Being the Church: An Eastern Orthodox Understanding of Church Growth

By Edward Rommen

If the divine liturgy really is as beautiful as we claim, wouldn't more people attend? Wouldn't the church grow?  Driven by our desire for growth, we count, we analyze, we make charts, and we strategize, but often with few discernible results. That is probably the result of focusing on secondary aspects of church life. As we know, the very existence of a church is a gift of God's presence and not the result of any particular actions taken by human beings. For that reason, church is primarily about being something rather than doing or achieving something. So the growth of the church is not reflected in ever-increasing numbers, dollars, and activities, but rather in steadily growing conformity to the divine ideal.  So in order to evaluate ecclesial growth, we will first have to ask what the church is supposed to be. One answer to that question is captured in the four marks of the church given in the creed: Oneness, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity.  These four characteristics serve as a matrix or framework within which we can focus on the primary aspects of ecclesial being and help it grow and become what it was intended to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Jul 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781498293167

Edward Rommen

The V. Rev. Fr. Edward Rommen holds an MDiv and a DMiss from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, as well as a Dr. Theol. (PhD in theology) from the University of Munich. After fifteen years of church planting and teaching in Europe, he returned to the United States to teach missions and theology, then returned to pastoral ministry after becoming Orthodox. He served as the rector of Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Raleigh, NC until 2017 and is currently adjunct professor at Duke Divinity School in Durham, NC and the resident priest at St. Mary and Martha Orthodox Monastery in Wagener, SC.

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Being the Church

An Eastern Orthodox Understanding of Church Growth

Edward Rommen

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Being the Church

An Eastern Orthodox Understanding of Church Growth

Copyright © 2017 Edward Rommen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-9315-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-9317-4

ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-9316-7

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Rommen, Edward.

Being the church : an Eastern Orthodox understanding of church growth / Edward Rommen.

Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 978-1-4982-9315-0 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-4982-9317-4 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-4982-9316-7 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Orthodox Eastern Church | Church growth | Church growth Biblical teaching

Classification: BX320.3 .R66 2017 (paperback) | BX320.3 (ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/17/15

All Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version,® copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: Ecclesial Being

Chapter 2: Ecclesial Unity

Chapter 3: Ecclesial Goodness

Chapter 4: Ecclesial Beauty

Chapter 5: Ecclesial Integrity

Conclusions

Bibliography

Preface

Some time ago I was extolling the beauty and power of the Orthodox divine liturgy at a gathering of missiologists. After my presentation one of the other participants asked, If the liturgy is really all that beautiful and powerful, then why aren’t the Orthodox churches filled to overflowing? Of course, anyone who has experienced an Orthodox liturgy would be hard-pressed to deny its overwhelming beauty. But the questioner did make a valid point, and I find myself unsettled by the apparent discrepancy between the ideal of liturgical beauty and the actual number of participants drawn to the liturgy. I ask myself why it seems so hard to get people to come, why more don’t respond to our invitation to come and see, and why even the faithful aren’t more faithful. If, as we rightly claim, the liturgy really is beautiful and attractive, wouldn’t more people attend, wouldn’t more flock to experience it? And if they did, wouldn’t our parishes be growing, constantly increasing in membership?

Just asking these questions puts me into the company of all those authors who over the last half-century have explored what they call the growth of the church. The desire to study this aspect of the church was born of a similar dissatisfaction when, in the 1930s, Donald McGavran noticed, and would not accept as normal, the lack of growth among his organization’s mission stations in India. As he studied the situation, he concluded that the reason for this lack of growth was a failure to implement the Great Commission. The churches and their members were simply not being obedient in reaching out to convert their friends and neighbors. He went on to develop a series of principles¹ that he claimed would bring the missing growth. These included numerical growth as the mark of a healthy church,² the need for social scientific research to determine existing growth patterns and predict future growth, and the use of cultural givens, such as group conversions and receptive peoples, to develop strategies of growth. Driven by the prospect of numerical growth, these ideas caught on and, during the next decades, developed into an active movement, with studies being done all over the world, courses being taught at seminaries, and countless publications being produced. As these principles were brought to North America, some of the cross-cultural elements were discarded and the pragmatism of the marketplace became the source of new techniques of growth.³ Today church growth in America is a booming business replete with seminars, conferences, consultants, and, of course, publications. By way of illustration, a search for the phrase church growth on Amazon.com returned 20,388 titles on February 26, 2016. A great deal of time and energy is being invested in seeking and proposing ways to grow churches.

