Church: Growing & Maturing

What is the Church – Growing and Maturing

Over recent years when people around churches talk about growing, what it generally meant is that we want more “bums on seats”. For people who remember the 1950s when church attendances were high and Sunday Schools were in their hundreds, the question of growth means that we want to know how to return to that success. So we have been through waves of fads in church growth methodologies. Maybe in the 50s and 60s we should have recognised the writing on the wall, because every church had a bus or a fleet of members’ cars that were picking up those children; the families were not coming; there was limited depth to our success. The society and even the church was becoming secularised. We were running all these sporting clubs and fellowship groups which had no faith content or the shortest devotions possible. The great debate was how we could force those tennis club members to come to church, even to the annual church parade.

The foundation to real growth in the church is maturity of faith.

The early church had some of the same issues. In Acts 9 we have the story of Simon the magician. He was making a name for himself as a “miracle worker”. When he saw what the apostles were doing he wanted some of that too. At verse 13 Simon believes and is baptised, but a few verses later we see the level of his maturity of faith. In verse 18 he offers Peter and John money to buy the power of the Holy Spirit for himself. Even today people sometimes think that faith is about signs and wonders, rather than primarily about faith in Jesus and the coming of the Kingdom of God, both to human lives and human communities.

In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul is quite direct, saying that the church is, or was immature, and he tells them what the symptoms are. The fact that they are “jealous and argue with each other” is a sign of their immaturity. He then goes on to talk about their disunity and their faith in their human teachers as things they need to get over. The immature are always looking at the little picture, their own immediate wants and needs; their own security. The mature look to the big picture, the foundations of our lives and our society. Jesus called this big picture view, the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom has implications for our personal growth as human beings and implication for society as a whole. That is the growth that is important, and the more we are authentic and faithful to that message, the more Good News will be shared, the more people will get the point and maybe even a few more people will want to join us in the mission.

Adrian.