Evaluating the Church Growth Movement: 5 Views

Counterpoints

by Paul E. Engle, Elmer L. Towns (Contributor), Craig Van Gelder (Contributor)

Although the church growth movement has made a significant impact on evangelicals over the past half century, it has also created controversy and division. This careful five-view analysis helps evangelicals understand the movement's strengths and weaknesses and arrive at their own conclusions on issues that affect the future direction of the church.

Genres: Ecclesiology, Christian, Church, Theology

355 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Paul E. Engle, series editor for Counterpoints Church Life, is an ordained minister who served for twenty-two years in pastoral ministry in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Illinois, and Michigan. He is an adjunct teacher in several seminaries in this country and internationally. He serves as associate publisher and executive editor in the Church, Academic, and Ministry Resources team at Zondervan. He and his wife Margie, live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Reviews

[C.T. Eldridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book gives a thorough examination of the church growth movement just after the turn of the millennium. I emphasize the timing of when the book was published, because (in my view) the book is now quite dated. If the same book were written today, I think the critiques and those chosen to make the critiques would be very different. Nevertheless, it was for me interesting and to a degree helpful to see how the writers were evaluating the movement at the time.

The book is very thorough even bordering on redundant at times. There probably could’ve just been three maybe four perspectives shared, and that would’ve covered the relevant issues. At times, it was hard to distinguish one author’s view from another’s, so why have so many?

Notably absent is any critique of the homogeneous unit principle. This absence is what I think makes the book most dated. None of the authors question HUP or share concerns about the ethnocentric and monocultural churches that it creates. Michael Emerson’s book “Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America” had only recently been published when this “Five Views” book came out, and these authors theologically formative years were well behind them when “Divided by Faith” changed evangelical consciousness. So you can expect zero engagement with the nature and consequences of HUP in this book.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helpful read for understanding missiological movements and theological evaluation etc.

[Brandon Current · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't Read. This book focuses more on the history and development of the specific "Church Growth" movement, not a debate about theological implications of various church growth strategies and emphasis in general. Much of it is spent on debating what the original leaders of the movement intended rather than what our attitude towards growth and outreach strategies should be. There were some helpful discussions, particularly from the last two views, but all in all, not a very useful book to anyone other than church historians.

[Jon Sherwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book forcing me (and I would presume many others) to take a look at why some of our foundational assumptions are there toward our understanding of church growth ... for we are to evangelize the world in our generation! (aren't we?) ...