3 new church plants.
A missionary to the Congo once told me that when he returned to an area where there had previously been very few Christians, they found around 100,000 new Christians spread between many churches, all desperate for Bibles, training for pastors, and teaching.
Then there are all the churches that have been planted along the Amazon River, which the Vineyard church documented during the 1990’s.

Clearly church planting can give large scale growth in the Christian church. How does it compare with other forms of growth?

A year ago a student of mine attempted a model of church planting using the limited enthusiasm principle, inspired by a prior visit to Uganda where we saw first hand church planting in action. The resulting patterns of growth gave significant support to the provocative claim. This is a follow-on from the result that revival like growth happens when the reproduction potential of the enthusiasts exceeds a threshold. That threshold is lower if the proportion of susceptibles is higher.

Firstly, a church plant will contain the most enthusiastic members of a church, including people gifted in evangelism. Thus the average reproduction potential is higher and thus growth in the church more likely.

Secondly, there is a higher proportion of enthusiasts in a church plant. This is because such a church is not easy to manage and thus not a good home for those who want to free-ride. If the number of enthusiasts is high enough then a critical mass is achieved which encourages renewal in the church and can bring rapid growth.

Thirdly, as new churches are planted, the susceptible pool keeps widening and thus periodically keeps dropping the revival growth threshold. This again sustains revival growth over a longer period.

Fourthly, if churches keep being planted then they keep themselves fresh and free from institutionalism. According to the congregational lifecycle model, this means there is a longer period of growth before the maintenance plateau kicks in.

One result of church planting is that although, like revival growth, the pattern of growth can be fast, it differs in that the growth is more steady and sustained for longer. Revival growth will burn out quicker, and have less long-term effect. Clearly I have to do further work on this but I think that the provocative claim may be true and more church growth comes from church planting than any other form of mission.

When dealing with the issue of church decline it is so tempting to say “all we need is revival – people on fire for God”. But the work of the Spirit does not exclude strategy. Instead we should say that we need revival AND church planting to save the church (and the nation!). This is the lesson of the Methodist revival. Wesley had the Holy Spirit. There was revival growth and revival was experienced. But they also planted churches, through that generation and later generations. It is the combination of the Spirit and strategy that saw the nation changed and I suspect must be the way forward again.

Mexican Wave

2010-03-12T16:27:00.000-08:00

There is nothing like a conference to inspire your thinking and I have just come back from a great one in London, the annual gathering of the UK System Dynamics society. System Dynamics is the main methodology I use in my church growth models as it attempts to understand how change happens by looking at how different bits of a system relate to each other. It is all about cause and effect. The theme of this conference was climate change, how the human system and the earth’s climate interconnect.

One of the analogies of a system used in the conference was the Mexican wave that often occurs in a sport’s crowd, e.g. at a cricket match. At first it is tempting to describe it in terms of a simple rule: If the person next to you stands up then you stand up. If each person obeys this rule then a Mexican wave is generated.

However this does not explain why a Mexican wave builds up and stops, in fact it does not explain much at all. Why do people stand up? After all the person next to you may have stood to go and buy a drink, or just to stretch. That alone does not make you stand up.

The Mexican wave cannot be understood unless it is thought of as an interrelated system. Thus the following are also important.

Context

You do not just look at the person next to you but at the whole crowd, particularly those opposite you. It is this that tells you a Mexican wave is happening, it changes the context from an “ordinary” crowd to a “Mexican wave” crowd. This change gives you permission to stand up in a regular fashion when those on one side do; something you would not do ordinarily.

Anticipation

You observe the wave getting closer so you are now anticipating the action you must take. Indeed you would now be so focused on the approaching wave, the sport’s match is ignored. Of course the first few waves have more sense of anticipation than the later ones. We quickly get bored with it.

Coercion

There are people in the crowd who do not want to participate, you may be one of them, but you feel you must stand up not to be seen to be the one who spoils the fun. But on repeats of the wave you are now looking for the first signs of dissension. There is always someone brave enough to buck the trend. Then others see it and eventually you feel it is “safe” not to participate. Once there are sufficient dissenters a tipping point is reached and the wave then quickly comes to the end.

