Theological Conviction and Church Growth

Al Mohler's blog entry for today is titled Why are Conservative Churches Growing?  It looks at two sociological explanations for this phenomena - Judith Shulevitz's May 12 column in Slate called "The Power of the Mustard Seed," and the book Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers by Hoge, Johnson and Luidens. 

Per Mohler, Shulevitz relies on the work of Laurence R. Iannaccone of Santa Clara University in his essay, "Why Strict Churches Are Strong," that was published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1994.  Shuevitz/Iannaccone says that conservative churches are growing because of their strictness:

Following Kelley's lead, Iannaccone argued that "strictness" is the clearest indicator of congregational strength and potential for growth. He defines strictness in terms of "complete loyalty, unwavering belief, and rigid adherence to a distinctive lifestyle." Thus, the churches that require members to hold definite doctrinal beliefs and to share common moral commitments are more likely to grow and remain strong than churches who have lower expectations in terms of both belief and behavior.

With that being the case:

Judith Shulevitz suggests that liberal denominations should look to this body of research and modify themselves so that their members will find deeper meaning and connection. Her answer is a recovery of ritual. Nevertheless, her concept of ritual has no specific theological content. As she argues, "the greatest religious leaders have understood [that] ritual is theater. You can use it to send any message you want."

Notice that Shulevitz doesn't think the message itself ("you can use it to send any message you want) is all that crucial, its the strictness with which you hold to the message and the behavioral demands that flow from it.

The authors of Vanishing Boundaries have a slightly different take on things.  They seem to share some similarities in regard to strictness, but it is the message itself that takes center stage:

Hoge, Johnson, and Luidens are clear: "Our findings show that belief is the single best predictor of church participation, but it is orthodox Christian belief, and not the tenets of lay liberalism, that impels people to be involved in church."

I'll leave it with you to dissect the intricacies of the two positions, but I'll jump off from there into another thought.

In my humble opinion the greatest sea-change in our Christian practices is not so much the change from a modern to a postmodern era, but the change from a theologically driven praxis to a sociologically driven praxis.

I realize I'm going to be accused of completely misunderstanding everything in saying this, but I think this whole modern to postmodern shift is less significant than the shift to sociologically driven praxis.  In that respect, I think the shift in praxis that was initiated by Donald McGavran and the church growth movement is of utmost significance.

I really don't have that much of a gripe with McGavran, although I know that as a stick in the mud conservative I'm supposed to.  The little I have read of him has been helpful - his analysis of the way people come to Christ has been helpful.  But the church growth movement that was spawned by his writings has brought about the aforementioned seachange in our praxis in the sense that it has caused sociological factors to dominate our methodologies. 

In other words, when we ask today about the keys to church growth and church planting we'll get sociological answers rather than theological answers.  Rather than saying the keys are a clear gospel, biblical preaching and biblically based ministry we'll be told that the keys are things like location, adequate parking and facilities, and accurate demographic analysis of a community.

To be sure, the importance of the gospel, biblical preaching and biblically based ministries aren't denied, these are taken as baseline minimums which all churches must have.  The mindset seems to be "well of course we need those things, but in and of themselves they aren't enough to grow a church."  The keys to growth are these sociological factors. 

I am not saying that sociological factors should be unimportant, I am just saying that we've turned things upside down.  It's the theological factors that are key and the sociological factors are the tangential matters.

In that respect I see the whole "postmodern ministry" project as being a next step in the whole seachange which was inaugurated by the church growth movement.  Ostensibly, much of what we see in postmodern ministry has been created as a reaction to the church growth movement.  But its actually relying on the same presuppositions of the church growth movement - that sociological factors determine praxis.  The postmodernists are simply saying that the world (the audience) has changed and that all of the seeker-sensitive and other stuff that grew out of the church growth movement doesn't work anymore.  Of course, the postmodernist Christians are saying that pretty much everything we've done for the last several hundred years won't work, but the bottom line is that postmodern ministry advocates are using the sociological tools of the church growth movement to critique the sociologically driven practices of church growth movement.  But in either case, sociology is the driving force.

