Church Growth by Conformity or Transformation?

The last half of the 20th Century was filled with information concerning CHURCH GROWTH! There was an unending stream of seminars and conferences on this theme! As we move into the 21st Century are we going to create churches by CONFORMITY, or by TRANSFORMATION? It is interesting to note that in almost the same time period, we, in North America moved farther and farther away from an agricultural based society to an industrialized based society. Could there be any connection between the changing picture of the church, and the changing picture of the society in which the church lived?

In the agricultural way of life almost everything begins with a seed, whether it is the smallest farm animal or the great grain harvest. Everything started with a seed! Right? This being so, it means that the ultimate shape and substance of what we possess was determined by the nature contained within the seed. The planting of seed grain in the spring TRANSFORMS the landscape of the great wheat lands into a carpet of green growing grain.

However in the industrial way of life we have a very different start. We begin with a picture of the finished product and we call that picture a blueprint. This is so, whether it is a hair dryer or an automobile, a house, or an aircraft hanger. The blueprint diagrams each part, we make the parts and assemble them, and by doing so we have a finished product that looks just like the picture with which we began. So with the picture in hand, we proceed to make the product by copying that picture step by step. In this way we CONFORM raw materials into a useable product.

There is one very significant consequence of our movement from an agricultural to an industrialized based society. Are you ready for this? Do you know what it is? The industrialized based society produces predictable results whereas in an agriculturally based society, one is never quite sure of the quality or quantity of the end product. Now with my farm background I probably understand this concept better than most city dwellers that live in a highly industrialized area. There are many illustrations that I might take from my experiences on my father's Canadian farm. I will limit myself to my most recent experiences on a rural acreage in Canada near Prince George, British Columbia. A few years ago I planted potatoes in a virgin patch of soil. Guess what? I got big potatoes, and lots of them! However the following year I planted potatoes in the same plot of ground. I used the same kind of seed from a fine local nursery. You guessed it! I got little potatoes and very few of them! Now there are some things predictable in agriculture; if you plant potatoes you won't get carrots. However, you have no absolute guarantee as to how big or how many potatoes will be produced.

Why have we have gone away from the agricultural lifestyle to an industrial life style? In my judgment we like to control the quality and quantity of the products that we desire to acquire. But how, in our industrialized society, do we think we can control the size and number of potatoes? We simply go to the store and buy the size and number of potatoes that are desirable for the given occasion. Timing is also a factor in our industrialized society. When we want potatoes, we want them now. Right?

Do you understand the parable? You may ask, "Now what does this have to do with the growth of the church? I believe that it has a lot to do with how we see the life and the possible growth of the church.

The truth of the matter is that this AGRICULTURAL VS INDUSTRIAL is at the very heart of the kind of church that can be built through us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our entrance to the 21st Century is accompanied by an unbelievable level of technology. This is the age of almost limitless mechanical production and that is not just in tangible elements of wood, metal and plastics! We are now advancing in our technology as it relates to flesh and blood matters. We have produced DOLLY, the sheep. Dolly is not as her mother and father intended her to be. Dolly is more the product of GENETIC ENGINEERING than she is of any ewe and ram. Now we are on the verge of producing spare body parts for humans. Have you seen the ear that was grown on the back of a mouse? Such control came about by INDUSTRIALIZED TECHNOLOGICAL ENGINEERING. It certainly was not an agriculturally based production, was it?

Who knows, maybe with our industrialization we might even be able to GENETICALLY ENGINEER the church in such a way that we can do away with a great many of the present negative, debilitating traits that are in the lives of people in the church. To what purpose? I really don't know! As you might know I am speaking a bit facetiously!

Are we going to grow the church from a seed? Or are we going to build it according to the picture of another church? Maybe even from another church that was grown from a seed? Or was that other church cloned through an industrialized process? How can we be sure?

If we grow the church from a seed, we will be taking the agricultural approach. Remember that we will not be able to completely predict what that church will look like! Will its worship music be traditional or modern? Or a mixture of both? Will the church be led by deacons or elders? Will the church meet in a specially designed building or in a rented facility? If we grow it from a seed, one thing is predictable; WE WILL HAVE A LIVING ORGANISM. While we cannot predict the size, shape, or number, we can predict that the church will be a living, life-giving organism with the built-in capabilities of multiplying itself!

However, if we take the industrialized approach to the building of the church, the outcome will be more predictable. Why? Because with the industrialized approach we do not begin with a seed, we begin with a picture of the final product. So if this is to be our approach we'll have to do some shopping. What kind of a final product do we want? Let's go shopping in the church catalogue. Let's see the many different pictures portraying the different types of churches. There are pictures in that catalogue that we've never dreamed about in our wildest imagination. It is certain that there are churches in that catalogue that hold absolutely no interest to us. There are churches all the way from the Norman Vincent Peel positive-thinking type churches to the wild-eyed screaming charismatic type. I am sure that the catalogue confuses us somewhat, but finally we settle on a picture. Through attendance at many seminar sessions that, by the way, are included in the purchase price of the picture, we will be enabled to build a predictable church. However, when we finally make it through all the hoops, we will have produced an ORGANIZATION that will further add to the division of the Body of Christ.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that in the industrialized world in which we live there will always be a later model. What do you do then if some church down the street has just acquired that picture with the accompanied seminar package? That requires another whole scenario!