The Mexican wave is a complex system of individuals with different attributes reacting to a number of elements of the system.

In some ways revivals behave like Mexican waves. Outside of times of revival enthusiast in the church are often repressed, they do not feel they have permission to stand out, enthusing about the faith, seeking conversions and expressing spiritual experiences publicly. But when the Spirit moves in some of them so that they break the mould, then it gives permission for other latent enthusiasts to come out and exercise their enthusiasm. The context changes.

As the revival spreads there is a tremendous sense of anticipation, thus more hidden enthusiasts emerge in addition to all those converted and renewed by the move.

Once the revival is widespread there may become an element of “coercion”, not deliberate, but people who are less enthusiastic for the stricter parts of the revival but do not want to be the odd ones out. They join in, but hoping that it can in time be moderated. The effect of this is to dilute the enthusiasts with people who do not really want the revival to continue. Once the some of the more diluted enthusiast start scaling down their activity it gives permission for others to follow, leaving the hard-core enthusiasts once again in minority. The revival ends, true spirituality is stifled again.

This is only a theory but there is some evidence for it. The move of God known as the charismatic movement started in the 1950’s and has spread through traditional denominations and spawned new churches ever since. It had some notable peaks in the 60’s, the 70’s and especially the 80’s. But since the Toronto Blessing of 1994, charismatic renewal has become mainstream and lost much of its original cutting edge. It has become diluted to the point that the original enthusiasts would look extreme, and few would now emulate them. Arthur Wallis described it in his book The Radical Christian:

“In the early days people talked about ‘the charismatic movement’. It then became ‘the charismatic renewal’. Now people seem content with calling it “the renewal”. Along the way we seem to have lost the two words ‘charismatic’ and ‘movement’, the two words we had at the start. Just coincidence? A mere change of terminology? Or something more significant?” (p.7)

Wallis then goes on to show how the dilution of the original movement took place and he gave a plea for it to be reversed. The “Mexican wave” of the movement was dying as the dissenters were watering it down. Wallis quotes an example about how someone received a blessing in the Spirit:

“He received the Spirit so quietly, without any emotion, …. Just as it should be” (p.66)

But Wallis takes issue with this, because that is not how it was at the beginning of the movement, and, he argues, not as it should be at all. The central doctrine of the movement had been toned down to be acceptable to a wider audience. They had reduced the “Mexican wave” of renewal to a whimper.

Now there appears to be a new move of God taking place, wild and challenging to the wider church, will it turn to a revival? Will the enthusiasts be powerful enough to produce that “Mexican wave” of blessing? It will be interesting to watch. But like a sport’s crowd we are also part of a system, and by watching it we become part of it and respond to it. What will be that response?

Revival with a Smile

2010-01-16T12:45:00.000-08:00

There have been numerous candidates for the phenomena of revival in the last hundred years or so; the 1904 Welsh revival and the 1949 Hebridean revival are accepted by most Christians as the genuine article. More recently there has been the Toronto Blessing, Pensacola, and charismatic renewal itself, all of which have caused controversy. But revival is always controversial at the time it happens, revival not only leads to growth and an influx of new life, but also challenges the world and the church.

I am always on the lookout for new candidates for revival, be they large movements or a small group in one location. There is the whole emerging church, of which fresh expressions is a denominational equivalent. I must write more on this sometime as I feel this does not have the hallmark of revival. So when I heard of Emerge Wales, I thought, “just another emerging church, pragmatic, artistic, into community transformation rather than revival”. However I was wrong. What I discovered was a largely underground and wild charismatic movement something along the lines of the Toronto Blessing, but less churchy.

I also found that it was not just in my native Wales, but also in pockets over England, Scotland and the USA. It has a flagship meeting called “Sloshfest”, a name guaranteed to raise the hackles of many in the Christian church; a meeting that draws people from around the UK although largely unnoticed by the wider church. More than that it was on this week in my part of South Wales for 3 days. And so I went to the evening meeting last night (Friday).