Which makes Mohler's column all the more fascinating to me.  In today's sociologically driven evangelical subculture there is a great revolt against rigidity in doctrine and practice.  We are opening ourselves up to new ways of doing Christianity in order to reach our generation.  Yet, if the scholars that Mohler cites are correct (and by the way, these scholars aren't theological conservatives like Mohler) then this doctrinal and practical rigidity is more compelling to this generation than the loosey-goosey approach we are taking. 

What is interesting is that this sociological analysis reveals that one of the keys to church growth is that we be theologically driven not sociologically driven.

Granted, this research is 10-11 years old and the samples from which the research was drawn was fairly small.  Alot has happened in the last decade, postmodernism has grown from a mere curiosity to a major movement (although it is still as slippery to define as it ever was).   Maybe things are different today, maybe this doctrinal and behavioral "rigidity" or "strictness" has gone the way of the wind and the research hasn't caught up to it yet.  Maybe we'll find over the next few decades that the demographics have changed such that strictness is no longer a characteristic of growing churches.

But I am not convinced that this will be shown to be the case.  And I think those who are so sociologically driven need to pay heed to the fact that sociological research is minimizing the importance of sociology in favor of theology.

Of course, as one who thinks that theology always needs to drive the bus none of this is a problem for me.  And I don't want to overstate my case either - I do think that much of the church growth, postmodern stuff is helpful.  It just has been given too big of a place.

Whenever I read or talk to someone who is into church growth or postmodern Christianity they always insist that being biblical is of a paramount concern.  They insist they are just repackaging the same message or re-imaging the message to be more faithful to it in order to communicate it more faithfully.  I would implore these folks to do full justice to the narrowness of the biblical message.  Yes, there is a wideness in God's mercy, but the wideness in his mercy is extended to all who will take the narrow way.  Thus, let's give the proper weight to the theological and sociological bases of the importance of the narrow (strict?) way.

Comments

[Peter Bogert]

Great post!!!

[MichaelB]

"complete loyalty, unwavering belief, and rigid adherence to a distinctive lifestyle."

Devil's in the details, so to speak. Generally a tough sell nowadays.

[Glenn]

David,
Part of my sociology research at UVa focuses on mega-churches and I have been a part of one. The one I know best has a lot of great features but I don't think the pastor would say he emphasizes "strictness" across the board. In some ways, sure. The Gospel is preached, sin and the need to repent is undiluted, and living according to the Scriptures is upheld. In those ways this mega church fits Kelley's "strictness" theory.

There are not a lot of barriers to entry, on purpose. Joining is as easy as walking down the aisle, meeting with a counselor and getting baptized. New members are encouraged to join Bible Study classes and tithe, but if they decline no costs are imposed. There may be costs imposed that I am not aware of, but my educated guess is that there are literally thousands of free-riders who are members of this church. Yet it grows by 2,000 yearly and a large core is highly committed in all respects. They have a huge group of members who live "strictly" and another significant group who are free riders. That's not a knock on the Church-- a lot of lives are transformed and newly become part of the highly committed core. The core of highly committed believers grows every year and most pastors would find that gratifying. My point is just that Kelley and Iannaccone's strictness theory doesn't work WELL in accounting for the growth of evangelical mega-churches. Churches friendly to free-riders can grow by leaps and bounds.

[David Wayne]

Glenn - thanks for the extended comment - you definitely hit on some things I didn't take into account. There is one thing that I probably didn't make clear in my post though and that is that Mohler was really saying that the Vanishing Boundaries folks see things differently. Rather than strictness being the big deal, its orthodoxy. So, the rigidity would be in doctrine more than behavior. I am wondering how that would play out in your situation and other megachurches?

[Rick N]

Glenn's comment IS interesting. I was interpreting 'strictness' in the sense of theological orthodoxy so the mega-church that you attend is not at all discounted because the front door is large.

