Romayne,

I agree with you to some degree, and I'll address that, but first let's talk about why numbers are important.

As Pastor Perry Noble says, it is about the numbers because it's about doing everything we can to make sure that more people go to Heaven and less people go to Hell. If a pastor is - as you said - teaching Truth effectively and his primary desire is to see people saved, he would be out of his mind to not want that message to get to as many people as possible.

Now here's where I agree with you 100%: If the focus ever gets to be about packing pews for popularity sake and scratching itching ears, things have gone horribly wrong. And yes, there are popular TV and Internet preachers who have wandered down that path, and that is not what the Church should be about. The Bible clearly states that those pastors will answer for how they've lead others. I can't speak for Joel Osteen - I've never listened to a single one of his messages - but it's unfair to lump every large church with a huge following into a single category. There are good mega-churches and bad ones. There are also small churches doing a tremendous amount of good, and some that are have lost their saltiness.

Please don't misunderstand me. The corruption and apostasy that concerns you grieves me deeply, as well. However, the rest of us can choose to focus on this and condemn it, or we can focus on spreading the Word to those who need to hear it. Or, to put it another way, is it better to condemn the Joel Osteen of this world, or to reach as many as he reaches with the simple truth of the Gospel?

I honestly believe that every church, big or small, should work to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person they're called to reach, by whatever (Biblically sound) means necessary. Not by pretending to be something they're not, but by doing everything God has called them to do and relying on His power to make it happen. I was very blessed today reading about Pastor Jim's call to shepherd a small church into a community of loving fellowship. That's a wonderful call of God on a small church that could never be fulfilled by a mega-church. And yet it's on that pastor's heart to reach every person he's been called to reach, however many that may be.

Look at the parable of the talents. Each servant was given a different portion. So it is with each of us, so it is with each church. Each servant who worked to multiply their seed was commended. The servant who did nothing to grow his portion was called wicked and evil. So it is for each church.

I've been at Cornerstone for 10 years and have known Pastor Luke since he was still in high school. He preached a tough message in the adult service tonight on King Jeroboam and getting rid of idols in our lives. He wants to make Heaven more crowded. And so do I.

Micah

Appreciate your input on this. I suppose I've just listened to too many so-called sermons which are filled full of more Law than Gospel, or where the "Pastor" spends more time talking about himself and his ideas than working through scripture. I've also come out of a hypercharismatic church which focused pretty much solely on experiences and preaching to "felt needs" with so little solid teaching I felt utterly lost and adrift, and I hear a lot of that from these mega-church preachers. I'm even hearing New Age concepts and eastern philosophies being expounded on as if they were endorsed by scripture and in one sermon from Rob Bell's church (not preached by him) the guy openly "preached" on the next best thing to Universalism and panentheism and seemingly it was well received. So personally, I'm not a fan of "the bigger the better" because ultimately these churches have to then break it down someway (as my church did with small groups) and what can then happen is that you get a whole host of small group leaders teaching their own concepts which may not even be what the church leaders desire, and rather than there being a cohesive body of believers, you've got multiple churches within churches and no real Truth being taught throughout.

But I appreciate my own experiences have certainly coloured my thinking on such matters, though I would heavily stand on expository teaching being by far, the best means of teaching people, and church websites with more content about salvation and redemption, rather than what relevant movie will be the sermon topic or vids that are more entertainment etc to bait people into attending, would be a far more sensible approach. IMHO :)

Blessings, Romayne

Well, at the risk of a 'hit and run' on this one I'll keep my response short:

I think different Christians (and different denominational-style views) can have different views on this and still work together. I'm with Romayne...i don't believe that 'more more more' is what God asks us to do. I agree that a big church is NOT the goal, that Olsteen doesn't preach a very biblical gospel, and that Perry Noble is wrong in his rationale for a big church.

I think some Christians think that all God wants us to do is get more people to heaven, and I don't believe that for a few reasons:

1. This is pretty gnostic...it totally disregards the kingdom here on earth, turning it into a game where all that matters is "winning" (and isn't important or useful in any other way). Heaven isn't the only concern, life on earth is important as well (and how we live it). God didn't put us here just to get to heaven.
2. God himself gets people to heaven, not us. By concentrating on "more", we fool ourselves into thinking we can get people into heaven. We can't. The bible makes it clear that The Spirit gets people to heaven. So what's our role? To be and do what God wants in general, not 'send people to heaven', which IMO is too narrow.
3. In everything humans do, more (quantity) generally equates to lower quality. A church of "more more more", in my experience, has relationships and understanding that is of less quality.

In the end, we're not going to agree...that's why the church splits into a million fragments. What we should be doing is confessing Christ...then walking together from there.