In spite of all of this activity, the growth of American churches has not been very impressive. Oh sure, there are a few well-known megachurches. But according to the National Congregations Study in 2012, churches with over a thousand participants represent only 2.4 percent of the total number of churches, only 10.2 percent of churches have between 251 and 1000 participants, 20.6 percent have between 101 and 250, 24.1 percent have between 51 and 100, and 42.7 percent have fewer than 50.⁴ In other words, 66.8 percent of all congregations have fewer than 100 worshipers. Many of the largest denominations are losing ground.⁵ According to the Pew Foundation, between 2007 and 2014 the Christian portion of the general US population fell from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent, with evangelical Protestants down 0.9 percent, mainline Protestants down by 3.4 percent, and the Catholic Church down by 3.1 percent.⁶

The reason for all this may be that most of these efforts at growth are actually focusing on the wrong things. Perhaps we have to shake the fascination with numerical growth in order to get at the real potential of ecclesial maturity. I believe that some of the church growth authors are aware of this and are exploring alternatives. Many readily admit that it is not simply a numbers game and even suggest that that idea is a misrepresentation of the movement’s thought. In one book, for example, the author promises not to trouble the reader with marketing gimmicks and salesmanship. Yet, near the end of it he openly promotes the standard church growth principle that scientific analysis can and should be used to facilitate the numerical growth of the church. He then gives an unabashed apologetic for using a survey instrument offered by his company, which they will analyze for a price.⁷ So, in spite of downplaying the importance of numbers, this doesn’t give the reader the impression that they are interested in anything but numbers. Some do point to the importance of spiritual factors, but only as they relate to numbers. Others, trying to downplay the influence of the marketplace, urge us back to biblical church growth, seeking to use the Scriptures, but do so as justification for numerical growth. Therefore, their reservations not withstanding, they always seem to come back to numerical growth as the underlying, unshakable presupposition of whatever they write. Let me illustrate this phenomenon by taking a closer look at one of the better books of this genre, Gary L. McIntosh’s Biblical Church Growth.

McIntosh seems to be aware of the concern that church growth methods appear to be derived from the social sciences. To counter this, he insists that, contrary to popular opinion church growth is not based on sociology, marketing, or demographics.⁸ But if it is such an obvious misunderstanding, then why do we hear it so often? According to him, church growth is a biblical concept, exploding from the life-giving nature of God.⁹ From that promising beginning he goes on to point out that what we need is presumably not numerical growth (although he does not say that explicitly), but a church that is faithful or obedient to God’s commands.¹⁰ Does he mean all of them? Perhaps, but he does not say that either. Instead, he adds a commandment: faithfulness to God’s purpose in the world. This he defines as bringing unbelievers into the church, which will bring at least a measure of numerical growth.¹¹ It appears, then, that the commandments to which we are to remain faithful are effectively reduced to just the one, the Great Commission¹²—and that involves numerical growth. In any case, it is the only command he deals with. I am not suggesting that this is not of paramount importance, but it is definitively not the only commandment we are to obey and not the only way in which the Church is to grow.

On a more hopeful note, he indicates that his book is not about the how, the doing of ministry, but rather the why, the being of ministry.¹³ However, that distinction does not survive the pressure to do, and the book turns out to be a how-to manual after all, that is, on doing the right things for the right reasons.¹⁴ Throughout the remainder of the book, McIntosh elaborates on a series of principles that give some service to biblical ideals, but which are all cast as things to do and are all coopted for the purpose of achieving numerical growth. Commitment to the word of God, for example, is advocated primarily because that has been shown to bring the potential of numerical growth.¹⁵ However, this commitment to Scripture seems to be limited, since there is no mention of Jesus’ warning that the path is narrow and that few will find it. Moving on, he suggests that our priority should be to glorify God. But in a clear misinterpretation of St. John’s Gospel (15:1–8), McIntosh ignores the context and traditional interpretation¹⁶ and suggests a better explanation, namely, that glory is given to God by bringing fruit in the form of converts,¹⁷ that is, by growing numerically. Later we are told to trust the Holy Spirit, not for guidance, for conviction of sins, or for the spiritual life, but for the growth—yes, the numerical growth—of the church.¹⁸ McIntosh tells us that we need pastors who faithfully serve as God’s fellow workers in fulfilling the Great Commission, training the right people for growth.¹⁹ We also need the right philosophy, which, as it turns out, is a form of growth-related pragmatism. If a particular technique misses its target, we simply discard it and develop a new culturally informed approach that does yield growth.²⁰ In echo of McGavran, we need the right plan, one that targets receptive individuals.²¹ We need to develop simple administrative structures that facilitate growth—no mention of the ecclesial structures given by God in Scripture and tradition.²²