My pastor once quoted to me (from where I cannot recall) that "the church should be very easy to get into and very difficult to get out of'. i.e., everyone is welcome to come in (this is not speaking of 'membership'/confession of faith per se) and fellowship with us and, once you confess Christ as your Lord and Savior the Church is responsible for your care in a greater way - even, and especially, to those sheep that wander from the flock.

That said, does this mean that a loving, welcoming, theologically-sound Church (unwavering from Truth) will in fact appeal to people more than a less 'judgmental' body? Does the answer to this question rely on how we view the effects of the Fall?

[brian]

David - you mentioned that strictness can be behavior based and I think this may be the way it's manifested in mega-churches. And not necessarily in a personal, pietistic, way, but maybe more in a cultural, conservative type way. Some of examples of what I'm thinking might be :

- voting Republican
- being pro-Life
- support for Judge Roy Moore
- anti gay marriage
- supportive of James Dobson, Pat Robertson, etc.

And if not those specific things then at least those types of things. Make sense?

[Harris]

Vanishing Boundaries has been a personal favorite for several years. One item in their analysis that might profitably be mentioned is the role of education. In tracking why mainline churches lost members, it turned on the failure of their education programs -- their ability to pass along the faith. It was not so much that these churches shrank, as they did not hold on to their youth.

Oh, a great post. Thank you.

[Glenn]

Related to Vanishing Boundaries, this might also be interesting-- when I was beginning my coursework in the sociology program I researched "switching" and "defections" from various US churches. Because I grew up mainline Presbyterian but didn't come to actual faith until college (no knock on mainline Presbies, I simply wasn't a believer until later), I assumed that there would be a lot of switching from mainline churches into evangelical ones. Not only had I made that trek but others I knew had also.

I was surprised to find that when mainliners left their churches, usually it was not switching into evangelical churches, it was leaving church altogether. However, a number of evangelicals switched into mainline churches. One reason why mainline membership hemorrhaging was not WORSE was because of the influx from evangelical churches.

It turned out, much of that influx was accounted for by social mobility, which correlates to denominational status. As untold numbers of people from low income, low educational attainment families gained greater education and thus greater income, they increasingly moved from Pentecostal and Baptist churches to Methododist churches and on to Presbyterian and on to Episcopalian.

Of course there is some switching from mainline to evangelical churches, but the real story seemed to be evangelicals moving on up to mainline respectability. You could also map the sect-church-denomination construct (Weber, Troeltsch, Niebuhr, Swatos) onto this. People are inclined to affiliate with people like them, and as people reared in sects increased in socio-economic status (SES), they moved from sects to churches. The fervor, decisionism, activism and strictness of sects can strike higher SES people as gauche. People being people, they like to fit in and advance so they abandon encumberances like sectarian religiosity.

[cwv warrior]

Waaaay to much sociology for me. Wonder what God wants? It is neither here nor there what people are looking for. You know, the old "rocks and stones themselves" promise. Truth, purity, mercy, first-love excitement...build that and they will come! Socio-economic status? It's not a social club! ALL KINDS can blend in the Body...barriers broken. The Word is what will unite us or divide us. How strict is that? Pardon me for my simple-minded, pea brain thinking. I agree...stick to the base. It's what God gave us.

[Glenn]

cwv warrior,
There is a difference between prescription-- what you are rightly contending for-- and description-- what I wrote about SES. And if there happen to be discernible patterns in human affairs, say for example, patterns in peoples' church membership over the lifecourse, there is no harm in being aware of the patterns. In fact, knowing what social forces are impelling people might help us better communicate the "truth, purity, mercy and first-love excitement" to them so the beliefs and practices get internalized and lived.

[Tim Keller]

I think Glenn is quite right. Very large evangelical churches attract people both because a)they offer a 'stricter' approach to belief and practice than the surrounding culture and yet b)they are easier to enter and be part of than smaller churches, because of the anonymity with which one can attend and participate.