You said — “One of the issues was church expansion. IMO and from examples in history and Scripture, it appears that churches grow the same way cells grow - through splitting or division. Mega churches are fine if they are not “induced” to be that way. Historically the church seems to grow through persecution.”
Talking about splitting churches reminds me of the Baptists. They split faster than you can spit on the sidewalk... :-)
But, at the same time, I’ve attended a Baptist church in Portland that was the “mother church” for a lot of other churches in the area (further away). They would sponsor another church for those who might be coming a long way to this one, and there were enough people to start another one. So, they would fund it as a sort of missionary project. Thus many other churches were started this way. This is a bit different than splitting churches.
Then, before I went to that one, there was a very small one that I went to that had a membership of about 90-100 people. And there was another church (of the same Baptist denomination) that was only a few miles away that had maybe about 120 people. But, that other church (for some reason) had a big piece of land and a big sanctuary. A while back they had build it, but it didn’t really grow bigger. So they had a lot of room, but not a lot of people.
And so, both of these churches got to talking about merging. It was told to them (both of the church congregations) that what happens when churches “merge” is that eventually the membership goes back down to the level of either one of the two churches (that come together, in the first place). So, essentially (the denomination was saying) you lose an entire congregation when you merge. That was the general rule of thumb.
However, it was decided upon, by both congregations to merge anyway and the one move into the larger facility with the other. And then, there was a new pastor for the bigger-building-church. And so, we had two pastors. They were considered “co-pastors”.
Well, within a year or so, that comgregation that had merged (90 from one and about 120 from the other) had grown to 1,000 membership. And it went bigger still, after that. So, that was a different situation than normally happens.
And talk about “induced” — I’ve been in some churches where they start using “business techniques” on the congregation for either persuading them to go along with a new program that they are doing (some church program) or for a new building project or whatever. It’s a situation that you find in many companies when they are making major changes. They go through a process of discussion groups, people are involved in discussing things and the new direction — and it’s made to seem that the people are involved. And actually the “outcome” is *already* predetermined and all they are doing is elminating the opposition and basically fooling everyone into going into a particular direction, by making them think it’s their idea.
And those who oppose, still, after this is over, are politely asked to leave. And, by the way, talking about these Emergent Churches, people who are opposed to what is going on in their own churches are also asked to leave, and not disturb the people who want to go along in this new direction. There are many stories of people who have been opposed to these new “Emerging Chruch” ideas and their implementation, and they were just told to leave.
Well, anyway, enough writing...
Regards,
Star Traveler
About Church Growth Techniques:
Our church was over flowing and needed a bigger sanctuary.
That’s fine, but I looked around and wondered - if instead
of fluff, the pastor taught the tough stuff like “Those who
practice unrighteousness will not enter the kingdom of heaven”
(Galatians 5:19), this “country club” church would lose half
their population and wouldn’t need to build.
Our church needed money for this project.
That’s fine, but I looked around and wondered - if God
wanted this to happen, the money would be there.
Our church needed permission from the city council.
That’s fine, but I looked around and wondered - if God
wanted this to happen, instead of pounding the table and
demanding the city council give permits, the city council
would be begging them to build a new church.
In Jo’s world, God would open the doors, instead of the
church busting through them to get their way. In the end,
the church split and the building program left them with
a huge debt and a poor community image.