In Part One, Todd Wilson and I traced the surprising 70-year journey of the Church Growth Movement from Donald McGavran’s missionary vision of gospel saturation and people movements to the consumer-driven, attractional system many churches inherited.
In Part Two, we ask the harder question: What if the problem isn’t simply our model, but the operating system underneath it?
Todd shares the moment when he realized that a church could become remarkably effective at organizational growth without necessarily producing the kind of disciples and churches that reproduce generationally. His phrase becomes the thread running through the conversation:
How you add makes all the difference.
We talk about why programs and volunteerism can create a very different kind of fruit than relational disciple-making and everyday missionary living, why finances can reveal what an operating system is actually optimized to produce, and why simply installing a new “missional” or “microchurch” app may not change anything if the old operating system is still running underneath it.
We also get practical. What can leaders do if they are still serving inside an existing church system? Todd argues that the answer is not necessarily blowing everything up, but creating R&D spaces where genuinely new forms of disciple-making, mission, and church can develop without being forced to immediately conform to the old scoreboard.
And we look forward. What might the next era of the church look like if disciple-making became our primary growth engine, ordinary missionaries became our primary means of extension, and our best capacity-building genius was redirected toward multiplying people on mission rather than simply expanding institutions?
If you sense that something beneath the surface of church life needs to change, this conversation is for you.
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https://church-growth.org/#thebook
And perhaps the place to begin is much simpler than rebuilding the whole system:
What is the one next step Jesus is asking you to take?
