Shrinking the church for Jesus
Tim Suttle has written a provocative column for the Huffington Post. He writes:
Pastors and churches spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year attending conferences, buying books, hiring consultants, advertisers and marketers, all to try and accomplish one thing: to increase attendance -- to be a bigger church.I'm absolutely convinced this is the wrong tack.I suspect Suttle is speaking primarily to an evangelical audience, but what do readers think about applying his ideas to mainline congregations?
Success is a slippery subject when it comes to the Church. That our ultimate picture of success is a crucified Messiah means any conversation about success will be incompatible with a "bigger is better" mentality. Yet, bigger and better is exactly what most churches seem to be pursuing these days: a pursuit which typically comes in the form of sentimentality and pragmatism.
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