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For most of the twentieth century, evangelical churches tried very hard to keep new people out. Oh, they didn't know they were doing this. In fact most leaders of these churches were probably wringing their hands, wondering why no one new was showing up. But nearly everything these churches did in their services was sending the signal: Keep out!
One of the major church trends of the last two decades has been the new attention paid to "seekers״—people who are considering a relationship with God but are not yet committed. Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois has become the largest church in the United States by wooing such people. Using somewhat different tactics, Rick Warren has had similar success with his Saddleback Community Church in Southern California. Seeing these success stories, many other churches have tried to copy these methods, with mixed results.
The key to these successful churches is not necessarily their methods, but their intentionality. Willow Creek and Saddleback decided what they wanted to do and then figured out the best way to do it. Common sense, right? But it's amazing how seldom most churches have thought about what they really intend to do.
And that's where Rick Warren's book offers help. Telling the story of his own church and its growth, Warren shows churches how to be purpose-driven. "The issue is church health," he says, "not church growth. If your church is healthy, growth will occur naturally. Healthy consistent growth is the result of balancing the five biblical purposes of the church."
In 1980 Rick Warren graduated from seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and moved with his wife to Southern California, to begin a church in the living room of their home in the Saddleback Valley of Orange County. The church began with the Warrens
and one other family, but it soon became the fastest-growing Baptist church in the history of America, and at the time the book was written it was averaging more than ten thousand in attendance. Warren was committed to the idea that if his church was to grow, it should grow by ״conversion growth,״ not from ״transfer growth.״ For its first fifteen years, it didn't have a building, but that didn't stop its growth. At various times some seventy-nine different facilities were used to house the growing congregation.
The five-part strategy that Warren propounds is that a church should seek to grow: (1) warmer through fellowship, (2) deeper through discipleship, (3) stronger through worship, (4) broader through ministry, and (5) larger through evangelism.
The Purpose-Driven Church capsulizes the latest shift in church strategy. In the first half of the century, very little was written about the art of running a church. Much was said about fundamentalism and modernism, and seminaries taught theology and homiletics, but church growth was not a hot topic. A chirrch just was. Why bother to define its purpose?
As the evangelical movement began to flower midcentury, there was a lot of talk about evangelism, but this was done mostly in individual conversations outside the church, in stadiums by famous evangelists, or in churches filled with people who were already Christians. Some began to see evangelism as at least one of the church's purposes, but how could a church connect with unbelievers?
Still, some experts were beginning to consider how churches could bring new people in. Lyle Schaller, a city planner turned Methodist minister, started writing books on church manage-merit. Church growth analysts (Donald McGavran, Peter Wagner, Win Arn, and others) turned their efforts from the mission field to U.S. churches. Pollster George Barna began analyzing the church's work in marketing terms.
Many Christians balked at the businesslike quality of all this. Some refused to define success in terms of numbers. Frankly, many small churches liked being small. And a number of church leaders still have questions about how the church growth movement and the seeker-oriented churches are defm-ing the church.
But Rick Warren's book throws down a gaunllet to any church leader. (Lyle Schaller, who may have started l he plethora of
books on church growth and management, called it ״the best book I've ever read on how to do church in today's world.") What is your purpose? Why do you do what you do? What should you be doing? How will you do that? These are the questions that, when answered, will propel local churches well into the twenty-first century.