Measurable Objectives, St. Paul’s or Ours:
Roland
Allen & The Church Growth Movement
James E. Plueddemann
Evangelical Missiological Society - Midwest Regional Meeting
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
April 21, 2012 Revised January 2014
It seems that the old "church growth" philosophy of missions is no longer at the forefront of missionary consideration. Yet I often hear admonitions from sending churches and mission agencies to set predictable, numerical goals. Looking back 100 years to the writings of Roland Allen may help us regain a more biblical perspective.
Setting measurable and predictable objectives is appropriate if one is measuring activities But activities are not the same as the outcomes that result from the activities. For example a legitimate measurable objective might be to show the Jesus film 100 times. This admirable objective is both quantifiable and predicted. But it isn't an outcome goal. The real "faith goal" is to see people make a genuine heart commitment to Christ or to see local believers passionate about evangelism. The important outcomes are inner qualities not external quantities.
It's interesting that the Pharisees in Jesus' day attempted to quantify the Ten Commandments. For example, "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." is an internal heart-related command, but the Pharisees wanted to make it behavioral and quantifiable. Thus they debated how many steps one could take on the Sabbath, how to avoid lighting fires etc. By attempting to set quantifiable behavioral objectives they became hopelessly legalistic. Jesus invested much of his teaching to combat quantitive measurements with inner heart change.
Setting measurable and predictable objectives is appropriate if one is measuring activities But activities are not the same as the outcomes that result from the activities. For example a legitimate measurable objective might be to show the Jesus film 100 times. This admirable objective is both quantifiable and predicted. But it isn't an outcome goal. The real "faith goal" is to see people make a genuine heart commitment to Christ or to see local believers passionate about evangelism. The important outcomes are inner qualities not external quantities.
It's interesting that the Pharisees in Jesus' day attempted to quantify the Ten Commandments. For example, "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." is an internal heart-related command, but the Pharisees wanted to make it behavioral and quantifiable. Thus they debated how many steps one could take on the Sabbath, how to avoid lighting fires etc. By attempting to set quantifiable behavioral objectives they became hopelessly legalistic. Jesus invested much of his teaching to combat quantitive measurements with inner heart change.
Rereading Roland Allen[1]
almost 50 years later brings back pleasant memories. As a missionary candidate
with the Sudan Interior Mission in the 1960s I desired to be a cutting-edge
missionary, and reading a book that was then 50 years old unexpectedly shaped
much of my missionary thinking over the next 50 years.
The purpose of this paper is to compare missionary
objectives implicit in Roland Allen’s Missionary
Methods, St. Paul’s or Ours, with more recent Church Growth contributions
to the discussion of missionary objectives. This discussion will be framed with
Scripture.
1) Missionary Objectives
An objective
describes what the mission seeks to
accomplish, desired outcomes,
purposes, goals. Methods are means of
accomplishing objectives. Missionary
outcomes are referred to in passing by Allen.
His primary purpose was to investigate methods, while assuming outcomes. St. Paul sought to plant reproducing churches
in key centers in the provinces of Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia. At the end of ten years the Apostle Paul
could say that his work was finished and it was time to move on to a new area
of service.[2]
The objective of St. Paul was to plant churches in strategic centers in
provinces. These churches would then reach out to influence the whole
province. There is no indication that
St. Paul had a ten year plan to reach certain provinces or cities. Paul was not motivated by precise outcomes,
but by vision filled with ambiguity.
In his vision on the road to Damascus Paul received a
mandate to go to the Gentiles, “to open their eyes and turn them from darkness
to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive
forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified.” (Acts
26:18) Paul was given a general task to
all non-Jews. He wasn’t told where to go, the number of converts, how many
churches to plant, or in what time frame.
Roland Allen makes the case that St. Paul didn’t plan his
missionary journeys. “It is quite impossible to maintain that St. Paul
deliberately planned his journeys beforehand, selected certain strategic points
at which to establish his Churches and then actually carried out his designs.”[3] Allen continues: “St. Paul did not deliberately
plan his missionary tours, but I find it equally difficult to believe that he
was not guided by some very definite principles in his selection of his mission
stations.”[4] Allen suggests that St. Paul operated from
principles rather than precise goals.