This is a movement difficult to pigeonhole. For the sake of having a name I have called them the “New Mystics”, the name of one of their groups, although “New Charismatics” might be better name, as that is their lineage. The original Charismatic renewal spread by word-of-mouth. The Toronto Blessing in 1994 had its spread accelerated through the then infant, but growing, Internet. The Emerging Church has added the phenomena of the blog to assist its spread. However the “New Mystics” use YouTube as the main vehicle of spread. This way their wildness and enthusiasm can be seen by all!

Now wildness is not new to the Christian Church. Not that long ago Matt Redman was singing “I will dance, I will sing, I’ll be mad for my King – and I will be, even more undignified than this”. I am not sure that generation of Christians ever achieved it. They managed to sing it without losing their reputation. But the New Mystics have achieved it with style; as one speaker said last night “once you have lost your reputation, you have nothing left to lose!” These people are determined to be mad for their King.

The meeting. The first surprise was how many had gathered, and that the bulk of them were young. This had all the appearance of something in its early stages that is growing – new and vibrant. The next surprise is that many were dressed as pirates – for worship! I guessed it must have been a theme of the conference. One thing was clear; they were determined to have fun! Before the meeting started some were dancing, some being prayed for, some were struggling to stand (remember the name? Sloshfest?). However all were smiling!

When the worship started everyone rushed to the front, to the dance floor. The songs were “in your face”, not the flowery poetry of contemporary Christian worship. Lots of repetitive hook lines and hook words “round, round, round, round …”. When we sang “Can’t go back to boring meetings, can’t go back to pop chart singing”, I knew this was something different. And I could see where they were coming from. And everyone was smiling; perhaps that is why they were singing these words, as the average Christian service is not known for its smiles.

Prayer time was more like a mosh pit, the prophecies were lost in the hysterical laughter of the speaker, and the person in charge for the night gave endless stories from his home life and shopping experiences, drawing out their spiritual significance for the gathered people. There was even water being thrown around. Critics of charismatic behaviour, revival and the Christian church could have a field day. But you had to smile.

The main speaker, John Scotland, struggled to control himself, or perhaps he wasn’t trying to! He read a Bible passage and successfully explained it, but frequently dropped into Beatles’ songs (he was from Liverpool), using them for prophetic effect. “Help I need somebody” took on a new meaning. He quickly ran out of steam so worship happened again. But we still smiled.

There was still some hint of normal church that the normal Christian would recognise. There was the offering and we were encouraged, over-encouraged at length, to give generously. I guess some things in church never change. There was less smiling at this point.

The leader of the meeting summarised the movement succinctly when he said he was after revival, but revival with a smile. They certainly got the smiles, but is it revival?

These New Mystics do not just meet in Sloshfest and the like, they go out on the streets and deliver the gospel with the same wildness, enthusiasm and smiles. And people are converted. Now that is the essence of the enthusiasts in my church growth models. Not just human enthusiasm, but passing on the faith to unbelievers, reproducing new Christian enthusiasts. On the evidence so far the New Mystics are doing this and I would expect to see revival-like growth.

I will leave it open for now as to whether it is spiritual revival. I am sure others will reach a negative conclusion, and much faster. But if they grow, and retain their current level of wildness, then one thing is for sure; they will shake the wider church, especially the contemporary charismatic and evangelical church to the core. It will no longer have the luxury of falling asleep and taking its time.

What about me? Noise, party dress, moshing is not my idea of church. But 24 hours on I am still smiling, and thinking a lot about Jesus.

Blogs

2010-01-16T09:34:00.001-08:00

One things is clear - I have not got the hang of blogs yet! Keep thinking I have to write a full article, rather than brief thoughts. I never could be brief as a glance at any of my published papers will reveal. Thought i should add this apology for those who delve into the blog from the church growth modelling website and wondered if I had stopped. However another post is coming very soon

Mathematics and History

2009-08-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

July is the conference season for mathematicians. I have done many in my career but a history conference is a first!. Spent two days at the International Medieval Congress (IMC) in Leeds. Now what has this to do with church growth? Well medieval history is dominated by religion, in particular the Christian church. A group of us interested in using physics to understand the spread of religion and ideas decided to hold our meeting within the 1500 strong IMC in order to interact with historians.