What becomes evident in the reading of this book is that whatever misgivings the author might have about the fundamental ideas of the church growth movement, and whatever efforts he has made to derive his principles from Scripture and orthodox doctrine, what he comes up with is clearly informed by a persistent desire for one thing, namely, numerical growth. One has to be impressed by the strength of this underlying idea. It is so powerful that every biblically and theologically sound principle mentioned in the book is amended or transformed into something that is designed to yield numerical growth. Thus, the promising idea of being the Church dies amidst the many suggestions on how to do the church in North America.

However, what if being and not doing was the one factor that determined the Church’s life, potential, and mission in the world? Here I am referring to the importance of a group of believers actually being or existing as a Church. The reason for asking this question first is that an organization, even a Christian one, that is not actually a Church cannot experience ecclesial growth no matter what we do or count. In other words, how can something that is not a Church experience churchly growth? Because of its unique nature as a living, spiritual organism, the Church has to be measured in terms of things that are appropriate to that nature. So we will need to define just what those things are. Once we identify the types of growth that are unique to the Church, we can then ask how we can go about measuring those things. Not all of those things can be counted. But, there are most definitely some things that we can count. My concern is that we count the right things and that we draw legitimate conclusions based on what we do count.

So if a group of people actually is a Church, then the gradient from unhealthy to healthy, dying to living, declining to growing, does not directly establish its ecclesial status. Simply being the Church brings it under the lordship of Christ and makes it beautiful and establishes the potential for churchly growth. So does just being the actual Church make it healthy? No! I do not want to make a simplistic equation between being the Church and automatically being healthy and growing. However, what I am saying is that in order for an entity to be healthy in the way the New Testament describes that health, and in order for a group to grow in the way growth is talked about in the New Testament, that group will have to actually be a Church. Again something that is not a Church cannot possibly grow in a churchly way. There are, in fact, many groups that are not Church (even though that is what they are called) and for that reason the growth that they may demonstrate is not growth of a biblical or ecclesial kind. We should not copy or even envy this type of growth. All the doing in the world cannot bring biblically defined growth. It first has to be a Church, then it can grow as a Church.

If all of this is true, then the very first question we need to be asking is whether or not a particular group really is a Church. History and tradition show us that the Church is constituted by the gathering of believers to celebrate the Eucharist, presided over by a priest duly ordained by a canonical bishop.²³ This theological context is of utmost importance to an Orthodox understanding of church growth, because it is the Church’s unique nature that determines the nature of its growth and thus what standards we will use to measure that growth. Unfortunately, many church growth thinkers seem to bypass this question and simply assume that the group they are studying is Church, taking it upon themselves to define its nature and thus the nature of its growth as they see fit. But, bracketing the question of the Church’s being (its ontology) removes the constraints imposed by its nature and frees the individual to use any standard of success available (such as the prevailing idea of profit and loss) and any techniques (marketing, branding, statistical analysis) deemed effective in achieving that kind of success. But, ignoring the fundamental nature of Church leads to an attempt to manage non-essential (as in not belonging to its character) aspects of its being by means of supposed growth—producing techniques before establishing its existential viability as Church and thus the ways in which it can actually grow. In other words, we wind up just doing, that is, managing an organization, rather than being the Church.

So I am wondering if this is the best we can do. I realize that simply criticizing other models will not do. In order to make a real contribution to the discussion, you would have to offer an alternative—not a new technique, but a revised vision of an Orthodox approach to mission, evangelism, and the growth of the Church. I think this will involve a thorough reevaluation of what it means to be a Church, what that implies for the type of growth we can and should expect, and how that determines how we might go about nurturing that kind of growth. It means rededicating ourselves to the teaching that part of what makes the Church the Church is the unity (one), goodness (holy), beauty (catholic), and integrity (apostolic) that is created by God himself, and not the conditions or structures imposed on it by its sociocultural context, the marketplace, or even the theoreticians of growth. This could be the foundation of a renewed Orthodox perspective on growing the Church.

To begin with, we will have to review the whole idea of Ecclesial Growth (introduction), its measurement, and its relationship to the ideal and the actual. Does the actual determine the ideal? How does the ideal affect our conception of the actual? If the ideal exists, what can it mean for it to grow or mature? Against what standards could the growth of the ideal be measured? Can it be counted?