Now I am not sure what kind of applications you have been making as we have been going through this very true-to-life parable. Maybe you are thinking that I am against the many pictures in the church catalogue. If that is what you are thinking, you have made a wrong application of the parable. To be absolutely honest with you, as I see it, the size, shape or the number of these different pictures of the church is none of my business.

That is the responsibility of the Lord of the Church. According to my understanding of Philippians 1:15-18, Paul felt the same way about the various methods that were being used in the building of church in his time. I might add that I do believe that leaders will be held accountable to God for some of the weird formations that are being pawned off on the society as being 'the church.'

You may ask, "Isn't there something to be learned from the experience of others in their approach in building the Church?" The answer to this question is short, just two words long... "THAT DEPENDS." Depends on what? If we look objectively at these various pictures, it is possible that we could gain a SEED OF TRUTH that could be brought back and planted in the spiritual soil of our community. But the temptation will be to go for INSTANT RESULTS by buying the picture and its accompanying procedures. Then following the prescribed procedures, we would reproduce the picture by the prescription INSTANTLY! We will have chosen the industrialized approach, instead of the agricultural approach of growing the church from the seed of the Word of God.

So what is your answer? Do you want to build the church by human conformity or by divine transformation? Shall we take the agricultural approach or the industrialized approach?

Romans 12:1-2 is a challenge given by the Apostle Paul to the believers in the church at Rome. The challenge is to present ourselves to God so as to be transformed rather than conformed. It seems to me that this text clearly reveals to us that the building of the Church is to be done on the agriculturally based model, not on the industrialized based model. So let us hear the words of the Apostle Paul from 1 Corinthians 3:5-7, "Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom you believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase." According to these words of instruction, let us plant the seed of the Word of God, water that Word with the tears of our prayers, and wait for God to give us the increase!

During the week of January 9, 2000 there was a Prairie Farm delegation that appeared in Ottawa that made this accusation:- "The Canadian Government has given more aid to Canadian Industry than it has given to Canadian Agriculture." A CBC newscast on January 15th reported that there was to be a Farm Rally in Swift Current, Saskatchewn to give Tribute to the Family Farm. Someone suggested that it might rather be a Memorial for the Family Farm in that "The Government of Canada is seeking to bring about the Industrialization of Prairie Agriculture."

Allow me to make the following application of these principles to the Church.
l. There is within the North American Church a philosophy that holds to the view that if the Church is to be better, it must be bigger!
2. The quality of the Church has very little to do with size! It has everything to do with LIFE, and the power to produce further LIFE! Big or small! The common factor of the underground Church of China is not size, but LIFE!

The God of Creation is God of the Church and He has pinned His HOPE on Seed!
l. Consider the early chapters of Genesis:- God planted a garden (2:8) and fallen man built a city (4:16-17). Out of that city came the practice of polygamy (4:19), and the production of industry (4:22).
2. It was in the midst of man's fall that God expressed His hope in a seed. In Genesis 3:14-15 God states that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent (Satan.)
3. The sinfulness of man continued in the same pattern even after the judgment of the flood. The command of God given to Noah in Genesis 9:1, 7 called for an increase based upon the agricultural principle. It seems to me that Genesis 10 is a record of the conflict of the opposing forces of agriculture and industry. It becomes evident in Genesis 11:4 that industry wins out over agriculture. However, God steps in and brings judgment by bringing the confusion of languages to them, and thereby scattering them abroad upon the face of the earth (Genesis 11:5-9). Then in Genesis 12:1-3 once again God expresses the fact that His hope is that through the seed of Abraham all the families of the earth will be blessed.
4. The making of man into a Christian, and the Christians into the Church, is all brought about by the seed of Abraham, "who is Christ." Galatians 3:16. The creation of Christians and the Church is linked with the word, transformed. To be thus transformed is to depend on the power of life bound up in a seed (1 Peter 1:23). This is a God-dependency! Contrarily, to be conformed is to depend upon forces outside of ourselves in our environment to bring about desired change. This is a form of co-dependency! Simply stated, this is a human-dependency!
5. In the history of the New Testament the conflict of these two forces are most evident among the churches of Galatia. Paul founded this group of churches by the preaching of the Gospel of the Grace of God. The Judaizers had come from Jerusalem and taught that Gentile converts to Christianity had to be circumcized and keep the law of Moses in order to be saved. The churches of Galatia were drawn into that deception. Hence Paul wrote the book of Galatians to bring correction to them concerning the error.

