Dear Fellow Pastor,
Thanks for reaching out about the recent developments in your ministry. Your excitement about your church’s growth is palpable. It’s definitely a “good problem” to decide how many services, classes, and/or groups you need to support this growth!
As I’ve told you before, our church prays for you and your church. We regularly pray for other Bible-believing, gospel-preaching churches in our region. While we differ on some things, our unity is real due to believing the same gospel.
In our last conversation, I detected some conflicted feelings about some of your recent growth. You asked it well: “where were these people before they showed up at my building?” You’re right. They were somewhere. As we get to know people and their stories, we always discover that a percentage were previously part of other churches. So, how should we think of this “transfer growth”?
Here’s how I think about growth, and transfer growth specifically.
First, a church expands its ministry reach when members have children. (Most call that “biological growth.”) These children are a blessing and responsibility for their parents and the church, but they aren’t yet part of the church until they profess saving faith in Christ and are baptized. That’s when spiritual growth happens!
Speaking of spiritual growth, there are two kinds. One is the ordinary, deepening maturity and commitment of people who are already Christians. It’s the most common kind of growth, and the one we’re mainly describing when we talk about discipleship.
Of course, the greatest spiritual growth happens when someone comes to faith in Jesus! This is the first and most basic kind of growth both of our churches are working towards.
As an observant pastor, I know you can already identify people who fit into these categories. I feel it’s incumbent upon faithful shepherds to discern how much of their church’s growth fits into each group, including how much of it is “transfer growth.”
Now, let me provide two examples of appropriate transfer growth, along with four cautions.
First, transfer growth should be celebrated when people move to our community, already knowing Jesus and having been part of a church, and God leads them to our church (often with the blessing of their former church). This is like a “spiritual chain of custody” being exercised by two churches. Another Christian leader I know calls it “the hand-off.”
Whether people move forty-five minutes away or across the country, they are reestablishing their life in a new place. Too often a new church home is low on people’s priority list. (Data even shows that one of the main reasons people stopped participating in a church in the last twenty-five years is simply that they moved.)
Of course, healthy disciples know they need to belong. They know they need spiritual accountability. They need a church. So, we should celebrate when God uses one of our churches to reach newcomers in their new community.
Second, sometimes people unite with our churches because they are spiritually minded people who find something in our church they’ve been sorely missing: biblical fidelity and spiritual community.
It’s true that people leave churches for all kinds of silly reasons; I’m not talking about that crowd. (Unfortunately, it’s a big group!)
Sometimes people leave situations where sound doctrine, gospel unity, or leadership integrity have been so severely compromised that it’s unclear if they will be remedied. When spiritually mature people walk away from those situations after making good-faith efforts to be part of the solution, they need a biblical alternative. Sometimes our churches are that alternative.
Now, this is where some cautions arise. Since the Bible says it’s easy to be deceived, I know I must be honest about ways transfer growth can deceive me.
First, I don’t think we’re often sure people are leaving other churches for spiritually sound reasons. Besides preference-based, trivial reasons for leaving, people sometimes offer up generic reasons that sound legitimate but lack substance.
“My church was getting woke.” If true, that could be a problem. But it could have also been that their pastor simply preached a biblically faithful series on justice from the Minor Prophets. “The leaders weren’t as transparent as they should have been.” Translation: We weren’t able to vote on every single financial transaction like we did in the good ol’ days. “I just felt like we were supposed to leave.” Well, I suppose that’s fine until you aren’t “feeling it” anymore here and you move on again.
These reasons are difficult to deal with. They can appear legitimate, but without further investigation, they ring as hollow as someone who leaves a church over the size of the youth group, the number of songs sung weekly, or the length of the sermon.
Brother, I want my church to be in the disciple-making business. That means reaching people and growing people. I don’t think we’re really growing people when we don’t encourage them to value the right things or respond to problems the right way. If ten or twenty people from our churches walked out of the door this Sunday under the same circumstances that some of our newcomers left their former churches, how would we feel? The Golden Rule applies, even in these situations.
Having been on both the “winning” and “losing” end of transfer growth, God has really impressed this biblical principle on my heart!