As part of this reevaluation we will also have to revisit the question of Ecclesial Being (chapter 1), that is, what it means for the Church to exist, and how its origin in the Divine is the source of its own unity, goodness, beauty, and integrity. Speaking of the Church in Corinth, St. Paul declares that the faithful there are God’s fellow workers, his field, his building (1 Cor 3:9). So, what does it mean for the Church to belong to God? I know that others²⁴ have dealt with this idea. However, church growth experts seldom take it up,²⁵ and when they do it is often under the influence of a truncated theology and market-driven concerns.²⁶ What I would like to do is make an attempt to shed the North American culturalisms that we have so uncritically adopted—conceptions of success, the bigger-is-better mentality, and so on—and start with the most fundamental questions of ecclesial ontology. If I can clearly describe ecclesial being, its source, and nature, I believe that it would help us understand that its primary task is not to flourish according to the ideals of society. Instead, it is to be a radical alternative to the world around it, a light in the darkness, and a place where a personal relationship with Christ is proclaimed and enabled.

The Church, like any existing entity, has a set of defining characteristics or properties that transcend all local expressions of it. These properties of being always belong to it if it truly exists as itself. Because the Church is the body of Christ, its attributes are actually the attributes of Christ himself, and these attributes of the Church would be innumerable. However, the holy fathers of the Second Ecumenical Council spoke of only four—unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. Each one of these is derived directly from the isomorphic, personal relationship between the Church and Christ. For that reason they clearly and accurately define the character of the Church whereby, as a theanthropic institution and community, she is distinguishable from any institution or community of the human sort.²⁷ Interestingly, traditional ontology also speaks of four transcendental aspects of being: unity, goodness, beauty, and integrity. These correspond roughly to the categories of the Creed ²⁸ and both can be used to help us define and describe the being of the Church.

If the Church is truly the Church, it will be a unified whole and be possessed of Ecclesial Unity (chapter 2). Before we consider the Church in its manifold actualizations, we see it as a single being, unified and one. The glorified Christ is the one who has completed the work of salvation. In him alone is the fullness of life (Acts 4:12). By extension, his body possesses an unreduced completeness of being. It is the context where Christ is made manifest, where he can be known, and where life in him can be sustained, be made complete (Phil 1:6; Col 2:10; 2 Tim 3:17; Heb 13:21). This completeness applies not only to the faithful, but also to those who do not yet believe, since the Church offers to the world the fullness of life in Christ. So, what can it mean to be made complete in Christ, to mature into wholeness? What form does the oneness of the Church take? How does that oneness serve its mission in the world?

If the Church exists as the fullness of Christ, if it is the very body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12–27), then it will also have an inherent goodness or holiness. The idea here is that every existing thing is good for some purpose, some end. Christ, in particular, is good for our salvation, our sanctification. Thus, Ecclesial Goodness (chapter 3) points to the benefits that Christ provides through the Church. The Church is the context in which we work out our salvation. As such, its primary importance is the salvation and the sanctification of its members. Those who are members of the body of Christ are in communion with him and are made holy by that union with him. The fathers and the ecumenical councils aggressively insist on the holiness of the Church. They say it is an essential and immutable attribute of the Church; not a function of its members, but rather the sanctifying grace of Christ. So, what does that holiness look like? How is it achieved and manifested? Of what benefit is the Church to the world around it?

If the Church is holy, then it possesses an inherent dignity, an Ecclesial Beauty (chapter 4). Because that beauty is Christ himself, that beauty is catholic and universal, that is, it incorporates all aspects of creation; all things in heaven and on earth are enveloped in that beauty. It can universally be recognized as Church because its beauty is apparent to all. Being alive in Christ, the faithful reflect something of that divine beauty, the harmony of his being (Ps 96:9). It is mirrored in a general way in all human beings (Ps 90:17; 2 Sam 1:19). Interestingly, the Septuagint’s words for beauty do not occur often in the New Testament (but see Rom 10:15 and those that bring the gospel, where the writers prefer the synonym glory (Matt 6:29–30). Speaking of his own glory, Jesus, in his high priestly prayer, prays for his followers in whom he is glorified (John 17:10), that is, a glorification that will be seen in his disciples. This may well refer to the inner beauty of the soul and the virtues (1 Pet 3:4; 1 Tim 2:9), but it will certainly have an external expression. In any case, this close connection between beauty and glory, as well as that of the members to the body, indicates that the Church is to be something glorious, something beautiful, and is to be so in all places. So, what can it mean for the Church to be beautiful? How is that practiced? How does the Church mature into that beauty so that it can be universally recognized as such?

