Does Church Growth Equal Church Success?

We are in a series right now focused on cultivating a healthy church culture. If you didn’t get a chance to listen to the previous two episodes, we encourage you to go back and take a listen because we covered a lot of ground.  

Every church has a culture, whether they realize it or not. And while some churches have a healthy(ish) church culture, we are seeing signs of widespread dysfunction in churches — revealing that many do not.

We’ve been using this metaphor of a fruit tree to help us.  The most important thing is the soil; if the soil isn’t healthy, the tree won’t be healthy and won’t be able to produce healthy fruit. Today we want to name a second toxin in the soil of the American church: the idol of church growth.

Let's discuss the problems we find in equating success with church growth, how this became the norm, and what we can do to shift away from it and be mindful of it in our own churches.