Second, healthy churches are committed to a Kingdom bigger than their own ministry. I’ve increasingly heard some pastors use the phrase, “Kingdom over castles.” That’s helpful. Our natural, fallen instinct is to protect what we have and see it prosper, sometimes at the expense of others. So, if a church really seems to be growing while the nearby congregations are shrinking proportionally, are the Kingdom’s boundaries really expanding?
I know we can’t entirely control people’s movement. (What can we entirely control?!) But we have to take a wider view of Kingdom growth. If I felt that every other church in my general area was apostate or totally dysfunctional, maybe I’d feel less strongly about this point. But if I tell my people that our address isn’t an accident, then isn’t that true of other churches’, too?
Third, a casual attitude toward transfer growth—whether toward people who leave our churches or come to ours from others—trivializes the church’s commitment to discipleship and maturity. Whatever our differences on membership, we both emphasize things like commitment, loyalty, faithfulness, conflict resolution, developing proper priorities, and deep relationships.
If I shrug at everyone who walks away or celebrate every new arrival without careful examination, I make a mockery of all those principles I’m preaching and teaching.
Finally, I think every church must remember the growth that makes Heaven rejoice: conversion growth. Sometimes we rejoice too much at other forms of growth while ignoring this vital truth. We can deceive ourselves about how faithful our evangelism is when a significant amount (or even majority) of our “growth” is transfer growth.
I don’t think I can know my church is being faithful if I measure only how many pews are filled on a Sunday morning. I have to measure baptisms. I have to look at how many people are walking through a discipleship course. I have to discern how many men are praying and reading Scripture with their spouse and kids. Whatever the metric, I have to scrutinize the total picture for solid evidence of growth and transformation.
So, to return to your original question about how to navigate the potential perils of transfer growth, I’ll mention a few practices I try to do and that I encourage others to do, also.
First, I don’t just baptize whoever walks through the back door and asks for it. I sit down with them and try to discern who they are, where they’re coming from, and whether baptism is the appropriate biblical step.
People regularly misuse Acts to justify spontaneous baptisms. The timing between people believing and people being baptized isn’t clear in most of the passages in Acts. Even when the period of time is relatively short, there are plenty of reasons for biblical instruction and personal examination. If Jesus Himself warned about the deceptions associated with people knowing their spiritual condition, we shouldn’t rush to reinforce them in that deception. Hasty approaches to baptism can do that very easily.
Second, it’s sensible to ask about people’s stories. Where are they from? What’s their background? Is there another church in that story? If so, why are they no longer there? If it’s been twenty years since they darkened the doors, yes, there’s probably too much water under the bridge to return. Who knows? That church may no longer exist. But asking the questions can reveal if there’s a relationship in need of mending, a conversation that should happen with a fellow pastor, or even a problem they may be bringing to our doorstep. We don’t care well for our own sheep to welcome (quickly) someone who may be a wolf.
Third, I know that the practice of offering a letter of standing and/or recommendation has fallen on hard times. Some churches won’t ask for a letter, and many won’t send one. Still, you can retain a time-honored practice when it comes to releasing members (amicably) or receiving new members. Even if all that happens is a brief conversation between you and another pastor, this can be a good way to identify, discover, or disclose lurking issues. Requiring a letter for incoming members, when possible, can also be a wise expectation that forces people to have an honest conversation with their current pastor.
If Hebrews 13:17 is true—and I believe it is—then every pastor will give an account for his flock. I don’t know about you brother, but this means I must know who the members of my flock are—where they’re going, and where they’re coming from!
I’m grateful we both stand for the Great Commission. I’m grateful our church doesn’t have to reach everyone alone! Pray for us as we pray for you. And let’s find ways to ensure we don’t perpetuate the “sheep-swapping” that is increasingly common in American Christianity.
Your Brother and Partner in the Gospel,
Jackson
About the Author:W. Jackson Watts (Ph.D., Concordia Seminary) has been the pastor of Grace FWB Church since 2011. His family lives in the St. Louis area. Watts is active in denominational leadership at the local, state, and national levels. One of the original founders of the HSF, Watts now writes regularly at www.churchatopia.com.
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