Norman Vincent Peale and the Church Growth movement
Norman Vincent Peale’s practical Christianity is often credited with being the forerunner of the of the modern Church Growth movement. The popularization of his philosophy and methods was left to a later generation. Peale’s philosophy and methods grew out of his wholehearted belief in the humanistic concept of the perfectibility of man.[1] As seen in the previous two chapters, Peale’s theology was heavily imbued with his belief that through his own efforts man could improve his life and overcome life’s obstacles either through self-realization or through getting in touch with the god within. Although he believed in the perfectibility of man, Peale’s ministry was focused on discipling rather than perfecting members. He believed that people should be brought into membership “in anticipation that education would subsequently reveal to them the fuller implications of a richer, more self-conscious faith.”[2]
The major focus of Peale’s ministry was winning members. This involved door-to-door canvasing, use of various advertising techniques, weekly radio broadcasts of his sermons, rented auditoriums for special services, and adoption of other business techniques to further church development. Sunday services were planned to perfection. His messages were upbeat, theologically liberal, inspirational, and sprinkled with references to Emerson and the social environment. Although altar calls gradually disappeared, the message continued to point to the transforming result of a personal relationship with Jesus and the church.[3] For Peale, it is apparent that his listeners were to find that personal relationship, “a richer, more self-conscious faith,” through education as opposed to repentance and forgiveness of sin at an altar.
Church Growth movement and the mission of the church
Christ said at the time of his ascension forty days after His resurrection, “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always to the close of the age.” [Matthew 28:19-20. RSV] There are three parts: evangelism, baptism, and teaching. Evangelism is making disciples through preaching (and witnessing) the gospel of Christ. Baptism is a public statement that one accepted Christ as his savior and has surrendered his life to Christ. Teaching is follow-up which is accomplished by preaching, teaching, and worship.
Disciples are not made by the effort of evangelism but by the Word of God. Evangelism is the tool or means of delivering the life transforming message (good news) of Jesus Christ. But at some point in the mid-twentieth century there arose a belief that the original biblical concept of evangelism could be improved upon. New methodologies and strategies were developed to sharpen the tool of evangelism in making disciples for Christ. This came to be known as the Church Growth movement. It is not a single group, organization or denomination but a set of ideologies that have been adopted by the majority of evangelical churches in America.[4] This ecumenicalism is possible because the churches and ministers who subscribed to the Church Growth movement are interested in methodologies and strategies for accomplishing the mission of the church as opposed to doctrine. Their message is that a church can adopt Church Growth methods and practices to grow their individual churches while keeping their doctrines. This sounds good, but a closer look reveals the devil is in the details.
Paul told the Corinthians that it was the gospel by which they were saved (See 1 Corinthians 15:1-2). But when the Church Growth movement attempted to sharpen the tool of evangelism, it fundamentally changed its focus from delivering the transforming power of the Word to growing the church through human efforts.[5] This resulted in a major change in definition of the mission of the church from making disciples to growing the church.
Defenders of the Church Growth methods and strategies may claim this distinction is merely a matter of semantics—that the end result of growing the church is the same as making disciples. This is not so. Recall what happened to the early church in the fourth century (See Chapter 3). Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire and became the professed religion of Emperor Constantine. Christianity was now seen as the avenue to material, military, political, and social success. Thousands joined the church, but many were Christians in name only as the narrow gate was made wide which allowed a flood of corruptions to flow into the church.[6]
A second defense by the advocates of the Church Growth movement is that their methods are effective in attracting people to their churches so that the gospel can be delivered and people can be saved, baptized, and taught. They cite impressive numbers with regard to membership, attendance, and participation in various church activities to prove the effectiveness of their methods and strategies. But in the final accounting of a person’s life, it is not their church attendance, membership, or participation that determines their eternal destiny.