My thinking is that if my models and theories of church growth have any credibility there should be some evidence to support them in history, not just the revivals of the modern period. What I have learnt has fascinated me. There was not just the growth of the state religion but of sects such as the Waldensians, heresies like the Cathars and even the growth of the monastic movement. There is much to learn here before the models can be applied to history, but I am hopeful.

I also learnt that historians and medievalists are really nice people with a very generous spirit towards others in their field, and those like me outside. This is still an area where an enthusiastic and well-read lay person can make a serious contribution. My own subjects of maths and physics are now just too technical. You need a PhD before you can even dip a toe in the water!

My other thoughts took me back to a famous science fiction series by Isaac Asimov called Foundation. Here the hero was a mathematician who could apply his theories to history - he called it psycho-history. He was so successful he could predict the future of the galactic empire for 1000 years and deduce what could be done to help it through its collapse. Inevitably he became a man in much demand - by all sides!

Of course current mathematical models are far from being able to understand human behaviour this well. People do not behave like atoms in a gas - each person is an individual known by God - which makes the maths torturous - and also comes as a relief as well! All the same a convincing theory of mass human behaviour is a dream of many modellers. However I will be glad just to have a better understanding of church growth that could be used to help build the kingdom and bring glory to God.

Challenge to Change

2009-06-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

A week ago a colleague of mine organised a study day at our university on the state of the churches in Wales and what can be done. Wales has seen a steady decline in church attendance from half the population at the time of the 1904 revival down to - well estimates vary from 5-10% depending on how you count attendance at church, weekly, monthly etc. I was asked to give one of my maths church growth talks.

This is the first time I have ever tried presenting my work to a non-academic audience. They were mainly church leaders, people engaged in mission etc. I stripped at out the maths and system dynamics and just left a few causal loops in, to describe the basics of the dynamics of conversion and how it gets increasingly hard to spread belief as the poll of unbelievers shrinks.

My main aim was to get over the idea that church growth is driven by enthusiasts, who reproduce themselves, and thus sustain the enthusiasm and growth of the church. Following Acts chapter 2 the principle is that life brings growth. So concentrate on building the church life and God gives the growth. OK there is a lot of maths behind the principle, and a number of nuances, but in essence seeking the life of God is what churches should prioritise .

It was a good meeting, many interesting questions and discussions. And the other presentations were good and thought provoking. The final round table discussion was perhaps less encouraging. Generally the whole focus of the discussion was on "what can we do?". That is fine, God does require us to do things, we are not passive in the building of his kingdom. But there was no discussion of "what can God do?" The spiritual side was lacking. We could have been trying to expand the tennis club!

I did say I had a concern that if church primarily grows through revivals, as Edwin Orr and Martyn Lloyd-Jones have claimed, and if revival comes about through a hunger and thirst for God, then, I said, I was seeing little of that hunger for more of God in churches these days. Plenty of enthusiasm for church, for growth, for mission, for community involvement, sometimes even for revival. But where is the enthusiasm for the Lord Jesus Christ himself?

My hope, and prayer, with all the work I do is that people will seek to be enthusiasts, to receive of the Spirit, because they have a thirst for more of Jesus Christ in all his glory. The conversions, the church growth, the community involvement, and the revival we need, will follow as our love for Jesus explodes. If the research I do helps points people in the direction of seeking to be an enthusiast for Jesus, then I feel it will be of some value.

More on what it means to be an enthusiast in another post!

And well done to all the people who came to the meeting and made it such a success (despite the provisos above) I pray the Lord blesses their ministries. And a special well done to Paul - the organiser of the study day.

Fresh Expressions - First Thoughts

2009-05-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

Church Growth is not all about maths for me. Yes it is my primary research project in university and it takes me to academic conferences. And it is a joy to use my trade of maths to bring some understanding to the way churches grow and decline. But church growth is practical: how can we see the world won for Jesus Christ? So I get involved with the churches too, my own and the wider church.

So I have ended up on a Fresh Expressions course with 4 others from my church. Fresh Expressions, also called Mission Shaped ministry, is an Anglican/ Methodist initiative to explore "new" ways of doing church in a postmodern climate. A denominational version of Emerging Church, of which I knew very little until recently.

