THE CHURCH GROWTH
MOVEMENT SWEEPS ACROSS AMERICA
Lecture 6
The Final
Lectures
Dr. Donald
McGavran
Up until
1971 church growth had been very largely concerned with overseas missions. My own experience as an overseas missionary
and the fact that the movement was developing in a school of world mission
guaranteed that. True, there had been
frequent references to the fact that the principles of church growth also
applied to Christianized lands like the United States. In 1966 and 1967, the Rev. Medford Jones, a
noted evangelist among the Christian Churches, at my invitation, tried to make
the Winona Lake annual Church Growth Seminar a meeting place for ministers of
many churches. They attended most of my
lectures and some by Mr. Jones.
Nevertheless, church growth and the Church
Growth Bulletin were devoted overwhelmingly to the work of foreign
missions.
As long as
three-quarters or more of the world’s population remains non-Christian, and
Asia and much of Africa remain overwhelmingly non-Christian, all schools of
mission will, beyond doubt, spend most of their time on discipling the
non-Christian ethne of Asia, Africa and Latin America. However, beginning in 1972, effective
evangelism in the United States and other Christian lands began to be taken
seriously by the church growth movement.
In 1972
Professor C. Peter Wagner, believing that church growth was needed to be
promoted in North America, told me he was planning in or near Pasadena for an
accredited seminar course on church growth.
Every week there would be one three-hour class session held at the Lake
Avenue Congregational Church from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. He and I would share the teaching load. I gladly assented to his proposal.
As these
ministers saw what church growth would mean in Southern California and the
United States as a whole, they became increasingly enthusiastic. Dr. Wagner resolved to have other similar
accredited classes for American ministers.
 |
| A house church of new converts from a leper colony near Bangalore |
One of the
men enrolled in this course was Dr. Winfield Arn, who was at that time Director
of Christian Education for the Evangelical Covenant Church in California,
Arizona and Nevada. As Dr. Arn listened
with amazement and understanding to the church growth point of view, he
resolved to start the Institute for American Church Growth. He came to see me in my office, telling me of
his resolve. I cautioned him, saying,
“Win, you had better not do that. You
may lose your shirt.” Disregarding my
advice, he resigned as Director and began the Institute for American Church
Growth. This institute has had an
amazing impact on the congregations and denominations of the United States,
Canada, and other “Christian” lands.
Every year large numbers of church growth seminars are held all across
the country, sometimes on a denominational, sometimes on an interdenominational
basis. It has published many books on
American church growth. It has made more
than a dozen church growth films, many of which are projected each week of the
year in congregations all across the United States.
With offices
on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, the Institute has become nationally
known. Just before coming to
Philadelphia, I spoke at a meeting of more than 200 denominational executives
in Pasadena convened by the Institute for American Church Growth.
Similar
influential emphasis on North American church growth was being mounted by Dr.
Wagner and his classes on church growth.
These formed a large part of the courses required for a Doctor of
Ministries Degree in Fuller Theological Seminary. It became increasingly clear that American
church growth was a vast field in which many could work effectively.
Indeed, in
1976, the United Methodist Church, observing that it had lost a million members
in the previous decade, turned to Dr. George Hunter, gave him a budget of a
quarter of a million dollars a year, and asked him to instruct Methodist
congregations and conferences all across the land in the principles and
practices of church growth. His program
did much to turn the United Methodist Church around and greatly furthered the
church growth movement.
On July 1,
1971, Dr. Arthur Glasser became Dean of the School of World Mission. Under his direction the school moved forward
even more rapidly. More and more
attention was paid to Chinese evangelism.
More nationals from more countries were given scholarships and admitted
to the School of World Mission. The
enrollment at the School mounted steadily year by year. Dr. Alan Tippett became the first editor of
the magazine, Missiology, and the
cause of missions was greatly benefitted.
About the
same time, a business executive, Edward Dayton, who, after his conversion
decided to become a minister and had enrolled at the Fuller School of Theology,
became deeply interested in the School of World Mission. He contributed the idea of PERT charting, the
progress of the expansion of Christianity in any given area or people. Upon graduating he formed a new organization
called MARC, Missions Advanced Research and Communications Center. This was made a part of the great World
Vision organization. Among its many
contributions to the cause is the publication of a series of books titled Unreached Peoples of the World.
 |
| A group of graduating Christian leaders to whom I had the privilege of teaching Church Growth. They are currently serving in China, Burma, India M Malaysia and other |
With the
ending of the imperial era, the national Churches (denominations) in each of
these formerly ruled lands, sometimes strong but often weak, insisted more
strongly than ever that they were completely independent of western churches
and could neither be ruled by no guided by missionaries from the West. Mission schools and colleges which had been
managed by missionary principals speedily appointed national principals. Episcopalian churches, most of whose bishops
had been westerners, rapidly retired these and appointed national bishops. The opinion of the national leaders of
Unions, Conferences, Dioceses, and Synods were increasingly recognized as the
last word in what ought to be done.
