Church Decrease Movement (CDM): Faithful Numerical Church Decrease

Numerical growth of a church isn't hard. Most of the people I've met who see swift numerical growth aren't either smart or knowledgeable. They haven't discovered some secret.  They shouldn't be rewarded, as they very often are.  Churches with big numbers are the most emulated in the United States. Their tactics are also the most likely to be sent to foreign countries.  The most notable standard for success is still size.

Before I left graduate school, the dean of academic affairs at the college from which I graduated told me to go out there to California and outgrow, essentially beat, Jack Trieber.  I remember the moment, and I smiled and didn't answer.  I had an early conflict within between perceived success and what I knew scripture taught.  It was in my nature to compete and win something, to be bigger than everyone else, to do something better than everyone else.  What was winning though?  Do we win in this lifetime or the next?  What did scripture say?

When I got started in California, there were dueling intentions for me, perhaps three different ones that clashed with each other.  One, I wanted to see people saved.  I wanted them really to be saved, although it may have been in actuality to see lots of professions of faith. Two, I desired to see quick growth.  It was my goal to become self-supporting by the first year and quit my job.  My wife and I didn't come to California with even half support, perhaps less than 25% of even what was required to live in the most expensive housing market and the hardest place in the country.  The support we received helped us, but it wasn't close to what we needed.  I never went on deputation.  I preached at a few churches and a few supported us, but it was never my intention to get support first.  I was coming to California and didn't need it.  Third, I wanted to preach the Bible, expositional preaching, and the latter was more important than the other two.  It was also the enemy of the other two as time progressed.

My wife and I arrived in California in August 1987, me 25 and her 23, and our first service was October 18 that year.  We came without a stick of furniture and almost no money.  I remember early on, in the first few months, having about three hundred dollars in the bank and being conned out of it by a "preacher" whose "car broke down" on his way to a funeral.  I was not a big city boy.  I didn't think we grew quickly.  I was expecting something faster.  However, we grew fast enough that I could quit my job by January.   My wife still worked at a bank.  We were self-supporting after a year and a half.

After about three years, we were averaging about 175 a week with a big day of 330.  How did we do it?  Promotion.  Big days.  Give-aways.  Exciting jr. church.  We had a Spanish group of about 70.  In the summer, we had what we called a neighborhood kids crusade and over 500 different children came in for the week.  We put on what I labeled the mother of all puppet shows with every day a cliff hanger.  It's easy for people, workers, to be motivated by numbers.  They see it as an indication that God is working and they are succeeding.  They'll keep doing this "work," because it is easy.  You offer people something tangible and temporal and they come.

One favorite story was buying a 25 passenger shuttle bus from gypsies.  I literally went to a home with a large palm of a hand on a sign out front, made the payment in cash, after which I was invited to a pig roast.  I walked out back with the gypsies and they had a very large pig, head and all, in their backyard turning on a large home made spit.  This was right in town in the city and I'm sure it was illegal to have a large fire in your backyard even to roast a pig.  I did not have my palm read.

Again, I'm saying it wasn't hard to do what I was doing except for one thing.  I knew it was wrong.  I didn't know it at first, but I felt guilty most of the time in everything that we did, attempting to motivate people with what we were using.  I was following the examples I had been given.  I wasn't even pedal to the metal on these strategies.  I could have done far more than I was doing.  I knew others were.  What held me back was the guilt.  I tried to tamp it down, justifying it by the fact that many others were doing it and doing more.  It was bringing "results."  Several people encouraged me to do more and were happy with what we were doing.

As all the above was happening, I was also preaching through books.  In Sunday School, I taught through scripture.  On Sunday morning I preached through John and then Acts.  I didn't see these as the methods of Jesus.  They clashed with what Jesus did.  This was not good for the people in the church.

The key for a "Spanish ministry" was having everything in Spanish (of course), allowing it to be separate from the English, and providing a lot of social opportunities, meals especially.  Many of the Spanish couples were not members.  They couldn't join.  They weren't married.  They were living together because getting married would bring in the government.  Some of them wanted to be baptized and join anyway without being married, but I wouldn't allow for that.  I took a "stand" there.  There was no intention of almost any of them to integrate with the English.  Except for one or two of them, they had zero motivation to evangelize the people of the United States, except for people in the country like they were.  Their children were growing up in homes that did not speak English, but they were learning it in the public school, causing a kind of division between the parents and the children -- two different cultures.

We had about 15-20 deaf.  The key for the deaf was constant pandering, keeping them busy with activities, and food again.  They didn't want to come if you didn't have something for them, so you just always had something for them.

A lot of what I led with church growth conflicted with biblical methods, the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, and biblical evangelism.  Even if I believed in a true gospel, the way I did things wasn't lined up with the gospel of the New Testament, which is the only gospel.  In many instances, I would preach passages that did not line up with what we were doing to get bigger.  We were, however, seeing a lot of professions of faith, and many would have said God was working through these means.

