Stealing Sheep

Tim over at Challies.com has a book review of William Chadwick’s book, “Stealing Sheep” subtitled: “The Church’s Hidden Problems with Transfer Growth.” The review, if not the book, is worth reading.

From that insider perspective, Chadwick writes about the dark side of church growth. Having done extensive research and having examined the fruits of his own early ministry, the author came to the startling revelation that the church growth movement has succeeded far better in pulling believers from other, smaller churches than in reaching the lost. “Great effort is being expended, but few are actually turning to Christ for the first time. Instead, the faithful are mostly just changing churches” (from the back cover).

The statistics are startling. It has long since become common knowledge that while there are many more megachurches in the United States than in days past, there are no more Christians. Obviously the only way to account for this is to realize that people are moving from small churches into these megachurches. And why wouldn’t they? Megachurches offer excitement, quality of music and programming depth that small churches can only dream about. The large churches have a great advantage in our consumeristic culture where we demand that our needs be met. Just as WalMart has put far too many mom and pop shops out of business, so megachurches have closed the doors of many small, faithful churches. The author’s research found that over 90 percent of the members at some of the largest churches in America have arrived from other churches. When we consider that some of these churches have 8,000 members and that the average church in America has only 100, we can see how this transfer growth has decimated other bodies.

I did a report when I was in college documenting the membership records of the church we were attending. It was amazing to see the swings in membership and that the growth was always from other congregations and then when membership declined it was to the church in the area that was now “the place to be”.

It is hard to say where the problem lies - is it the church that is attracting them that is causing the problem? Is it the fickleness of ’sheep’ who are ever itching for something else? Is it the original church that was not able to build their people into a community that would not dream of abandoning one another?