Evaluating the Church Growth Movement

Often time’s pastors are running from one appointment to another. They meet with their congregation in their homes; they meet them in the hospitals when they are sick. They meet them when they are ministering to them at church. The question becomes, when do they get involved in evangelism? Pastors are so busy tending to their flocks that they do not have time to add to their flocks.

In his book, Evaluating the Church Growth Movement, Paul Engle says, “Before the influences of church growth, young pastors often focused primarily on programs, committees, office duties, marriages, hospitals, burials, counseling, and a thousand other perceived duties that kept them from the priorities of evangelism, leadership, strategy, and establishing vision.”

All of those duties that Engle mentioned that pastors do to keep busy are not bad things. Each of them are extremely necessary ingredients in a growing and healthy church. It does make one wonder though, who made it a rule that it was the pastors job to lead the programs, to perform the office duties, to visit the sick, to bury the dead? Why is it that it has to be the pastor to do all of this work? The answer is, it isn’t his job.

The word ‘pastor’ is mentioned only one time in the New International Version of the Bible. The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 4:11-12a, “It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service…” Paul tells us that the job of the pastor is to equip the saints, not do the saints work!

Each pastor has a responsibility to his flock to help them to discover what their spiritual gift is and then to help them to be able to use it. A church that is built completely around one man who does it all can be sure that system will not stand for long. Healthy churches are those who are busy helping its attenders to be all that God created them to be. When this happens, it allows the pastor to focus on those things that he is best to do. Those things like preaching, casting vision, and providing leadership.