Is this the best long-term church growth strategy?
There are 3 questions which come up upwards in relation to the growth of religious movements, particularly the Christian organized religion. How would you respond each of these?
a. Why is Islam growing in the Britain and in the world at the moment?
b. What was the primary reason for the growth of the early church?
c. Why in the Westward do conservative churches generally resist the pass up that affects more liberal ones?
Now these are large questions, and the answers are bound to exist complex. Merely by and large in answer to (a) most people will reach for an explanation around the rise of fundamentalism and a global rejection of Western liberal values. In reply to (b) many will recall about the cultural and religious distinctiveness of the early Christian movement, and its appeal in relation to the cruelty and fatalism of much pagan organized religion. And in answer to (c) many will reach for ideas of commitment and discipleship which resist the corrosion of modern individualist and consumerist civilization.
Just there is a proficient instance to be fabricated that all 3 have the same explanation: childbirth.
Let's consider Islam. Although the Muslim population is gear up to increase because of immigration, a much more powerful longer-term factor is differential rates of childbirth compared with the ethnic Great britain population.
The Muslim population of the UK is gear up to triple in 30 years, according to projections from the Pew Research Centre. Under the model which assumes median migration levels, the number of Muslims in the state would rise from 4.1m in 2022 to 13m in 2050. It said the research followed a "record influx of asylum seekers fleeing conflicts in Syria and other predominantly Muslim countries".
The UK likewise has one of the largest gaps in fertility rates between Muslims and non-Muslims, with Muslim women having an average of 2.ix children compared to the 1.8 had by non-Muslims. This ways that even if migration were to stop completely, the group's population share would rise by more than three per cent in the Great britain, every bit well as in France, Italia, and Kingdom of belgium.
In contrast to growth through migration and birthrates, only 2.nine% of UK Muslims consider themselves to be 'converts'. The same is true globally; the primary reason why Islam is growing around the world is that predominantly Muslim countries have a lower average age and higher fertility rate than non-Muslim countries.
In 2006, countries with a Muslim majority had an average population growth rate of 1.eight% per year (when weighted by percent Muslim and population size). This compares with a world population growth rate of 1.1% per year. As of 2011, it was predicted that the world's Muslim population will grow twice equally fast every bit not-Muslims over the next 20 years. By 2030, Muslims volition make up more than a quarter of the global population.
Secondly, what about the early Christian move? Rodney Stark, in hisThe Rise of Christianity, offers some fascinating assay of what we tin discern near the way in which growth happened, including the nature of their bulletin, the integrity communicated by martyrdom, and the difference that intendance and compassion fabricated when disaster struck, specially in the form of plagues. Just childbirth is a significant contributor. Tim Chester, in his critical review, summarises:
Capacity four and 5 are more compelling. Only what is striking about these chapters is they offer more than historical evidence, both from Christian and pagan sources. Here Stark argues that Christianity grew because of its response to epidemics (more of this below) and because it gave women higher status and produced higher fertility rates. Men outnumbered women in the Roman empire, largely due to female infanticide and bloodshed during abortions. In the church, even so, women outnumbered men because Christians rejected infanticide and abortion, and because more women converted. (Stark provides plenty of compelling historical evidence of these claims.) As a result, fertility rates among Christians were college, contributing to an increase in the proportion of Christians in empire.
It is interesting to note here that 'women outnumbering men' has ofttimes been seen as a challenge to the church, with concerns about potential feminisation of church culture and the possible implications of that. But as Stark points out, information technology is women who accept children (!), andif those children grow up in the faith, then that will have a significant touch on intergenerational church building growth.
Thirdly, why have conservative churches generally been better at resisting decline than liberal churches in the West, including the Britain? I would want to contend on several fronts: those who proclaim a faith that is more distinctive from surrounding culture actually have a message which might describe people; in that location is forcefulness in drawing people together with a shared belief; consistency provides a welcome refuge from the unending changes and challenges of the world around; and the message might really be truthful! Deep down, people are fatigued to what they perceive is true. And then I was rather taken aback to read Steve Bruce's argument about the power of social-scientific research in relation to religious belief, to promote his book summarising a lifetime of such workResearching Religion: why we demand social science. He begins with challenging some fondly-held beliefs:
Consider four common assertions virtually organized religion in United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland.