The problem with many churches using Church Growth methods and strategies is that it is often accompanied by preaching that is watered-down, incomplete, or inaccurate. Christ’s call to a death to self and sin at the foot of the cross is often masked by feel-good messages of love and forgiveness with little or no cost and without a call to holiness. As a result, the lives and lifestyles of many Church Growth “converts” bear little evidence of change or conformance to the teachings of Christ. Many seekers falling into the all-inclusive nets of churches following the Church Growth model resemble the unregenerate second generation Puritans of the late 1600s. These Puritans were not in full communion but remained members in a halfway covenant which resulted in a mixed membership that had lost the purity of a separated regenerate church.[7]
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with many of the Church Growth methods and activities in themselves. Christian fellowship, breaking of bread, and concern for the needs of one’s fellow brothers and sisters in Christ is normal and biblical. Some of the Church Growth activities and methods have been used by traditional churches for decades and were not intended to be the high-powered generators of church growth in themselves. To be successful, Church Growth practitioners must add a large measure of accommodation of the spirit of the world that injects subtle but fundamental changes to the preaching, teaching, and doctrines of the New Testament.
The culture-driven church
The Church Growth movement continually attempts to find better ways to accomplish the redefined mission of the church—church growth rather than making disciples. Church Growth advocates say churches must use the right bait to attract and capture members. As the tastes and interests of a culture change over time, the church must change the bait to match the new tastes and interests of both its current members (consumers) and target audience outside the church. Hence, the focus and message of the church is dictated by the prevailing culture as opposed to the timeless prescriptions of the Bible. As culture changes, the membership-oriented church must change in order to accommodate and stay relevant to the culture. Over time the parade of changes accumulate to such an extent that the church loses its Christian identity and becomes a powerless, syncretic form of Christian paganism.[8] In his letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul wrote of the coming apostasy in the last days in which men and women who once knew Christ would reject or abandon their faith. Paul described these Christians-in-name-only of the last days as “holding the form of religion but denying the power of it…” [2 Timothy 3:5. RSV]
The therapeutic gospel
In the last chapter we examined the beginnings of the therapeutic gospel through Norman Vincent Peale’s blending of psychology and New Age practices into a religious mix aimed at healing the soul through self-help and the works of men. Here we look deeper into the meaning and workings of the therapeutic gospel as it has grown within the evangelical church over the last seven decades.
The American psyche has been branded with the humanistic concept of the perfectibility of man and anything less than personal perfection is thought unacceptable. As a result, billions of dollars are spent annually on psychological techniques and therapies of self-help and counseling. Once thought of as help for physical problems, therapy is now applied to a host issues that are now considered psychological problems which range from personal relationships and self-esteem to the ultimate purpose and meaning of life. This concern for psychological problems has inevitably become a large part of religious thinking and concern within the contemporary church as a result of the philosophy and growing influence of the Church Growth movement.[9]
Craig Gay writing in The way of the (modern) world called this preoccupation with psychological problems very disturbing because the focus of therapy is upon “immediate relief and rehabilitation,” and the only acceptable measure of relief is “the subjective experience of well-being.” [emphasis in original] However, the therapeutic approach “provides no serious discipline for the soul.” Therapy as a means of dealing with the stresses of life often stands at odds with the formation of character and one’s duty to God and his fellow man. The therapeutic use of religion and religious faith are not the same. In the therapeutic use of religion, the individual is essentially in charge of his or her journey to a sense of well-being within. But the Christian faith focuses the believer on obedience to God and the Bible as opposed to pleasing the self. Gay summarizes the difference by quoting Philip Rieff, “Religious man was born to be saved. Psychological man is born to be pleased.”[10]
Christians may vehemently deny the humanists’ belief that this life is all there is so one ought to be happy, grab all the pleasure that one can, and live as if there is no tomorrow. However, many Christians’ affirmation of the afterlife often do not match their actions as they reach for a therapeutic fix to ease the pain of the moment when what they may really need is obedience to God and His higher purposes. Many modern Christians have acceded to the cultural wave of humanism and are preoccupied with the present experience and a quest for comfort instead of accepting the pain of self-denial and obedience to God which is linked to their eternal destiny.
It is a deception when Christian concepts and terms are employed to justify therapeutic “feel good” measures as a substitute for obedience to the Christian faith in matters of healing and rehabilitation. Gay wrote, “Faith in God through Jesus Christ and by the power of the Spirit is not a means, but is, along with hope and love, the end purpose of human existence.” [emphasis added] However, Gay cautions that the problem does not lie in therapy as such. Specific therapies are often of real benefit, but the difficulty arises when therapy is viewed as a means of dealing with the problems caused by the human condition.[11] Put another way, man is a fallen creature, and although religious therapy may make him feel better about himself for the moment, it will not change his eternal destination.