So, the above is my 2 cents, and most evangelicals (which are most of the Christians in the country) will disagree with me...and that's fine. All that matters is that we're doing our best to follow Jesus in our own, broken ways.

On reflection, I sort am somewhat apologetic for starting this topic in the manner I did. Only because I consider G&G to be about our websites more than our varying doctrines etc, as I would imagine most on here come from a hugely diverse church theology background, so it probably wasn't the best platform to sound off about the lack of solid doctrine floating about in some churches currently. But I did want to make that point about how as webmasters we can become equally too caught up in making our sites glitzy or relevant etc without remembering the purpose for the site. I don't know about other webmasters on here, but certainly in my own case, I don't have a lot of leeway about how I can fashion the site anyway - it's the property of my church and the leadership there determine what I can ultimately put on the site. I've my own opinions on many things which differ vastly with my church's views but I know I'm where God wants me to be, and I'm here to do HIS Will not even the church's, thus if they were to ask me to put up material I felt was wholly errant I'd certainly not do so without at least challenging their reasons, and if I was continually asked to do such things, I'd end up having to leave the position.

So because we are responsible for enabling our churches to present themselves to the world, we too do have a huge responsibility to not be willing to comply with errant theology for any reason IMHO.

Scripture states that these last days will be ones of apostasy not revival thus we need to be very careful of getting drawn down the broader path of the unsaved rather than holding to the less popular narrow one of salvation.

Thanks for the input anyway guys - been interesting. :)

I think the issue of size is one we need to start thinking differently about. We think about numbers and size like that is what matters.

In Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus called us to make disciples. I won't get into how we do that here. That's too much. But, a but in the pew is not a disciple. The definition of a disciple according to Webster is "one who accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another". The concept of accepting here is not someone saying "yeah, that's cool." It's a matter of taking that on, or trying to, in their own life.

So, is someone who attends a church a disciple? Not because they attend. If I listen to someone talk for an hour a week and say "yeah, that's cool" but do not follow it or hardly talk about them or their teaching am I one of their followers or disciples. Nope. So, why do people think this way with people who call themselves Christians?

From the studies that have been conducted, a majority of the people who sit in the pews on Sundays are not disciples. They are church attenders and there is a difference.

So, a big church or a small church can be a bad thing if it is not partnering with God to make disciples (partnering because it's called a co-mission). But, a big or small church building disciples is good.

Imagine a big church building disciples in a town. That big church is better than the small ones just trying to attract people.

By thinking about numbers and attendance we are missing the point. Church attendance is not the point. Weekend worship numbers are not the point. Building disciples is the point.

A local church (big or small) not building disciples is doing it wrong. A local church (big or small) building disciples is great.

So, the hard question is... what does a disciple look like?

Numbers don't matter except that every number is a life--a father, a mother, a son, a friend, etc. The best description of "Sola gratia; sola fide" I've ever heard was from my pastor (we're a church of 3500). We put a treadmill and an easy chair on stage. He talked about thinking you have to work for God to make Him love you (the treadmill). Paul said it this way, "We're saved by grace through faith, and this is a gift from God not by works, so that none of us can boast." Next he talked about how faith in Christ should cause a change in your life. If you lay back in the easy chair claiming to be a Christian, but nothing has ever changed, something is wrong. James said, "Faith without works is dead." God created us for good works, but those works don't save us.

Just concentrating on heaven is a limited gospel. We need to be salt and light in the world. Concentrating only on this world is limited too. Heaven and hell are real places and real people do spend eternity in one of them.

If we just do the great commission (making disciples of the one who cared so much about people not only here and now, but eternally that He died for us) we'll all be doing what we're called to.

Love ya guys,

Paul
(who up until now has only riled things up on the podcast)

On Twitter, @Rob_Feature said:

I think the beauty of God's Church is that people can be SOOO far apart on so many issues, and come together as The Church on who Jesus is.

I think the only place Christians tend to get things really, really wrong is when they decide - outside of the very most basic tenets of our faith (who God Is) - that any of the answers are simple, cut and dried. Evangelicals (and I consider myself one) tend to have a very narrow worldview, and are happiest when all aspects of their faith fit nicely into their proper compartments. I think that's why your generalizations are relatively valid.

I Corinthians 13:12 is a good reminder that none of us have it all figured out, and it's no coincidence that this chapter falls smack dab between chapters on unity within diversity and exercising spiritual gifts without abandoning decency and order. Faith, hope and love are the essence of the here-and-now Kingdom on Earth, and the greatest of these is love.