- People become more religious as they get older because their approach to decease makes them mindful of their souls.
- Wars and other social crises provoke religious revivals.
- Religion is not declining; information technology is just changing its shape. Traditional Christian churches may be in trouble but Pentecostal, charismatic and independent evangelical churches are recruiting the religiously indifferent and the New Age spirituality milieu is attracting big numbers of seekers.
- The British have stopped belonging to churches but they are still believing. What has declined is not religious sentiment only the willingness of people to associate.
Each of these assertions sounds plausible and might well exist true. We could draw on our own experience, on biographies, or on modest ethnographic studies to demonstrate their validity.
They are actually false. And we can testify that with large-scale statistical data.
In among the assumptions he challenges are the ones nigh conservative churches resisting decline.
I began my career as an ethnographer, scornful of conventional social science and rude near statistics. I only gradually converted as I repeatedly fabricated mistakes. To explicate just one, I and many others spent a good part of the 1980s arguing about why conservative churches were growing while liberal ones were declining. We debated just which features of 'strong' religion explained its appeal. Turned out we were wasting our fourth dimension. Demographers demonstrated that the most significant departure between conservative and liberal Protestantism was not their relative appeal to the unGodly but the typical family size of existing adherents. Conservatives had more children. Even if both sides had been equally adept at recruiting their ain children, the liberals would have declined faster. An ethnographer who studied a bourgeois and a liberal church building might only have spotted that (though none did!) but it took the statistical assay of large-calibration data sets to bear witness nosotros were not simply barking up the wrong tree just barking in the wrong forest.
That is non to propose that the other factors are completely unimportant in contributing to church growth (after all, the big 'if' here is 'if both sides had been as good at recruiting their ain children' and there are all sorts of factors at play hither), only that rates of childbirth and family unit size are significant—and ordinarily characteristic nowhere in the word.
So it appears that, from the contemporary growth of Islam, from the historical growth of the early church building, and from recent experience in Western civilization, one of the best long-term strategies for church growth is to encourage Christians to ally and have children, and have more than boilerplate.
At that place are a number of serious objections to adopting this equally a church growth strategy.
The feminist objection argues that focussing on childbirth affects women more than men, and taking this approach will push u.s.a. dorsum into a patriarchal culture in which inequality between the sexes grows again. Taking fourth dimension off to have children is in fact the biggest factor in the so-chosen 'gender pay gap'—just what if women do really want to take children? In what way is it 'feminist' to deny them this—or create a culture in which they take the double force per unit area of parenting and working, rather than being rewarded for taking time off for the family unit? And why do we presume that fathers should not besides be involved? We had three children, and my wife continued as a partner in her GP medical practice because I worked part-time from dwelling and her parents as well provided support.
The pastoral objection is that many churches already focus too much on the nuclear family, to the point of appearing to proclaim salvation past childbirth and parenting, in which the single, the infertile, and the divorced are hurt and marginalised. I think that is a serious danger, and needs to exist addressed at every point.
The ecology objection is that there are already too many people in the world, and we are destroying the planet by exhausting its resources. If annihilation we should be having fewer children, not more than. But that simple claim omits 4 important facts. Get-go, as the late Hans Rosling graphically illustrated, population growth is primarily caused at present by the burl in immature people, and this settles down equally populations escape poverty, so that the global population is already set to level off. Secondly, Western countries already face a major claiming in their declining fertility and declining indigenous population, which will lead to the demographic 'time bomb' of an elderly population with bereft resources in the working population to back up them. Why would we want to contribute to that problem? Thirdly, the primary upshot in population is the differential rates of population growth effectually the world. And finally, if we all cut our eating of meat, and were more than vegetarian, many of the resource challenges would be dealt with.
