How fast should the church grow?
Information technology is often thought that the decline in church attendance in the West is then precipitous, and the erosion of Christian values and so rapid, that if the Christian church is to recover something very dramatic must happen. This tin can manifest itself in the quest for a 'technique' of leading church or of mission (oftentimes brought across the pond from the States), or the seeking of a dramatic act of God in some sort of 'revival.' Or perhaps the effect is to make many in the church feel that the task of recovery is also difficult, and at that place is no option only to take the continued decline with expert grace.
Curiously, this business is besides manifest, as a kind of mirror prototype, in the history of the early centuries of the Christian movement, the period when the church experienced its about rapid flow of sustained growth in any time in its history. Historians of the period have mostly worked with two assumptions: that the 'triumph' of Christianity was more or less inevitable; and that it could only be deemed for past periods of dramatic mass conversion. Without these, the numbers don't add up.
I have but read Rodney Stark'sThe Rising of Christianity, and in his opening affiliate he debunks both these ideas, expanding on the item in subsequent chapters. I should say I am a bit late to this—Stark's book was first published 20 years ago. And the book equally a whole took me rather past surprise. I expected a continuous narrative or statement; in fact the chapters join what were originally separate studies, mostly previously published every bit academic papers. At some points the piece of work is quite technical, and Stark assumes that the reader will understand almost statistical correlation and levels of statistical significance. And each study draws on a not bad depth of previous research; for case, Stark mentions in passing how he calculated the distances betwixt cities in the Roman world, which actually takes quite a lot of endeavor. (See the particular provided by Mike Thompson in his chapter 'The Holy Cyberspace' inThe Gospels for all Christians, published a twelvemonth later Stark.) Stark is quite unsentimental in his calculations of, for case, the touch of different rates of mortality amongst Christians and pagans because of their different reactions to the outbreak of an epidemic, and is happy to sweep aside the previous consensus in social scientific study of religion on the grounds of evident bias in earlier studies.
Stark begins with a starting figure of one,000 members of this new Jesus movement in the year 40 (he is happy to be a petty sceptical nigh Luke's claims in Acts virtually 'thousands' coming to faith early on) and ends with the suggestion that past 350, Christians were in the bulk past the year 350 in an Empire with a population of threescore million. This suggest to him a growth rate of the move of twoscore percent per decade, and gives this table of the growth of Christianity:
| Year | Number of Christians | Percentage of popn |
| xl | ane,000 | 0.0017 |
| fifty | 1,400 | 0.0023 |
| 100 | seven,530 | 0.0126 |
| 150 | xl,496 | 0.07 |
| 200 | 217,795 | 0.036 |
| 250 | ane,171,356 | ane.ix |
| 300 | 6,299,832 | 10.5 |
| 350 | 33,882,008 | 56.5 |
It looks like there is astronomic growth in the later years, as is often noted in the literature. But Stark points out that this is just a feature of compound growth (and is the reason that you ought to start investing in your pension scheme when young). The charge per unit of growth here continues at the same rate. Stark also notes that this growth looks painfully slow at the kickoff; he returns later to explore why the motility might have sustained itself through this period when new religious movements oftentimes give up, discouraged. But he besides notes that this is why nosotros accept just about no archaeological evidence of Christians prior to 180; it was too insignificantly modest to leave any detectable footprint. To back up this model of growth, Stark correlates it with a range of estimates and data, the most disarming being actual numbers of Christians in an area of Egypt calculated by inspecting names on graves—and then it looks similar a convincing model. In the light of this, Stark can debunk suggestions that there must have been mass conversions or dramatic miracles for this to take happened, using my favourite phrase in the whole volume: 'In that location is no substitute for doing the arithmetics.'
Why is this relevant to our present situation? Well, what does 40% growth per decade actually look like? Every bit Stark points out, due again to the compound nature of growth, it is a 'mere' iii.42% per year. Then what would the dramatic revival that nosotros need look like? If you are in a congregation of 50, then that ways imagining peradventure one or two more people joining you in the course of a yr. If you are in a congregation of 100, then it means seeing perhaps iii or four more in a year'due south fourth dimension. What struck me almost this is that information technology is perfectly imaginable and not at all discouraging as an unattainable goal for any congregation. And withal it is this kind of growth which saw Christianity plough from a tiny, marginal cult to a movement which transformed the Empire. Nosotros merely have to 'practise the math.'
At present at that place are, of grade, several provisos to this. Information technology but works if the growth is asteady iii.42% per year. Stark argues that the main reason that this growth was sustained was that the early Christian movement remained asocially open up network. Many churches terminate growing because the members have no significant friendships outside the congregation, and it is friendships which class the bridge beyond which Good News can travel. In the UK, I would too suggest that pocket-sized churches detect it much easier to abound at a percent charge per unit than big churches—so to sustain growth hither we would need to be committed to church planting once congregations reached a sure size. (I am just trying to think if that is beingness done by whatever large churches in England at the moment…)
Some other major proviso is that, in order to grow at this rate, y'all need to replace the members that accept 'gone to glory'. Stark notes that this happened in the early church through that oft-neglected phenomenon, biological growth. In other words, Christians had children and raised them in the faith. It is quite a good way of replacing those who have grown quondam and died! Having recognised the importance of reaching immature people, many churches accept invested in employing youth workers, and the whole area of ministry has been professionalised and invested in through the development of youth work courses and qualifications. The only problem with this is that it might be precisely the wrong strategy. A few weeks ago I was speaking to someone who has been prominent in the national scene in youth piece of work, and he pointed out to me the problems. In the 'old days', youth work would have been overseen by a group of adults from the congregation, working together, some of whom would have been parents of children in the group. This ways ii things. Commencement, the youth piece of work will naturally be connected with families in the church and issues of parenting, so that the two are integrated and support ane another. Secondly, with a selection of adults to relate to, at that place is less dependence on one star to whom all youth of every background and personality must go on with and like. In other words, plural leadership connected with the wider church is far preferable to monarchical leadership which operates independently from the life of church building families.
That aside, the challenge of Stark's number-crunching is a reminder that church growth is more virtually focus than fireworks, more than of a marathon than a sprint—something that calls for a long obedience in the aforementioned management. Perchance that requires more than depth of thinking, praying and acting that we sometimes permit for.
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