His objective was to establish two or three centers of Christian life in
a province that would be equipped to spread the gospel throughout the province.
Paul could later claim that the whole province had been evangelized.[5]
The Bible never mentions planning for the first missionary
journey described in Acts 13. After fasting and prayer the church in Antioch
placed hands Paul and Barnabas and sent them off. They were also sent on their way by the Holy
Spirit (Acts 13:3-4). It seems that the
early missionaries used their common sense and implicit guiding principles and
then preached the word until they were expelled, stoned or run out of
town. While St. Paul was motivated by a
vision for planting and establishing three or four missionary-minded churches
in each province, it is unclear that he even knew which particular provinces he
should reach. After preaching in
Galatia, the Holy Spirit kept him from moving into the province of Asia, and
then led him in a vision to the province of Macedonia (Acts 16:7-10).
Planning seemed to take place in the midst of the activity.
While there are no hints that Paul planned for precise quantifiable objectives
by certain dates, we cannot say that St. Paul was inefficient. After ten years
Paul could claim that “by the power of the Holy Spirit of God. . . from
Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel
of Christ” (Romans 15:19). This is an
amazing accomplishment in a relatively short time frame.
2) Church Growth
Objectives
The Church Growth movement was helpful to the missionary enterprise in many ways, but was harmful in others. While there are many similarities between the Church Growth
Movement and the Pauline movement described by Roland Allen, the most stark
differences arise from a passion for precise planning and outcomes. In contrast
to St. Paul’s vision-driven, principle-centered objectives, the Church Growth
Movement was driven by planned measurable objectives. C. Peter Wagner writes:
“Efforts without measurable
objectives can easily be construed as cop outs. Failure becomes an
impossibility. Reporting becomes hopelessly subjective. This is why goals,
carefully designated specifically articulated and constantly evaluated are
stressed by church growth men.”[6]
According to this definition, the ministry of St. Paul as
described by Roland Allen was a failure. Paul didn’t begin with measurable
objectives, his reporting back to the church in Antioch was “hopelessly
subjective” and his goals were not “carefully predicted, designated, specifically
articulated and constantly evaluated.”
In 1970 Donald McGavran produced a highly influential book, Understanding Church Growth, in which he
writes:
Setting membership goals is in
accordance with God’s eternal purpose. Goal setting in the service of the Great
Commission is pleasing to God. . . . Scripture is solidly on the side of careful
planning for church growth. . . . Goal setting should start by teaching that
measurable church growth is biblically required.[7]
McGavran suggests that decadal growth be measured as a
percentage of growth, not the growth of raw numbers. He mentions that Ralph
Winter proposed a formula for calculating growth from the concept of compound
interest.[8]
Again we note the glaring contrast between Allen’s
description of St. Paul and the Church Growth strategy. One movement was guided by principled, visionary
and ambiguous outcomes and the other by mathematical formulas and objective
membership goals.
I participated in a major church growth seminar in Jos,
Nigeria in the 1970s. A team of missiologists came from the United States and
taught a group of Hausa-speaking pastors through translation. First the seminar
leaders handed out graph-paper and asked each pastor to plot the growth of his
church in the last ten years. Then they
asked the pastors to set yearly goals for the next ten years. For example, if last year the church grew by
50 members, they would aim for adding 50 members per year for the next ten
years. Then the seminar leaders handed out logarithmic graph paper that showed
that if they only increased by 50 members a year, the percentage of growth
would over time move downward on the graph. As I visited with the
Hausa-speaking pastors during break times, I realized that most of them were
puzzled by these mathematical projections.
Many of them pastored some of the fastest growing churches in the world
and yet none of them had dreamed of setting membership goals and graph paper. For the next ten years the ECWA churches in
Nigeria grew by 370%. They grew not by
setting measurable objectives, but by what Roland Allen described as the
spontaneous expansion of healthy churches reaching out to their neighbors.[9]
There is a growing backlash in the non-Western world, against the quantitative
planning theories of church growth.