In Galatians 1:6-7 he expresses his astonishment over their response to the external pressure put upon them by the Judaizers. The Galatians were moved away from the true gospel to a perverted gospel. They were moved away from the gospel of relationship to a gospel of religion.

Consider Galatians 1:11-24:
V. 11 The gospel Paul preached was not man made, that is it was not a message produced by industrialization.
V. 12 It was grown from the seed of truth that came by revelation from Christ.
V. 13-14 Paul's former life as Saul of Tarsus was centered around his ability to oppose those who were not in agreement with him. He pressured them by persecution. Saul, as a Pharisee, was a noted success as a Genetic Engineer of Religious Thought and Practice. Anyone who didn't fit with what he wished to create was disposable. Saul, in his pre-Christian Theology, thought he had the right to abort the people that stood in the way of his plan to industrialize religion. It should be noted that Religion without the true, living, compassionate Christ is dangerous, and that is so even within the framework of the Christian religion. Examples to verify this statement can be found within the historical records concerning the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusaders.
V. 15-17 Saul was changed to Paul by the seed of the gospel, and that seed grew into a manifestation of Christ in his life as he preached Him among the Gentiles.
The spiritual counterpart of natural agriculture worked so effectively in his life that following his conversion, he went into Arabia to receive truth based on the revelation of Christ. This truth came from divine enlightenment upon the Old Testament scriptures!
V. 18-20 After three years Paul went to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter.
v. 21-24 Following this he went to Syria and Cilicia to acquaint himself with the brethren there. They had heard that "The man who formerly persecuted Christians (an industrialized type approach to bring about conformity), is now preaching the faith (created by the seed of the Word of God Romans 10:17) he once tried to destroy."

Consider Galatians 2:1-21:
V. 1-3 Paul and Barnabas went up to Jerusalem to confer with the Church Leaders (Acts 15) over the issue of the Judaizers versus the gospel he preached. Paul took Titus and he was accepted by the brethren even though he was an uncircumcised Gentile convert.
V. 4-5 Though false brethren were present, Paul stood for the truth of the gospel in order that people like the Galatians might continue to benefit from such preaching.
V. 6 The men who focused on external appearances added nothing to the life-transforming message that Paul preached.
V. 7-10 These false brethren became aware of the position of the Church, that is that Paul would preach this gospel to the Gentiles and Peter would take the same message to the Jews. James, Peter, and John, reputed leaders in the church at Jerusalem, extended fellowship and affirmation of ministry to Paul and Barnabas. The only external thing that these Jerusalem Leaders asked of Paul and Barnabas was that they would remember the poor. There was no mention of circumcision or the keeping of the law of Moses.
V. 11-14 When Peter came to Antioch he fellowshipped freely with the Gentile believers. However, there was an occasion at Antioch when certain men came from James. On that occasion Peter and other Jews withdrew from the Gentile believers. Peter did so because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. Paul rebuked Peter promptly for such a hypocritical action. He did so because Peter's outward action was not in harmony with the inward truth of the gospel (2:14).
V. 15-21 The law was an external force incapable of bringing lasting change, however the gospel of Christ is an internal seed with power to change the life.

Consider Galatians 3:1-18:
V. 1-5 Paul, by the Spirit, had preached the gospel so powerfully that it was as if Christ had been crucified before their very eyes. However the Judaizers' deceptive message caused them to turn to a gospel of works. So, Paul wanted to know one thing of them, how had they received the Spirit, by keeping the law or by believing the gospel?
V. 6-9 Paul refers to the fact that Abraham was justified by faith, and the promise was that all nations would be blessed by God on the same basis. V. 10-14 The law brings a curse, but redemption and blessing comes by faith.
V. 15-18 We have a further contrast between law and grace, and a powerful statement about the seed of Abraham as being Christ.

The conclusion is that the seed of the gospel produces righteousness!

THERE ARE Two Dangerous extremes for churches and individuals! Remember, every road has two ditches! -
l. There is the ditch of legalism. Through conformity a pattern of conduct is produced by human effort.
2. There is the other ditch of levity. There is a profession of belief, but there is no expectation of an outward change. It is like the worm going into the cocoon and never expecting to come out a butterfly. The cocoon becomes a place of death rather than transformation.
3. The road between these two ditches is where the seed of life transforms the ground into a green carpeted pathway. In the ministry of Jesus there were three people that were restored to physical life after having died. Each of the three persons had a different expression that gave evidence to their restored life: -

a) In John 11 Lazarus was restored to life and he WALKED!

b) In Luke 7:14-15 the widow's son from Nain was restored to life and TALKED!

c) Luke 8:54-55 Jarius' daughter came back to life and she ATE FOOD!

If you or your church has been restored to spiritual life, there should be some expressed evidence of that life. Either the walk (or conduct), or the talk, or the desire for new spiritual food should be in evidence. If none of the foregoing are present, perhaps that which has been experienced is conformity to religion, not a transformation of new life! What do you think?