Finally, if the Church actually exists as Church, it will be characterized by truth. Ecclesial Integrity (chapter 5) speaks to the fact that the Church either is or is not the Church. There can be no middle ground. So how do we know what the Church is intended to be? How can we tell if an otherwise Christian group is or is not the Church? The answer is that it would have to be built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph 2:20). The content of the gospel was entrusted to the apostles; they themselves became the very personification of the Church. That is, they were simultaneously the depository of and the guarantors of everything Christ had handed down to them. It would be fair to say that where the apostles were, there was the Church. When that message was then entrusted to the first generation of bishops, they continued in the role as guardians of apostolic tradition. What makes the Church the Church is faithfulness to the foundations of the apostles. So, what does that look like today? What does this mean for its witness to the world?

Once we return to these existential foundations, we will be able to draw some conclusions about the relationship between the ideal and the actual, about the nature of the maturation process, and about the things we must be and do to facilitate that growth. Here I will offer some evaluation of the general path that church growth thought has taken. Here I will cast the vision of being the Church.

* * *

As already indicated, throughout this book I will be making a distinction between the Church and other Christian organizations that are not Church in the strictest sense of that word. In European languages, this distinction is easily expressed. In German, for example, one can speak of die Kirche (the Church) and eine Gemeinde (a fellowship). In English²⁹ this is not quite so easy, since we have gotten used to calling almost all Christian fellowships churches. Therefore, what I will do in this text is use the capitalized Church to indicate an entity that is truly Church and the lowercase church for all other occurrences of Christian groups. This is not meant to call into question the faith of those who worship and serve in Christian fellowships. It is, rather, an attempt to force us to take more seriously the very idea of Church and to be as consistent with our terminology as is possible.

1. Rommen, Die Notwendigkeit,

60

–

70

.

2. This principle has been more or less uncritically accepted and appears to be the fundamental assumption of almost every book on church growth that I have read.

3. History of Church Growth, Inc.

4. Size of Congregation.

5. Between

2000

and

2010

the Southern Baptist Convention was up by

0

.

1

percent, the United Methodist was down

4

.

7

percent, Evangelical Lutherans lost

18

.

2

percent, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) lost

22

.

0

percent. Ibid.

6. Pew Research Center, America’s Changing Religious Landscape.

7. Schwartz, Natural Church Development.

8. McIntosh, Biblical Church Growth,

9

.

9 Ibid.

10. Ibid.,

19

.

11. Ibid.,

20

.

12. Ibid.,

17

.

13. Ibid.,

24

.

14. Faithful churches become effective not simply because they do the right things (hows) but because they understand why the right things need to be done. Ibid.,

25

.

15. Ibid.,

45

.

16. Note, for example, that St. Chrysostom associates this fruit with the disciples’ love for one another and for Christ, with abiding in him and his words, and with the keeping of his commandments. Hence He maketh his discourse credible, for if the bearing of fruit pertains to the glory of the Father, He will not neglect his own glory. ‘And ye shall be My disciples.’ Seest thou how he that bears fruit, he is the disciple? But what is, ‘In this is the Father glorified’? ‘He rejoiceth when ye abide in Me, when ye bear fruit.’ John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel According to St. John, Homily

76

(John

14:31; 15:1

).

17. McIntosh, Biblical Church Growth,

56

.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.,

81

–

83

.

20. Ibid.,

105

.

21. Ibid.,

132

.

22. Ibid.,

137

.

23. Afanasiev and Plekon, Church of the Holy Spirit.

24. Küng, Church.

25. Not a word about the nature of the Church in Searcy and Henson, Ignite, or in Schaller,

44

Ways. Very little even in McIntosh, Biblical Church Growth.

26. Reising, ChurchMarketing

101

.

27. Popovich, Attributes of the Church.

28

.

In the Orthodox Church the only creed that is used is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which is the text of the first ecumenical council (

325

), amended by the second council in

381

.

29. In British English a distinction is made between a Church and a chapel. However, that is too focused on the building to be of much use to us here.

Introduction

Counting, Success, and Ecclesial Growth

We’re born with the ability to see the world numerically just as we’re born to see the world in color.

¹

In my preface I expressed some concern over the uncritical application of business models and statistics (counting) to the