While large amounts of missionary money continued to pour into these
lands, it was increasingly made over to the national churches to divide and
spend.
Increasingly,
also, national governments denied visas to missionaries. Whether this governmental action was
suggested by leaders of the national churches or by enemies of the Christian
faith is not at the present time clear.
Both causes have been argued, but the outcome was sharply to diminish
the number of missionaries in a great many mission fields.
At the very
time when many nations of the world were opening to the Christian faith, the
number of missionaries who could get permission to work there was sharply
diminished. This led many denominations
related to the World Council of Churches to diminish their missionary
labors. “World evangelization,” they
said, “is now the work of the younger churches.
We shall continue to make grants to them, but the work is theirs, not
ours.” As a result, the mission budgets
of many great denominations sharply diminished.
Since they were no longer sending out large numbers of their own sons
and daughters, their giving to missions sharply decreased. For example, the United Presbyterians, who in
the 50’s were sending out more than 1600 missionaries, in the 70’s were sending
out less than 400. Furthermore, in the
Episcopal Church the number of missionaries dropped by almost 75% during the same period.
In the
evangelical denominations, however, many continued to send out
missionaries. Some sent even more than
before. It was clear that what world
evangelization was in a globe populated by equal nations, most of who were
non-Christians, was far from settled.
Many
maintained that “Since in that land we now have our great national church, we
no longer need to pray for, give to, and work for its evangelization.” That “the great church” concerned numbered
less than one percent of the population of that country did not seem to make
much difference to those who advanced this argument.
It was in
this kind of a world with these sentiments that the School of World Mission in
Pasadena, California, was developing its concepts of what effective missions
should be. In the vast enterprise it was
easy to do much good work and achieve very little, if any, church growth, i.e.,
the conversion of large segments of the population. It was too easy for churches to “carry on a
great mission work” which consisted largely of encouraging and supporting
slow-growing or even non-growing national churches.
That here
and there great growth was occurring did not materially change the
picture. For example, while a small
denomination known as the Evangelical Church of India was planting one new
congregation a week in south India, and in northeast India, the Baptists were
adding thousands from the animists each year.
It was also true that in the rest of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and
Burma, most of the denominations established in the preceding two centuries had
become largely static or slow growing.
In some places they were declining.
The rapid growth of the Church in Taiwan between 1947 and 1965 had
ended. The numbers of Christians there
in 1985 remained only slightly larger than they were in 1965. In Japan only one percent of the population
had become Christian, and in the Muslim world gate after gate had been shut and
locked against the spread of the Christian faith. In the rapidly growing cities of the world
also little effective evangelism was being carried out. The urban populations in many cases were
winnable but they were not being won. It
was this kind of a world that the School of World Mission faced. It was in this kind of a world that the newly
named science of missiology made its pronouncements as to how populations ought
to be and could be Christianized.
The rise of
the School of World Mission in Pasadena triggered an increased emphasis on
missionary education in evangelistic seminaries all across the United
States. At Columbia Bible College,
President Robertson McQuilkin started a graduate department specializing in the
preparation and education of missionaries of the church. At Gordon-Conwell Seminary, twenty miles from
the great City of Boston, Professor Christy Wilson emphasized Christian mission
in a great way. Trinity Divinity School
at Deerfield, just north of Chicago, decided to emphasize missions. It sent its new Professor of Missions, Dr.
David Hesselgrave, veteran missionary to Japan, to the School of World Mission
for a school term to learn all that he could and then launch courses on
effective missions at Trinity. The
Missouri Synod Lutherans appointed a professor of church growth in their
seminary in St. Louis. Biola University,
which had had a missions department, strengthened it, appointed four full-time
professors of missions, and by the early 80’s had developed a program leading
to a Ph.D. in Missiology. Many other
Bible colleges and seminaries introduced courses emphasizing the opportunity
and need to reap fields white to harvest and to care for unripe fields so that
they would shortly become ripe.
Books on
mission had been comparatively rare in the 60’s. Such as were published—see the
book lists published in the International
Review of Missions for those years—dealt very seldom with effective
evangelism or the discipling of unreached segments of earth’s population. Missions tended to discuss the problems of
national churches. The Church of Jesus
Christ exists in many forms among the many populations of planet earth. Books on missions tended to discuss these
problems of existing congregations and denominations. They seldom focused their attention on
effective evangelism. To be sure,
evangelism was frequently spoken of, but it made no distinctions as to whether
those who responded to the call were nominal Christians of one’s own
denomination, nominal Christians of somebody else’s denomination, the children
of existing Christians, or men and women belonging to some non-Christina faith,
such as humanism, Marxism, Buddhism, Islam or Hinduism.
In sharp
contrast the books published by the Fuller School of World Mission dealt
continually with actual Christianization. Was Christ’s command to matheteusate panta
ta ethne really being carried out?
