Church Growth Businesses

Church growth techniques are spreading quickly among Christian leaders. The problem with this way of emphasizing church growth is that it distorts the Gospel. The primary goal becomes using business techniques to draw in people into a megachurch building program. Rather than letting people know what the Gospel is about and what it requires to become a Christian, people are drawn in primarily to meet their felt needs. The focus becomes them and not Jesus. Worship becomes focused on the needs of the people as opposed to worshipping Jesus for who he is and what he has done for people with his sacrifice on the cross. Tragically, when research was done on several megachurches to see what they knowledge level of the members was with regard to the Gospel, research results showed few people had a clear understanding of the Gospel. Success from this perspective is measured in how large one's church is and the financial bottom-line.

In contrast to the business model for church growth, Jesus commanded that we are to disciple both the people and nations of the world. Discipleship requires a very deep commitment to training Christians for the expansion of God's kingdom here on the earth. Disciples are so well trained that they can produce other disciples and plant new churches where the discipleship process is carried on. In contrast to this long-term commitment toward developing mature Christians, the church growth business model uses a superficial approach to sharing the Gospel and bringing the masses into our churches. The result is superficial, carnal Christians who know little about the Christian faith and live much the same as they did before they attended these churches. The following video describes the many errors in this church movement.