However the fundamental world-view of a behavioristic, objective
quantifiable reality persists in many Western mission governing boards are often composed of members with a behavior objective mindset. I
suspect that the measurable objectives movement was more influenced by the
business world than by the biblical world described by Roland Allen.
3) Management by
Objectives in Business
One year before Roland Allen wrote Missionary Methods, Fredrick W. Taylor produced a highly
influential monograph called, The
Principles of Scientific Management.[10] Taylor called for a radical increase in
efficiency though the us use of time-motion studies. In 1954 Peter Drucker,
influenced by Taylor, wrote The Practice
of Management, and introduced the concept of management by objectives.[11]
A planning model that grew out of the Drucker philosophy
included the acronym SMART or specific,
measurable, achievable, realistic
and time-bound. [12]
None of these five characteristics fit the Allen model or that of St. Paul. It seems
that the Church Growth model was more influenced by principles of scientific
management than by Scripture.
In 1995 I wrote an article for the Evangelical Missions Quarterly entitled, “Measurable Objectives,
No! Faith Goals, Yes!”[13]
The article received so many negative letters to the editor that they had to
run them in the next two issues. The
editor, Jim Reapsome, told me that my article won a prize for the most negative
letters to the editor. Several of my criticizers pointed
to the use of quantities in the book of Acts.
So I did a study of outcomes and results in the book of Acts.
4) Outcomes in the
book of Acts
First I copied and pasted the whole text of Acts into a Word
document with a wide margin. As I read through the text I underlined every text
that made mention of a result. As I began
to analyze the various kinds of results, I noticed that most of the results
fell into a limited number of categories. I recopied the text of Acts into a
table format with the text on the left and possible categories of results on
the right. I then analyzed each verse in
the book of Acts that referred to an outcome and summarized the categories into
major groupings.
Here are my findings:
Results are an important feature in the book of Acts. It is
appears that Luke made at least 111 statements in Acts that refer to outcomes
or results. Luke reported on outcomes that grew out of the work of the Holy
Spirit, the apostles and the early church. But none of the outcomes were planed advance.
Here are the major groupings of resultant statements:
· Twenty seven times Luke reported evangelistic growth. Three times
approximate numerical results were given such as “about three thousand were
baptized,” (1:14) and “the number of men grew to about 5,000” (4:4) and “about twelve men in all” (19:5). Each
time numbers were used they were given as estimates. Growth in size was
reported 24 times without using numbers,
such as “the number of disciples was increasing” (6:1), “the Lord added to
their number those who were being saved” (2:47), and “all those who lived in
Lydda and Sharon saw him and turned to the Lord” (9:35). Most often Luke merely
reported that “a great number of people believed.” It seems that Luke was
highly interested in the growth of the church but he was not overly concerned
with reporting numbers. At no point do
we find predictions of numerical converts.
· Thirteen times Luke reported results in terms of
discipleship, nurture or the
strengthening of believers. Evangelistic results, while important, also
required the continual inner growth of believers. Sometimes Luke recorded
spiritual growth in terms of the church.
“Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria . . . was
strengthened and encouraged by the Holy Spirit” (9:31). Other times Luke reported the strengthening
of disciples (14:22).
· Human
need results were important to Luke. Twelve times results were reported in
terms of physical healing, economic sharing or casting out of evil spirits.
Early believers shared possessions (4:32), the lame were healed (3:8), demons
were cast out (7:7), and the dead were raised (9:40).
· Often the results were negative. Twelve times Luke reported painful outcomes of ministry.
After one sermon, Paul was dragged out and stoned (7:57), persecution broke out
against the church in Jerusalem (8:1), Jews poisoned the minds of the Gentiles
(14:2) and Paul was accused of being out of his mind because of his great
learning (26:24). It is important to
note that a high percentage of the reported results were negative. Luke never blamed the sermon or the preacher
for negative results. Not all ministries
should be expected to produce positive outcomes.
