Contrary to popular thought the church of God is growing

In January I was talking to a fifty-year old man while waiting in our dental surgery.  We got round to talking about the church, and he assumed that the church of God was in terminal decline. However, as I pointed out, while many British churches are indeed declining, worldwide the church of God is experiencing incredible growth. For Christian churches are growing around the world faster than the rate of population. The population growth rate is currently trending at 0.87% growth, but Christianity’s growth rate is trending at 1.08%. In fact the Christian population is projected to top 3 billion before 2050.  Among these Christians, Protestants, Independents, Evangelicals, and Pentecostal/charismatics are the fastest-growing groups. What is more, most new adherents to the faith come from non-Christian countries, while by contrast the global population continues to decline.

The Anglican Communion has doubled in size in the past 50 years. There are now at least 86 million Anglicans worldwide. Most parts of the Communion have grown, whether rapidly or modestly in recent decades.   Likewise Baptist churches are growing worldwide.  The fastest growing Baptist population is in Africa, while the second fastest growing Baptist population is in Asia.  Overall, there are around 170 million baptized Baptists in the world. The churches belonging to the Baptist World Alliance are to be found in 134 countries.

Interestingly I have discovered that the country with the fastest-growing churches is Iran.  While here in the UK the fastest-growing churches are made up of Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong.

It is true that in the United Kingdom most churches are declining. The United Reformed Church is the fastest declining church; while of all the declining Christian denominations Baptist churches are the slowest declining church. What is more, although some Baptist churches are already closing their doors, many Baptist churches are experiencing growth. For instance, when I was the minister of Altrincham Baptist Church over a period of 13 years the church quadrupled in size. Later when I was the senior minister of the town-centre Baptist church in  Chelmsford, what had been a church in strong decline, by the time I left had 400 members with another 600 people who belonged to our community. Many other churches in Chelmsford are growing, including Anglican churches and independent Evangelical churches.

In London many churches are growing, with over 43% of churches growing in Greater London since 1979.  The Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) network  has grown through church planting and restoration of historic churches. Since 1985 one of my friends is minister of a Baptist church in Croydon where every Sunday there are almost 3000 people worshipping.  Since 1985 HTB has started 20 new churches. In 2017 it was reported that across five city-centre plants from HTB, numbers had grown from 130 people to 2600, of which 19% had returned to church and 15% were entirely new to church. Or I think of my friend, Steve Chalke, a Baptist minister who has not only has been pastor of a growing Baptist church, but who founded the Oasis Charitable Trust and is a former United Nations’ Special Adviser on Human Trafficking. Today Oasis is responsible for 54 primary and secondary academies. In addition he has created refuges for women and with the encouragement of the British government has set up an alternative to prison for young offenders.

However, growth is not restricted to the South of England. In the Province of York, Stephen Cottrell (the Archbishop of York) has challenged the Anglican churches in that area to plant 3000 new churches over the next three years. As I saw with my own eyes, already many churches are growing. In St Peter’s, a city-centre church in Leeds, congregations number some 300 people on Sunday mornings, and many more attend the evening service.  Stephen Cottrell believes that his job is not to manage decline, but to ‘turn the tide’ of secularism and grow churches so that they might fulfil their God-given task to preach the Gospel and to demonstrate God’s love for the world by caring for the poor, the hurting, the oppressed and for all who need to experience the love of Jesus in action.

Yes, the church of God is not perfect.  Sadly, as has been seen in recent months, churches have yet to put in effective safeguarding practices to ensure that people are not abused by sexual predators who may be leaders in their churches. Nor do God’s people always truly love one another.  However, one thing in favour of the church is that Sunday by Sunday we recognise that we have fallen far short of what God expects of us, and so we confess our sin and ask for God’s forgiveness, and resolve to go more truly Christ’s way.

To conclude:  contrary to popular thought the church of God is growing. However, although Jesus wants to build his church as he told the Apostle Peter, his purpose for the church is to create a people who will fulfil his commission to share the good news of God’s love for his world and to demonstrate that love in the way we love the world.