Quite a long time has passed since we witnessed the unexpected rise of a new kind of Calvinism. Few had anticipated that in the twenty-first century, so many millions of people spanning a host of nations and traditions would find themselves affirming such old and controversial doctrines. Yet many did so because they were wary and weary of the kind of big-box church-growth Evangelicalism that had been packaged and professionalized and very nearly franchised out.

Growth and Change

As a movement grows from infancy to maturity, it becomes necessary to ask some questions about it. Particularly, it becomes necessary to ask if it is possible that it over-corrected in response to some of the concerns that caused it to grow in the first place. It becomes necessary to ask where it may need to change before those over-corrections become too deeply entrenched to ever change.
The purpose of Andrew Heard’s book Growth and Change: The Danger and Necessity of a Passion for Church Growth is to get church leaders thinking about the connection between the two terms—between growth and change. “This book is designed to help you think about a very important and very emotional topic: change. And not just change in some generalized sense, but a kind of change that could have great significance in your life: change to our churches, our gospel ministries, and our Christian leadership.” It is change that would spur growth.
Why is such change so necessary? He explains in the introduction:

I am convinced that many of the ways we are running our churches and ministries, and many of the ways that we are exercising our leadership within our churches and ministries, has become a significant hindrance to the fundamental growth of the church, both numerically and spiritually. Or, again to put it positively, I’m convinced that with some significant changes to church life and to our leadership patterns and practices, we will see a greater penetration of the gospel into the lost community around us and so see many more people saved. I’m convinced that we can see more men, women and children come to faith in Christ and grown to maturity in Christ.

Big if true, as the young folk say. But also challenging because “we won’t change the things that need to be changed until the pain of not changing is greater than the pain of changing.” The author’s task, then, is to help us see and feel the pain of not changing to such a degree that we actually begin what could be a long and difficult process. The greatest part of that pain is the pain of knowing that the people around us are perishing and that it is our responsibility to reach them with the good news that could save them. “Unless we share God’s heart for the lost in such a way that it pains us greatly to see people perish without Christ, and unless that pain exceeds the pain that we know will accompany our efforts to make changes, we will almost always opt for the status quo. Of course, this is not the only factor that will determine whether we work to bring about change. But it’s a significant and inescapable part of the equation.”
I need to pause here to say that Heard is one of us. He’s not some church growth guru who is writing from a completely different theological perspective. He’s not one of those guys who wants to be able to start a new movement with his name attached to it or a consultant whose over-priced plan is to water down the gospel to make it more palatable to unbelievers. Not at all. He loves the gospel and would do nothing to tamper with it or adapt it to modern sensibilities. Yet he is also concerned that many churches—many of our churches—have too little concern for the growth of their churches and, therefore, for the salvation of the people in their communities. “If we develop a passion for church growth without being aware that this is one of the most dangerous passions a person can have, then the passion will destroy us and our work. What’s more, it’s one thing for the leaders of a church to be passionate about growth, but when that passion extends to the members of the church, the situation becomes even more dangerous.” In other words, he wants us to consider growth with a prudent awareness of the temptations it can bring and the many ways it can go wrong.
So the goal of his book is to create a passion for growth and a heart that is willing to bear the pain of change. It is to commit to being faithful, but also to assess whether we are being truly fruitful—to think deeply about both inputs and outputs, the things we do and the results we see in response. It is to convince Christians that it is honoring to God to consider and do those things that will spur growth, yet always in such a way that God’s Word reigns supreme over both means and ends.
Acknowledging that such talk makes some people nervous, it is perhaps worth noting here that no less than D.A. Carson provided the foreword and proclaimed it the best book in its field. “Andrew Heard,” he insists, “is a reliable guide to the biblical, theological, evangelistic and pastoral issues that will confront all Christian leaders who aim for growth, recognize the need for change, and hunger to work out of a rich and faithful biblical theology. Andrew is well known and well trusted in Australia, his homeland. Now we pray that his influence may multiply exponentially around the world.” And having read Growth and Change, I find myself echoing both the praise and the hope. I read this book with a deepening sense of conviction and with a deepening sense that I need to go back and read it again, and possibly again after that.