We have only had two sessions so far and I must say my first thoughts are mixed. A lot of it makes sense. Mainstream church is way out of touch with society. You don't need any of my mathematical models to realise the likelihood of it influencing people, let alone seeing a conversion, is very low. But would a fresh expression church fare any better? So far we have just not heard enough to answer that question.

What we have had is a lot of justification, theological and sociological, for a church that can engage with postmodernism. Now I read a lot of academic sociology for my research, and it is loaded with buzz words whose definitions can be quite complex. But I am finding that Fresh Expressions, like the Emerging Church, is full of jargon much of which is difficult to be clear about. E.g. missional, incarnational, organic, intentional. Base Ecclesial community!

Hopefully we will make progress over the next few meetings and get some concrete examples of what is going on. Maybe I can even get a model going to explain some of the dynamics of this movement, if that is what it is. In the mean time I feel somewhat relieved that going back to the Bible I see that Jesus did keep things remarkably simple without ever losing spiritual depth!

What is Church Growth?

2009-05-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

To kick off the blog of church growth modelling it makes sense to try to understand what “church growth” actually is. The church growth modelling project has run since 1995, but to understand the modelling we need to understand what is being modelled.

To give the context, “church” means the Christian church. This is not because I am not interested in other religions, but the motive behind the growth of the Christian church is specific to Christian beliefs. As a result all Christian churches have similar organisational structures and mechanisms that influence that growth.

Firstly, at its simplest, church growth means the numerical growth of the church, the increase in the numbers of people who are part of that church. This could be the whole of the church in the world, in a particular country, or even down to a city. It could also refer to specific denominations, or even a congregation.

In some circles it is deemed a bit inappropriate to talk of numbers, as God is interested in quality, holiness and obedience, rather than just how many may turn up to church. However the great commission demands that the church makes disciples, and if it is to carry out that duty, then it should get bigger! If it stays small we owe it to God and his commission to find out why, as there may be faults in our practices.

Indeed no church wants to stay small. In order to carry out that commission and to bring glory to God it is natural for a church to expect to grow. Denominations have returned statistics of membership since the 19th century. Accounts of church life in earlier times often make references to how many people attended a service, especially when revival was taking place. A quick glance at the revival accounts of Jonathan Edwards, or the journals of John Wesley or George Whitfield, give ample evidence of this. So church growth means growth in numbers.

Secondly, “church growth” took on a more specific meaning in the late 1950’s with the work of Donald McGavran. McGavran had been a missionary in India and had developed theories as to why some churches grew and some didn’t. His central theory led to the concept of people groups as an aid to growth due to a shared language and culture. On his return to the USA he founded the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary, California, where he and others have honed these isea into a set of principles. This has come to be known as the Church Growth Movement, taught in seminaries, embodied in methodologies and championed by various churches such as Willow Creek and Saddleback in the USA..

This version of church growth is heavily criticised by some Christian groups (do an internet search in church growth movement). I would rather leave my thoughts on that to another post. However I guess the main reason people criticise the church growth movement is that they think it is “all about numbers”. That leads to a third way of looking at church growth which is its spiritual growth. It is not enough for a church to get bigger. Its members need to grow in Christ and holiness. The great commission is not just to make converts but disciples.

My work in the church growth modelling project has to date concentrated on numerical growth. This is not because I think spiritual growth is unimportant but it is much harder to quantify, thus harder to model and understand how it impacts numerical growth except in very general terms. However we are moving in that direction. I will explain more about this, and the nature of modelling, in another post.

My modelling work is also much bigger than the Church Growth Movement, however I respect their work as I value their insights and always try and relate them to those that come out of the modelling. Indeed there are other valuable insights, from sociologists of religion, other forms of social diffusion such as the spread of languages and ideas, and the whole field of epidemiology. On this project we try to use every intelligent analysis to bear light on church growth.

However my favourite area is always that of revival, outpourings of the Holy Spirit. That is when we can see most clearly God at work, in ways that often defy understanding yet are wonderfully exciting. This is the essence of church growth: God increasing his church in numbers and quality through the work of his Spirit so his name is glorified.

John