True & False Growth
by Donald T. Williams
The first thing we must do to fulfill the Great Commission—to make, not just converts, but disciples from every nation—is to make sure that the Church is functioning as God designed it to. The description of the way it is supposed to work in Ephesians 4 is a picture of what making disciples looks like. To this end, the members must let the ministers equip them for service so that both they and the Church may grow until we all attain to the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God, and maturity, even to the measure which belongs to the stature of Christ (v. 13). In verse 16, Paul puts together the minister’s training and the believers’ serving to show how the whole process is supposed to work. It all flows from Christ, “from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”
In other words, the primary nature of church growth as the New Test-ament understands it is not growth in converts but in Christlikeness; it is not growth in numbers but in new life. Now, the church is supposed to grow in numbers as people are being saved and added to it daily. But this is to happen as a byproduct of the deepening discipleship of believers. If it is not happening, there is something wrong with that discipleship. And if numerical growth happens any other way, it may end up not being real growth at all.
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Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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