· Eleven times the result was the direct
intervention of the Holy Spirit or
of angels. Luke described that “disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit:”
(2:4), “all were filled with the Holy Spirit” (4:31), and the Holy Spirit came
to Gentiles who heard the message (10:44). Twice angels produced unexpected
results when the disciples and Peter broke out of jail (5:19 & 12:11). Often the reported results were not outcomes
of the disciples’ actions, but God used supernatural means to produce results.
· Five times the result was a theological shift in the mind of Peter and of the church or a
theological challenge to the Pharisees and Sadducees. Peter finally realized
that God “accepts people from every nation who fear him and do what is right”
(10:34). The Jerusalem Council agreed
that they should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who were turning to God
(15:19). The correcting or developing of
theology was an important result in Luke’s reporting.
· Four times Luke reports that the word of the Lord spread, widely and in
power (12:24, 13:49, 19:10 & 20).
The result was not described in terms of the action of people, but of
the word of God. We are not told how the people responded but nevertheless it
seemed important to Luke to report the outcome of the spreading of the
word.
The prediction of results in Acts does not fit the Church Growth concept of planned or predicted objectives. Only three times out of 111
examples are quantitative results reported and they are reported in round numbers after the fact. No reported result in
the book of Acts were planned or predicted. Results in the book of Acts were
important, describable and evaluatable, but were not predictable.
5) Reaction Against
Management by Objectives.
The secular management guru Tom Peters has written about the
problems of specific plans and goals.
Plans? Goals? Yes, I admit that I
plan and set goals. After I’ve accomplished something, I declare it to have
been my goal all along. One must keep up appearances: In our society “having
goals” and “making plans” are two of the most important pretenses. Unfortunately,
they are dangerous pretenses – which
repeatedly cause us to delay immersion in
the real world of happy surprises, unhappy detours, and unexpected byways.
Meanwhile, the laurels keep going to those mildly purposeful stumblers who hang
out, try stuff with reckless abandon—and occasionally bump into something big
and bountiful, often barely related to the initial pursuit.[14]
Could it be that having precise goals and making
quantifiable goals are also a dangerous pretense in missions? I think so.
Even Peter Drucker seems to agree that management by
objectives would be unhelpful for mission agencies. He writes: “the non-profit
organization exists to bring about a change in individuals and in society.”[15]
These changes are not predictably quantifiable.
Missionaries seek to be used of God to bring about change in the hearts
of individuals, the church and society. Such an objective does not fit the
SMART criteria, it is not specific, measureable, easily achievable, humanly realistic or time-bound.
The Korean missiologist Bong Ho Son, has written that
“church growth theology has done more harm than good in Korean churches in
general.”[16]
Samuel Escobar has also criticized what he identified as the
Western Management Model with it’s passion for statistics.
Every characteristic of missiology
becomes understandable when perceived within the frame of that avowed quantifying intention. Concepts
such as ‘people groups,’ ‘unreached peoples,’ ‘10/40 window,’ ‘adopt a people,’
and ‘territorial spirits’ express both a strong sense of urgency and an effort
to use every available instrument to make the task possible.[17]
Escobar also refers to the hundreds of strategies near the
turn of the century, called AD 2000, and Lausanne II with the vast array of
“arresting but mystifying statistics.”[18] Most of these strategies would fit the SMART
paradigm of being specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and
time-bound.
6) A Clash of
Cultural Values
Could it be that the debate about missionary objectives is
rooted in a clash of personality differences or cultural values? Geert Hofstede spent a lifetime gathering
data from around the world on cultural values in the work place. One critical
value was what he identified as uncertainty
avoidance, defined as “the extent to which the members of a culture feel
threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations.”[19] Individuals
and cultures with high uncertainty avoidance seek to control the future through
planning, statistics and measurable outcomes.
Maybe the difference
between Roland Allen and the Church Growth Movement is more related to a tolerance
for ambiguity than to theological differences. Winter was first an engineer, a
job that required low tolerance for ambiguity. He felt very comfortable with formulas
and statistics. Allen was a pastor more
in touch with the more ambiguous disciplines.
The Apostle Paul was motivated by a life-long vision and a general sense
of direction, but he could endure the uncertainties of a missionary work.