This week the blog is sponsored by Zondervan Reflective. This is an excerpt from Thaddeus Williams’ latest book on living out a radically God-centered systematic theology entitled Revering God: How to Marvel at Your Maker (Zondervan Reflective, 2024), featuring stories of Christian thinkers like Michael Horton, Fred Sanders, Joni Eareckson-Tada, John Perkins, Vishal Mangalwadi, and others on how God’s attributes have impacted their personal lives.
There are many so-called “evidential” arguments for God’s existence. The universe’s beginning points to its Beginner. Design in the universe points to its Designer. Moral laws point to the Moral Law-giver, and so on. Such arguments compute well with how certain minds are wired, particularly the more philosophic brainiac types. But there is another style of case for Christianity, one that I believe touches those without patches on their blazer elbows, pipes in their teeth, or five-syllable words on their tongues. There are arguments, if they can even be called that, which address themselves to all of us, every human and every dimension of our humanness. They address us not as cerebrums on sticks but as the artists, lovers, dreamers, hypocrites, heroes, loners, romantics, dullards, worshipers, adventurers, failures, jokesters, and weirdos that we are.
Every day you are bombarded with more arguments for God’s existence than your five senses can possibly intake or appreciate.Thaddeus WilliamsShare
They are something less like arguments and more like invitations, signposts, pointers, clues, keys that open doors to wider vistas of human experience, lighthouse beacons that guide us out of churning black ocean chaos to safer shores. They are what a pastor hailed as “America’s most important and original philosophical theologian” understood so well. Describing the searching soul, Jonathan Edwards says,
[I]t sees that till now it has been pursuing shadows, but that it now has found the substance; that before it had been seeking happiness in the stream, but that now it has found the ocean…. The enjoyment of [God] is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean.
Dusk, magnolia flowers, ground-rule doubles, dandelion fluff, thunder, baptisms, laughter-induced side cramps, the sudden volume spike of rain from a pitter patter to a torrent, the conversation with a homeless man, the wrestling match with a toddler, the cool pillowcase, the Lord’s table, and on we could go. Try to wipe God from the horizon and, in the final analysis, this stream of wonders runs dry. They are reduced to nothing but “illusions fobbed on us by our genes,” in the words of atheist Michael Ruse.
I have some books on my shelf that list five arguments for God. Others document a dozen. Peter Kreeft lists twenty. One youtuber boasts 150 arguments for God in a four-hour video. What is the true number? Something more like how many drops are in the Pacific, or how many subatomic particles exist. Every day you are bombarded with more arguments for God’s existence than your five senses can possibly intake or appreciate. Lord, give us eyes to see, noses to smell, buds to taste, fingertips to touch, ears to hear, and souls to sense the moment by moment grand case for You. Help us follow shadows to the Substance, streams to the sea, sunbeams to the Sun. Amen.

My gratitude goes to TGC for sponsoring the blog this week to let you know about another series of their always-interesting Good Faith Debates.

Today’s Kindle deals include a good selection of titles.
(Yesterday on the blog: Navigating the Space between Singleness and Marriage)
Hope for Those Tempted to Control Their Children’s Spiritual Lives
This is so important. “So much of our parenting is built on control, which is not always a bad thing. We want to control the influences around our child, so we don’t let them watch inappropriate TV shows. We filter the internet in our home, we get to know the parents of the friends they hang out with, and we tell them not to walk anywhere alone or to talk to strangers. But control in parenting can easily take a negative turn.”
‘No Celebrities Except Jesus’: How Asbury Protected the Revival
Hopefully you’ve got the ability to read this article at CT about the revival and how the administration at Asbury did their best to foster and protect it.
From WEIRD to Absurd
“As I watch the debates in Scotland, and talk with my Anglican friends – agonizing as they are over the implications of their bishops’ absurd decisions around same-sex blessings – I grieve but also feel a growing conviction that we shouldn’t take any of this too seriously. The devil loves to be taken seriously, he hates to be mocked. What we are living through is ridiculous, absurd, and passing.”
One Year Later, Moscow Pastor Says, ‘I Know God Is Going to Judge Us All’
“The first week after Russia began ‘special military operations’ in Ukraine, Russian pastor Evgeny Bakhmutsky couldn’t sleep.” My Worship Round the World journey was meant to take me to this church though, for obvious reasons, we’ve had to go elsewhere.
Facts Don’t Care About Your Healings
This is yet another interesting and challenging reflection from Samuel James.
Rethinking the Value of Potential
Melissa has “noticed that a common pro-life talking point needs reforming.”
Flashback: Only the Christian Faith Begins At the Top
Only the Christian faith begins at the top. We are made right with God first, then obey his law as it is suspended from above, as it is revealed from the heavens.

As I go into a cemetery I like to think of the time when the dead shall rise from their graves… Thank God, our friends are not buried; they are only sown! —D.L. Moody