Editor’s Note: In this controversial post by Tim Suttle, we come face-to-face with an important discussion: what does it really mean to grow the church? We are firm believers that having more people in Christ-centered churches is a good thing, but the way we get there is an important conversation. We hope you will engage with this story and share your thoughts, agreements, disagreements in the comment section below.
Pastors and churches spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year attending conferences, buying books, hiring consultants, advertisers, and marketers, all to try to accomplish one thing: to increase attendance — to be a bigger church.
I’m absolutely convinced this is the wrong tack.
Success is a slippery subject when it comes to the Church. That our ultimate picture of success is a crucified Messiah means any conversation about success will be incompatible with a “bigger is better” mentality. Yet, bigger and better is exactly what most churches seem to be pursuing these days: a pursuit that typically comes in the form of sentimentality and pragmatism.
Sentimentality and pragmatism are the one-two punch that has the American Church on the ropes, while a generation of church leaders acquiesces to the demands of our consumer culture.
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The demands are simple: tell me something that will make me feel better (sentimentality for the churchgoer), and tell me something that will work (pragmatism for the church leader). Yet it is not clear how either one of those are part of what it means to be the Church.
Sentimentality is mother’s milk to the church that has ceased to believe our faith should really make a difference in the way we live our lives. Instead of proclaiming resurrection, the sentimental church will devote their entire Sunday worship service to Mother’s/Father’s Day — or worse yet, Valentine’s Day. Not that we don’t appreciate our parents and sweethearts, but the yielding of precious worship time to the celebration of greeting card companies signals a much deeper problem: we have lost track of the story of God.
Yet, for a church to grow bigger, losing track of the story is precisely what is required.
Instead of pursuing faithfulness, the sentimental church must provide a place where people can come to hear a comforting message from an effusive pastor spouting fervent one-liners that are intended only to make us feel good about the decisions we’ve already made with our lives. If our beliefs aren’t actually, really true then at least we can have a Hallmark moment, right? Above all, the sentimental church must never teach us that in the kingdom of God, up is down, in is out, and nothing short of dying to ourselves and each other can help us truly live.
