The three modes of Chinese church growth
Chinese churches usually start off with a core group of families who are passionate about growing their church. Usually these are young families with young children, and they naturally reach out best to other young families in their own circle of contacts. And as they share the gospel with other parents, naturally they will also reach that entire family, and that family will also join the church. This is the first mode of growth - and this is why Chinese churches grow very fast in their early years. It’s because whole families are being added to their numbers by a core group of families passionate for evangelism. This kind of growth tapers off after a while as passionate families exhaust their circle of family contacts.
As the children of the families get older, there opens up a new mode of growth. In high school or university these children begin to ‘own’ their own faith, instead of just being brought along to church by their parents. They learn about evangelism, and begin to share the gospel with their own friends. While this second mode of growth usually begins in high school or university, it continues on as these children go through each successive phase of life. So when they leave high school to join university they meet a whole new lot of friends they can start sharing the gospel to. When they start work, again, a new set of friends. When they marry and have children, again, a new set of friends through their playgroup. This adds individual friends one by one, so growth by this mode is slower.
While the second mode of growth adds individuals from new families, it struggles at reaching the rest of those families, particularly non Christian fathers and mothers. This is because Chinese parents generally aren’t very receptive to being told by their children that their religious convictions for their whole lives have been wrong! This is when the third mode of growth becomes important. Because while non Christian parents are not receptive to hearing the gospel from their kids, they are much more receptive to hearing it from people their own age, and of their own culture. In this third mode of growth, parents who are passionate about evangelism need to be connected up with non Christian parents of church kids. This kind of growth is much harder to achieve, as it takes some communication and understanding between age groups – all the other kinds of growth can just happen by the ‘oldies’ doing their thing, or the ‘young people’ doing their thing!
Now, there is a fourth mode of growth, which is biological growth. This is when young people marry and begin having children of their own… But that’ll just make my diagrams far too complicated. Stick with these three for now.
Bear in mind that these are modes, and not stages. You don’t leave one stage behind and move on to another – you add new modes of growth to your church. While the youth in your church kicks off the second mode of growth, the first mode should still keep on happening to some extent, although practically speaking, people will exhaust their circle of relationships after a while. This is why Chinese churches need to become proficient at the third mode of growth – to make use of the new family contacts that your church has made over the years!
[ PS: what modes are your church operating on at the moment? ]
Which modes are operating in our church right now? I can only speak of the English Congregation.First mode… This is still happening. But not so much.Second mode… This is happening… not too much either but not non-existent either. It\’s in a lukewarm inbetween. Usually by the same few people. Also note that in this second mode, children also gain a certain degree of freedom once they start going to uni / work… they become drowned out by the worries or pleasures of the world and more blue/green short adults disappear than red short adults join. (Why? I\’d leave that for another time.)Third mode… Some of the parents in the English Congregation have joined us through this.Fourth mode… There aren\’t actually that many births in our congregation at the moment. Most of the kids in Sunday School are the kids of those adults who have been around for a long time, or the kids of the friends who these adults have invited to church. Also, a great part of the congregation\’s growth is the passing on of teenagers from the Cantonese and Mandarin congregations to the care of our own. These teenagers will go through the ranks of the youth ministry and then when they reach that uni / young workers / young parents lifestage… well…. hopefully most of them will stick around although I suspect that some of them will also suffer the fate described in the second mode (above).Also noted… It seems to me from this diagram that the blue people (core church members) seem to be doing all the work in this church! For the church to continue with sustainable growth, the green people need to become blue, the red people need to become blue, the yellow people need to become blue, and they all need to do their part. Otherwise the church will slowly choke… with all the blue people overworked and the other green / red / yellow members leeching and pulling things down.One thing which may determine whether this happens or not is whether the green / red / yellow members understand the gospel… This is probably an overgeneralisation but I believe that if they truly understand the gospel, they will naturally become blue. If they don\’t understand the gospel, they will hang around church for other reasons. The blue people may get bogged down in the serving / leading / pastoral care of the other colours and if they still don\’t change colour, the blue people may may run out of time to, or lose focus on, carrying out the first, second and third modes. Some churches operate with the fear of retaining the green / red / yellow people to such an extent that they make significant compromises on their mission, on theology, on discipline, and other things like that.
Rather, fear of losing…
Yeah, the diagram is simplified for the sake of clarity. It would be a pretty dysfunctional church if all the work of evangelism was done by the original few members!