New Paradigm churches v. traditional churches
We’ve talked about the origins of the Church Growth movement and its philosophies, methods, and techniques. We’ve also described the culture-driven therapeutic gospel. But how does all of this look when it comes together in a Church Growth-oriented evangelical church in the twenty-first century?
New paradigm churches are growth-oriented, culture-driven, and therapeutic in outlook. These churches have a philosophy of ministry intentionally focused on numerical growth through the use of demographic studies from which well-defined market strategies are crafted and then implemented by modern business techniques.[12] Being market-driven, their first step is to study the demographics of the market to determine what the consumer wants as opposed to the traditional evangelical church that is soul-oriented, biblically driven, and eternal in outlook.
In “Choosing My Religion” published in 1999 by Advertising Age, Richard Cimino described the factors Americans consider when seeking a church. Cimino’s observations on the desires of consumer-minded Christians had been discovered decades earlier by Church Growth leaders. What Cimino and earlier church leaders found was that mainstream Americans had begun shopping for a God to fit their humanistic beliefs and lifestyles. As a result, their preferences had shifted from “religion” to “spirituality.”[13]
Behind this shift is the search for an experiential faith, a religion of the heart, not of the head. It’s a religious expression that downplays doctrine and dogma, and revels in direct experience of the divine—whether it’s called the “holy spirit” or “cosmic consciousness” or the “true self.” It is practical and personal, more about stress reduction than salvation, more therapeutic than theological. It’s about feeling good, not being good. It’s as much about the body as the soul…This being the United States, where consumerism is the closest thing we have to state religion, it’s very much about marketing, packaging, and promotion.
Today…religion and spirituality have become just another product in the broader marketplace of goods and services; congregants care as much about a church’s childcare as its doctrinal purity, pay more attention to the style of music than the pastor’s theological training.
Church leaders across the nation are using computerized demographic studies and other sophisticated marketing techniques to fill their pews. “Mainline churches don’t have to die,” says church marketing consultant Richard Southern. “Baby boomers think of churches like they think of supermarkets…They want options, choices, and convenience. You don’t have to change your theology or your political stance.”[14]
This shift from religion to spirituality has occurred because of the rise and eventual dominance of the humanistic worldview in all facets of American culture during the last half of the twentieth century. Whereas the dominant Christian religion in America through the end of the nineteenth century meant relationship with and obedience to a loving God, the humanistic worldview denies God’s existence and replaces Him with the god of self and its quest for happiness. However, humanism is a false philosophy and its prescriptions fail to answer the haunting questions of life. It is man’s natural inclination to seek God to find order, meaning, and purpose to life, and it is through religion he seeks to find Him. But through the seductions of secular humanism, Americans have become saturated with the consumer mentality and the belief that customer is always right. In vain, they seek a do-it-yourself, designer religion that will supply a sense of temporal well-being instead of eternal truth that only comes from the God of the Bible.
The God of the Bible demands that men die to self in order to live the life eternal. This is not a message that can be scientifically packaged and promoted by new paradigm churches focused on attracting members instead of winning the lost.
Decades ago, A. W. Tozer foresaw the eventual outcome of popular evangelism we now call a new paradigm.
If I see aright, the cross of popular evangelicalism is not the cross of the New Testament. It is, rather, a new bright ornament upon the bosom of a self-assured and carnal Christianity. The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it.[15]
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Arthur Gordon, One Man’s Way, (Pawling, New York: Foundation for Christian Living, (1972, 1958), p. 143.
[2] Carol V. R. George, God’s Salesman – Norman Vincent Peale and The Power of Positive Thinking, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 56.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Stephen Parker, Church Growth Crisis – The Decline of Christianity in America, (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Forever Family Publications, 2011), p. 13.
[5] Ibid., p. 32.
[6] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), p. 27.
[7] Eddy, p. 55.
[8] Parker, p. 39.
[9] Craig M. Gay, The way of the (modern) world, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), p. 185.
[10] Ibid., p. 186.
[11] Ibid., pp. 187-189.
[12] Gary E. Gilley, This Little Church Went to Market, (www.xulonpress.com: Xulon Press, 2002), p. 20.
[13] Richard Cimino, “Choosing My Religion,” Advertising Age, April 1, 1999.
http://adage.com/article/american-demographics/choosing-religion/42364/ (accessed October 23, 2015).
[14] Gilley, This Little Church Went to Market, p. 59.
