A friend of mine recently posted the following to Facebook and it got me thinking:
Growth is just an increase in size, mass, complexity, or output. It says nothing about
direction, sustainability, or value. A tumor grows rapidly by hijacking resources,
crowding out healthy tissue, and eventually killing the host. Cancer doesn’t care about
the bigger picture—it’s pure, unchecked expansion.
The same pattern shows up elsewhere:
* Economies: GDP can rise while debt balloons, inequality widens, or ecosystems
collapse. “Growth” statistics look fine until the system cracks.
* Companies: Revenue and headcount can surge on hype, subsidies, or accounting
tricks, yet the underlying business model is rotten (see countless dot-com busts or
zombie firms).
* Bodies: Muscle grows with training; fat grows with excess. Both are “growth,” only one
improves function.
* Organizations/institutions: Bureaucracies expand staff and rules relentlessly, often
becoming less effective per person.
* Personal lives: Career climbing, social media followers, or material accumulation can
accelerate while mental health, relationships, or purpose atrophy.
The Useful Distinction
Healthy growth is functional growth: it serves the whole system over time, maintains or
improves resilience, and doesn’t destroy the conditions that make further flourishing
possible. It aligns with the entity’s purpose rather than subverting it.
Metrics matter, but they’re never neutral. What you optimize for, you get more of—often at the expense of unmeasured qualities. A forest grows by cycling nutrients, not by every tree maximizing height until they all topple in the first windstorm.
This is why blind “growth at all costs” is a slogan, not a strategy. Real progress requires judging the kind of growth: adaptive and integrated, or parasitic and fragile? The tumor teaches the lesson clearly—expansion alone is not evidence of life worth sustaining.
Growth doesn’t mean health. Even tumors grow.
At a certain point in the history of ancient Israel the people were very religious, but only a few thousand worshipped the One True God. Everyone else had gone after the Baals and Ashtoreths. They were even sacrificing their own children in worship to demons.
When we measure church faithfulness by numerical church growth, we make the amount of butts in the pews an idol. When numerical numbers become an idol than the Word of God becomes a liability that can be cut out if need be. Faithfulness to God and His word is an obstacle, a thing to be driven out. Fellowship with other Christians becomes a drag to be thrown off.
Numerical growth is not a sign of faithfulness, nor is numerical decline a sign of unfaithfulness. Sometimes God prunes, so that the branches can flourish later. Sometimes God removes His lampstands from a community so they can see what it means to “do what is right in their own eyes” until they realize the depth of their sin and cry out for a Savior.
To give a definitive answer as to why one congregation is growing while another is shrinking is to try and give an answer for something God has not revealed.
If not numbers, by what or how should the church measure growth?
Without becoming pietists, we look at the fruit being displayed in the lives of her members. Are we seeing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in our words and actions? Are we serving and welcoming the “least of these?” Are we standing for God’s truth, even if the world does not want to hear it? Are we applying the Ten Commandments to our vocations? Are we loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? And when we realize we are failing at those things, are we confessing our sins and receiving God’s forgiveness?
This might sound weird coming from the Evangelism Executive of the Oklahoma District, but one of the first things I tell a congregation that I am asked to speak at or put on a workshop for is that the goal is not numerical growth, but faithfulness to God’s word. I cannot promise sunshine and roses (it would be great if I could). Instead, I encourage people in their walk with the Lord and point out that one thing God calls us to do is to be His instruments in the reckless sowing of the word. We do not judge the soil quality. The Sower tells us to cast His word everywhere, so we cast it out everywhere. Pathway? Check. Rocky soil? Check. Weedy soil? Check. Good soil? Check.
We do this through our various vocations, wherever we live, work, shop, go to school, play, relax, etc. Our hope is that people will hear the gospel call and stop resisting the Holy Spirit. But we are not a social club or a business looking for customers. We are the church. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified. Our Lord calls us to “make disciples” by baptizing and “teaching them all I have commanded you.” Compromising on God’s word in an effort for numerical growth is to grow by cancer, not by health.
So, I encourage you, be faithful. Let God worry about growth and decline. He is God, let Him be in charge.
In Christ,
Rev. Daniel Ross, Evangelism Executive
Want to witness in a thoroughly Lutheran way but not sure if your church has enough
people for an Every One His Witness workshop? In 2021 the LCMS published a Self-
Study Guide for E1HW! You can find a link here: https://www.lcms.org/how-we-
serve/national/witness-and-outreach-ministry