I had a mix of biblical and unbiblical practices.  I was convinced of discipleship, believed the Great Commission was making disciples.  I wrote a thirty week discipleship.  We started attempting to take every new "convert" through the thirty weeks.  I taught a 25 week parenting course that was ongoing.  I wanted true conversion and was constantly tweaking personal evangelism to fit a scriptural model.  My preaching became more and more dense exegesis of the Bible.

I never decided to get smaller.  I would, however, conform our belief and practice to what I was preaching from scripture.  I allowed exposition of the Bible to change our church.  Every change decreased our numbers.  The goal was to honor God with faithfulness to His Word.  Success was to conform everything to God's Word.  Our church changed and got smaller and smaller.  In fact, the actual church didn't get smaller by what we did.  Our church never was very big when we tried to get big.  We had a lot of people, but the church wasn't big.  Our church, the actual church, is bigger now.  Our expectations changed.

We do more evangelism now than we did before.  Our goal is to preach the gospel, thorough and accurate.  We want to do it a lot and everywhere, and we do.  So now we have around 70-80 people when everyone is in town and healthy.  We don't count.  We know who the people are.  If we count, that's where it is.  I understand that I'm not a success.  I would be if we kept on the former path.  Not really a success, but considered to be one.

Understand this:  we do more ministry now than we ever have.  A true gospel is preached more.  More actual discipleship occurs.  More biblical worship takes place.  We are a greater success, even though the trajectory we took has led me not to be a success.

When I look at the churches that do what we did a long time ago and even worse today, I understand that they get credit for doing these things.  People want to know their secret.  They look to them for ideas for how to make their church bigger.  I'm disgusted by what I see.  I understand the damage their techniques cause.  I said it wasn't hard to do what they do.  It isn't, but at the same time it is impossible.  How do they look at themselves in the mirror, knowing what they are doing?  I don't get it.  The lack of discernment is astounding.  How can they be saved?  I don't think they are.  We at least do not regard them as saved people.

In every sector of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, even among unaffiliated churches, the size of the church is the most accepted and practiced criteria for success.  The leaders of the largest churches get the most mention among others and have the most influence.  It is easy to see.  Men have a difficult time criticizing them for what they do, because they don't want to get out of favor with them.  Those churches also very often have the biggest or most buildings and the most money.  Even among the conservative evangelicals, size is what is rewarded.  You have to be a kind of success that even the world would say is successful.  They do not, I repeat, do not promote men with small churches.  A man with a small church is not a success.

Young men know that success is getting big and this is true everywhere.  Something is wrong with you or you are doing something wrong if your church is small.  Men know this.  It then affects the way that men practice, and, therefore, believe.  You are better if you are big.  You are less significant and somewhat a failure if you are small.  Again, men know this.  This affects everything.  It needs to stop.  The idea needs to be torched.  The truth is the truth.  The truth itself is success.  Conforming to it is success.  We have less conforming to the truth and sadly, because conforming to the truth isn't rewarded by the leaders in America of every segment of evangelicalism and fundamentalism.

Even among the people that would say size is not the right evaluation of success for church, they still promote size.  They contradict themselves.  They say that size shows superior giftedness.  I've seen it again and again.  And then the proof is in what occurs then.  The men of the bigger churches are considered better.  I can tell you that when my church was bigger, there was more widespread acknowledgement of my success.  It couldn't immunize me for my guilt.  It couldn't convince me that what I was doing, had been doing, was biblical.  I also have known that the more popular you are, because of size, brings a kind of credibility when you say something.  You can say the truth and it is ignored.  You can say an untruth and it gets attention, if you have widespread influence especially because of your compromise.

People pay attention to those who have a big following, even if what they are saying is crazy.  Even the more conservative evangelicals give credence to the one who has seen bigger success, very often through compromise.  There are numerous examples of this.  If kooks criticize them, they deal with it, because the kook has a following.  If the small pastor criticizes them, they ignore it, even if it is the truth.  The truth doesn't matter.  Size matters.

We need a movement of church decrease.  Like Paul, men need to count what they are doing and what they have done as dung.  Believe God.  Obey God.  Depend on Him.  Look to God for relevance.  Or accept that you are not relevant, but that biblical success is actually success.

Do I think a movement of church decrease will occur?  Churches will decrease, mainly because of apostasy, something like we see has already occurred in the United Kingdom.  Much of the apostasy has already started in the United States as manifested by acceptance of same-sex marriage and then the embrace of "social justice."  Among revivalists, there is an increasing "emergent" flavor or worse.  Effeminate men are rampant and not confronted.  When they are confronted, those confronting are rebuked by millennial mobs, pandering parents, and clueless women.

What we need is strength.  We need solid scriptural teaching.  We need courage.  We need men.  I don't think we'll get it.  Maybe you can prove me wrong.