The Wrong Definition of Growth

by Paul K. Williams (deceased)

John Cripps asked an elder in the United States why the church where he was a member was growing. He replied, "When we stopped pounding the pulpit on the issues we started to grow.” The elder also said that the elders were divided on the subject of divorce and remarriage, so they don’t teach about that. They let each member make up his own mind on that subject.

An elder’s wife wrote me, “____ preached a hard-hitting lesson yesterday morning on marriage in preparation for the withdrawal of one of our brethren who has entered into an adulterous marriage. A few of the brethren are struggling with this. Weak brethren would like to live and let live when it comes to sin. Sad.”

Question: Is that church going to stop growing?

But where will this attitude lead? My grandson, Nathan, told me that a few years ago a friend of his preached for a church in Los Angeles. The elders invited him to move there and work with them, but they said, “You must agree not to preach against abortion.”

Contrast that with the attitude of Paul, the apostle. He said to the elders of the church at Ephesus:

“You yourselves know, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, how I was with you the whole time, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews; how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house” (Acts 20:18-20).

And heed what Paul wrote to Timothy:

“I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry" (II Timothy 4:1-5).

When Jesus wrote to the seven churches of Asia, saying that He knew their works, He did not write one thing about whether a church was growing in number. He wrote a great deal about their faithfulness, or lack of faithfulness, in life and doctrine.

Could it be that many of us have the wrong definition of success? Let us not measure ourselves by ourselves but by the word of God.