To what degree had this ethnos
of these ethne been disciple and enrolled in Christ’s body, the
Church? The career missionaries at the
School of World Mission, whose careful researches into the multiplication of
congregations among various segments of the world’s populations had been
accepted as master’s theses or doctoral dissertations, were in many cases
published. The stream of books relating
to effective evangelism formed an ever widening and deepening stream. Consciousness of eternal God’s command that
the gospel be so preached to panta ta ethne that these segments of
society would be led to faith and obedience was heard, therefore, not merely by
professors of mission and students enrolled in missionary courses, but b the
tens of thousands (or more likely hundreds of thousands) who read these books
in denomination after denomination and land after land.
During the
70’s the impact of the School of World Mission on the missionary thinking of
the world was very considerable among evangelicals. Among concillars it tended to be ruled as old
fashioned, speaking to a bygone age, unaware of the strong nationalistic
sentiments of the younger Churches, or not sufficiently concerned with equality
and justice. Nevertheless, bit by bit,
here and there, the concillar denominations were influenced and began to take
significant action.
For example,
in the early 80’s a bishop of the United Methodist Church in the United States,
noting that his denomination had lost a million members between 1965 and 1975
and wakened by church growth thinking, proposed in a letter that between 1985
and 1995, the United Methodist Church win 10 million Americans to ardent
Christian faith. What John Wesley had
prayed for and dreamed about 200 years before in England was being envisaged in
the United States. While this bishop’s
words at this stage should be considered more a hope than an actual plan, more
a dream than an actuality, they do indicate that some denominations were
concluding that for them to remain static in the midst of an increasingly
humanistic, materialistic, and secular American population was not God’s will.
As the
financial resources available to the School of World Mission increased, other members
were added to the faculty and other aspects of the missionary enterprise began
to be taught. For example, since all
missionaries need to learn a new language and speak it effectively, a new professor
was added to the faculty, and his new courses on learning language were added.
In an
attempt to win a hearing among the widest possible range of denominations,
Arthur Glasser and Donald McGavran started teaching a course on contemporary
theology of missions. This dealt with
evangelical theology concillar theology, Roman Catholic theology, and
liberation theology. While describing
fairly each of these branches of theology, the course insisted throughout that
each theology should be judged by whether it did effectively carry out the
divine command to win men and women to Christ and multiply Christian
congregations. The course later
materialized in a book published by Baker Book House called Contemporary Theology of Mission. It became one of the most read books on
missions.
Dr. Ralph
Winter, the missionary genius who delivered the school’s courses on history of
missions, learning that the Pasadena Nazarene College had moved to San Diego
and was selling its campus and adjoining lands for $15 million, in 1976 decided
to resign from his post as tenured professor in the School to found a world
mission center on the former Nazarene campus.
He had, in 1969, founded William Carey Library, a publishing house of
mission books. This publishing company
moved immediately to the campus which Dr. Winter had purchased.
William
Carey Library enormously facilitated the publication of books on world
mission. What other Christian publishers
turned down, fearing that they would not sell enough copies, William Carey
Library boldly published. The expanding
missionary conscience of Christians created avid readers. William Carey Library can scarcely be
overrated. As to the U.S. Center for
World Mission, it became a place where 44 missionary organizations, large and
small, established their headquarters.
Its publications multiplied. It
sought to arouse a missionary concern in all denominations across America. Dr. Winter insisted that raising the $15
million always be subordinated to raising missionary concern in the Churches of
North America.
The U.S.
Center for World Mission lifted up the concept of unreached peoples and called
sharp attention to the fact that these were not being reached in any adequate
way by existing missionary efforts, whether of national churches or of
missionary societies. The USCWM and
several other world mission centers started in other places, whole not calling
themselves church growth movements, nevertheless were both a fruit of it and
among its most effective promoters.
Time will
not permit an adequate account of the church growth centers started in other
countries of the world, but they must be mentioned. As career missionaries and national leaders
graduating from the School of World Mission went back to their lands of labor,
they often started church growth centers.
These arose in Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, India, Singapore, Kenya,
Brazil, England and Australia. The
attention of missionary societies and churches was increasingly focused on
carrying out eternal God’s command and of obeying Him to whom all authority in
heaven and earth had been given.
8n 1980,
Dean Glasser resigned as Dean and continued teaching. His place was taken by Dr. Paul Pierson, a
United Presbyterian missionary to Brazil for many years. Under his dynamic leadership the School
increased still more. The extension services
which Dean Glasser had begun were carried still further. Under them hundreds of nationals and
missionaries, while residing in other lands, took accredited courses from the
School of World Mission.
 |
| Dr. Cho leads us in praying for the harvest |
When the
School of World Mission opened on September 25, 1985, more than 300 students
from 71 different nations, including Yugoslavia and Namibia, registered. Twenty-seven Ph.D. degrees in missiology had
been given, 39 professional doctorates in missiology had been given, and very
large numbers of M.Th.s and M.A.s in
missiology had been conferred upon men and women who had successfully completed
strenuous courses on missiology.
This lecture
in a rather inadequate way has covered the fifteen years 1970-1985. Much more than this had happened. I hope that this lecture will, however, give
some of the highlights and indicate some of the academic impact of church
growth thinking.
No comments:
Post a Comment