Fourthly, at that place is thetheologicalobjection. Where there is death, there needs to be wedlock and procreation, since there is no other fashion to preserve one's name for posterity. This is the theological and anthropological assumption behind the first commandment that we find in the Bible:
So God created human beings in his own paradigm, in the epitome of God he created them; male person and female person he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the body of water and the birds in the heaven and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Gen 1.27–28)
But for Christian, we are living under the (re)new(ed) covenant in Jesus. We worship a single saviour, and the campaigner who wrote much of the New Testament was likewise single. Our new task is not simply to procreate, simply to evangelise; our new family is non but those we are related to past claret, merely those we are related to by discipleship; growth comes less by having physically children, but past having spiritual children, which explains some of the extraordinary linguistic communication in the New Attestation.
He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my female parent and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my blood brother and sister and mother." (Matt 12.48–50)
My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you… (Gal 4.19)
To Timothy my true son in the faith:Grace, mercy and peace from God the Male parent and Christ Jesus our Lord. (1 Tim 1.two)
Simply the reality is that we are not but inhabitants of the age to come; we are likewise at the same time inhabitants of this age. So, although we live nether the dynamics of the kingdom of God, we also continue to live under the dynamics of the created world. Nosotros are not all the same completely free from the obligations set out in the cosmos narrative. Only when there is no more expiry will in that location be no more marriage and procreation.
And so what would it look like to prefer this church growth strategy?
First, it would require explicitly countering our cultural narrative that we find fulfilment in success, in career evolution, and in the acquisition of stuff. Every bit Will Jones points out, there are all sorts of cultural reasons behind the refuse in family and childbirth in Western culture. Merely for me, the main ones are around the fact that having children is expensive and inconvenient if your goal in life is cloth prosperity.
Secondly, it would need positive educational activity well-nigh the value and reward inherent in Christian teaching most family and sexuality. This would need to include educational activity on the importance of parenting for both men and women.
Thirdly, it would need an essential both/and approach in relation to questions of family, singleness, and the healing of cleaved relationships. We live in the overlap of the ages, so family and parenting is important and to be valued, as is singleness. Information technology is worth noting that having families has in the past been highly valued within Christian discipleship, but and so has the example of singleness modelled in mission and leadership (call back John Stott).
Fourthly, nosotros need to provide for not-Christian spouses of Christians, and in item for non-Christian men of Christian women in a positive and open up way.
Fifthly, it would demand to include a strategy of reaching young people in their teens and twenties, perhaps through culture change in the church effected by church planting. I find it curious to talk well-nigh 'alluring children to church', when in fact it is not children who bring themselves. Our churches will exist full of children if and when there are young people in our congregations who go married and take families. That is how it has by and large happened in the past.
Sixthly, we demand to have seriously the claiming of parenting through adoption, equally exemplified by the remarkable work of Krish Kandiah and Home for Skilful (also as others).
Seventhly, we need to provide patterns of discipleship for children which are integrated with, rather than asunder from, family unit life. This is the best style to encourage children to grow in their faith.
However it happens, this doesn't announced to be optional if we desire to run across the church building abound again. There is even a name for it in the church growth literature: biological growth. The bear witness strongly suggests that the future belongs to whoever takes this seriously.
You might want to raise further objections, or advise other things that are needed. Fire abroad in the comments!
Follow me on Twitter @psephizo.Similar my folio on Facebook.
Much of my work is done on a freelance basis. If you have valued this post, would you considerdonating £1.20 a month to support the production of this blog?
If you lot enjoyed this, practise share it on social media (Facebook or Twitter) using the buttons on the left. Follow me on Twitter @psephizo. Like my page on Facebook.
Much of my work is done on a freelance footing. If you have valued this post, you tin brand a single or repeat donation through PayPal:
Comments policy: Expert comments that engage with the content of the post, and share in respectful argue, can add real value. Seek offset to understand, and then to be understood. Make the near charitable construal of the views of others and seek to learn from their perspectives. Don't view debate as a conflict to win; accost the argument rather than tackling the person.
Source: https://www.psephizo.com/life-ministry/is-this-the-best-long-term-church-growth-strategy/
0 Response to "Is this the best long-term church growth strategy?"
Post a Comment