Recently I read an article by Orange County’s mega-church pastor Rick Warren that I feel compelled to respond to. First of all, the title turned me off from the start.  “How to Break the 200 Barrier” accurately foreshadowed where he was going: numbers, numbers, numbers.  After reading the article, I asked a question of a young woman who Sue and I have evangelized and disciple for several years.  God radically saved her out of a life of self-injury and deep spiritual darkness.  I asked her, “What if, when we were witnessing to you, our motivation was to help our church break the 200 barrier?”  “No one wants to be a number,” she replied.  Yet the article was void of any real discussion of individuals and needs; He didn’t even speak of conversions.  It was all about church attendance.

Also missing, shockingly, was a single reference to Jesus, and Warren only quoted one verse of Scripture, which he terribly misused.  The verse he used, the passage about the grain of wheat dying and falling to the ground in order to grow fruit, is clearly about our resurrected bodies. Warren used it to justify eliminating ministries he deems ineffective and getting less attention form the pastor as a church packs in more and more spectators.

Now, Rick Warren was very effective at portraying anyone who disagreed with his article as old, set in their ways and not wanting to lose control.  While I might qualify as old at 53, no one who knows me would call me set in my ways.  But the author does such a good job of scapegoating that leaves no option for readers to honestly disagree with his premise.

Of course, I am not opposed to my church or any other church growing as the Lord provides the harvest, but Rick Warren consistently seems to confuse his priorities.  Our first goal must be to glorify God in all we do.  Evangelism has value primarily (only?) to the degree that it brings glory to God and adds more worshippers of God to his creation. These converts should then live their lives to the glory of God as well. To make a plan for church growth as our first priority and the individual (or worse, God) secondary is to do it not just backwards but to do it wrong. 

The ‘seeker sensitive’ movement is beginning to wind down, and it is so because it was based on a fallacy: “there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.” (Romans 3:11) Unbelievers do not come to church looking for truth.  The church is to go into the world to make converts.  Then, if they are ready for growth, they come to church. Better worship, slicker programs, multiple services are simply market strategies, but the Church is not a business, and people are not looking for a show any more.  Millennials especially are clear that they want simple, compassionate religion.  

Furthermore, the only time I can remember numbers of new converts being emphasized was at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit instituted the church age.  The 3000 new believers resulting from Peter’s sermon were necessary to spread the Gospel to the ends of the known world as quickly and efficiently as possible.  This had to be done as the blood sacrifice age was on the brink of coming to an end with the destruction of the Temple around 68 AD.  Other than this major biblical event, I do not see an emphasis on numbers of converts, and definitely not on church attendance numbers.  All outreach seemed to be on a very personal level.

And yet, I feel like I am coming dangerously close to  the unpardonable sin by criticizing Pastor Warren’s simple steps toward church growth. But I’ve been around American Christianity for a lot of years, and I’ve seen the marketing / growth strategies come and go and inevitably fail.  God is not honored when we turn his amazing Gospel of grace and deliverance into a marketing strategy, and the people he loves so much into just one more number on the way to breaking a barrier.  Yet that is the best Rick Warren could do.