In a world where many more countries are sending missionaries around the world, we need to be be cautions of missionary strategies that merely reflect Western cultural values, which will not only seem strange, but hinder the missionary world of the new missionaries.
7) Conclusion
Many good things have come out of the Church Growth Movement. Both McGavran and Allen promoted the
spontaneous expansion of the church through the use of family connections as
“bridges to God.” Ralph Winter pointed
out vast areas of the world needing more missionary involvement. Church Growth theology has permeated the
Perspectives Course movement which as been a challenge and a blessing to
thousands. Church mission committees
have benefited from the emphasis on strategic planning. But the movement also
has some serious downsides. Mission committees, mission administrators and missiologists take note. The movement of measurable objectives isn't dead yet. Too bad.
Here are a few
of the serious problems. Measurable objectives:
Even though I believe that quantifiable, predictable or behavioral objectives are a hinderance to the task of world missions, I believe in evaluation. I am convinced that we can keep our eyes open to indications of the effectiveness of the activity or program.- Tend to aim for what is easily measurable rather than heart change in people and churches. What is easily measurable is often insignificant.
- Tempt us to count activities rather than eternal outcomes. Since we can count how many times we do things, it is tempting to think we are successful merely by being active.
- Assume that quantity is an accurate reflection of quality, when in fact, often the opposite may be true. Could it be that the faster the growth of the church, the shallower the quality of discipleship?
- May lead to a missionary becoming incorrectly encouraged when only external goals are met, or becoming wrongly discouraged by ignoring the subtle hints of blessing.
- Lead to insignificant or even trivial goals. Since measurable objectives must be achievable, we aim at what we know we can achieve rather than true faith vision. We aim too low when we aim at what can be predicted and quantified.
Evaluation that comes after-the-fact can be most helpful in improving programs. I'm convinced that the the best evaluation considers not just outcomes, but programs and cultural awareness of the situation, and how the three fit together. But this is the subject of another blog.
[1]
Roland Allen, Missionary Methods St
Paul’s or Ours? (London: Robert Scott, 1912).
[2]
Ibid., p. 3.
[3]
Ibid., p. 15.
[4]
Ibid., p. 17.
[5]
Ibid., p. 18-19.
[6] , C.
Peter Wagner, “The Church Growth Workshop or Seminar.” Church Growth Bulletin. vol. viii, no. 6, July 1972, p 235.
[7] McGavran,
Donald A., Understanding Church Growth.
3rd edition C. Peter Wagner ed. 1990. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans. P . 279 (First published in 1970, revised in
1980 and edited by Wager in 1990)
[8]
Ibid., p. 283.
[9]
See, Roland Allen. The Spontaneous
Expansion of the Church: And the Causes Which Hinder It. (Kindle edition,
1927).
[10]
Fredrick W. Taylor. The Principles of
Scientific Management. New York:
Harper, 1911.
[11]
Peter Drucker. The Practice of Management.
New York: Harper, 1954.
[12] Doran, G. T. (1981). There's a
S.M.A.R.T. way to write management's goals and objectives. Management Review, Volume 70, Issue 11(AMA FORUM), pp. 35-36.
[13]
James E. Plueddemann, “Measurable Objectives, No! Faith Goals, Yes!” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 31, no. 2
(April 1995): 184-187.
[14]
Tom Peters. The Bookstore Journal.
Feb. 1991.
[16]
Bong Ho Son. “Some Dangers of Rapid Church Growth.” Korean Church Growth Explosion. Bong Rin Ro, and Martin L. Nelson
eds. Seoul: Word of Life Press. P. 283.
[17]
Samuel Escobar. “Evangelical Missiology: Peering Into the Future at the Turn of
the Century.” In William D. Taylor, ed. Global
Missiology for the 21st Century: The Iguuassu Dialogue. Grand
Rapids: Baker, 2000. p. 109.
[18]
Ibid., p. 109.
[19]
Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede and Michael Minkov. Cultures and Organziations: Software of the Mind. Chicago: McGraw
Hill, 2010, p. 191.