Love is an action verb. Leviticus 19:16 (MSG) says, "Don't spread gossip and rumors. Don't just stand by when your neighbor's life is in danger. I am God." I find all three of these sentences relevant to this thread.

I am sick and tired of receiving forward-to-everyone-you-know emails from Christians complaining about how badly the unsaved people of this world behave. Duh! Why would someone who doesn't know Christ want to behave differently? Sin is fun, especially when you don't know God. Let's admit that and move on. I'd prefer that those people would put their time and effort into writing emails about how to share the love of God with others.

The phrase "when your neighbor's life is in danger" can refer to the physical, and can be applied to all sorts of social justice efforts like feeding the poor, getting involved in rainwater reclamation programs, or sending aid to Haiti. It can also refer to the eternal, and finding ways of spreading and sharing the Word of God to those who have never heard it. (Romans 10:14) How you approach that, and which is more relevant to you depends heavily on your stance on predestination, and there's no way we're all going to agree on that. So I'll just say that both ways of sharing God's love are very important, and I've never seen a church that's really, really good at doing both. (It's a good thing there are a lot of different churches, and I don't mean that sarcastically.)

And yet we're in agreement when God says, "I am God." A good reminder that in all of these things that we should do, or refrain from doing, it's really easy to forget that He is God, and He is on His throne, and whatever we're doing, however we do it, if we forget to do it for Him, we're messed up.

Micah

Romayne,

Please don't feel bad about starting anything. You've brought up some really good points and this has become an interesting and wide-ranging discussion. Tech-oriented people tend to get so focused on doing things that we forget why we're doing them. That makes us just as vulnerable to error as a pastor who is only concerned about attendance figures and forgets why we wanted butts in pews in the first place. There are right and wrong ways to "do ministry" at all levels, and we need to be mindful of that.

I cherish Geeks and God is because of the way it has become a global community focused on local ministry where Rob and Matt have helped us hone our geek skills while never letting us forget to check our hearts and our motives as we're doing tech. I consider that a core value of this community, and pray it never changes.

Micah

I sat through a lecture in our leadership school last week on the topic of church growth. This lecture was given by a pastor of a mega-church (the Columbus Vineyard), and he struck me on a couple of points that I thought might be worth sharing.

The one thought that struck me was that churches should always want to grow until their entire community is made up of committed followers of Christ, no matter what size it is currently. This is because that is our biblical mandate to go and make disciples of all nations. To Matt's point he did a lot to discuss that this means not only getting a butt in the pew, but also to get them into community and work with them to get rid of sin and hang-ups and what-not. His counter-point is that churches that are too focused on just growing a small set of people into a tighter nit group, often stagnate because God gave us a missional mandate as the body of Christ.

I know in my life, after a certain point of discipling, I had to start focusing outside myself to keep growing. I think that is just part of the maturation process. I seem to only grow when I'm stretched, and it is hard to get outside of my box and make real relationships and bless people in the name of Jesus. So that is pretty stretching, and puts me in 'rely on God' mode.

One other point that I thought was compelling is that mega churches have the potential to have major impact on social systems and larger (sometimes seemingly impossible) problems in their communities (or in the case of Saddleback, entire countries in Africa). They have more resources, and more talent, so if they choose they can leverage those to be salt and light to their community in the name of Jesus.

I'm personally not for or against big churches in general (though I do have opinions on specific large churches), but mostly if a church is doing a lot to bring God's Kingdom here on earth, which means to me proclaiming freedom for the captives, sight for the blind, and salvation through Jesus, then I'm cool with that.

I just haven't encountered any church that does that and doesn't want to grow by reaching non-Christians.

I have a friend whose Mom was saved while watching a TV evangelist who later went down in a very high-profile scandal. However, 30+ years later, she is still committed and has since passed her faith to her sons who are now doing the same with their children. For whatever reason, God chose to use that ministry, flawed as it later proved to be, as the way for three generations of this family to be introduced to Christ.

My tendency is to see small as "good" and large as "questionable at best". Unfortunately, reality has never shown this to be a good rule to follow. A church's desire for growth can be for a myriad of motives. Likewise, a church's intent to stay small may be for the positive (maintaining a close community) or negative (racial discrimination).

As time goes by, I find myself being much less dogmatic, even when encountering the worst offenders. Certainly there are still doctrinal issues I hold very dear. There are times when we need to stand in the gap and sound the alarm. However, it seems much more often, when I identify what I think of as shortcomings in others, I really need to step up and try to fill their void. The upshot is that I'm much more fulfilled when I do what I'm called to do than when I'm trying to act like the Holy Spirit. If God needs to humble someone, He will be most effective. If God needs to call them close, He will show more compassion than I ever could.

-NP