Important Qualities of Church Life

1. Empowering leadership

The leaders of growing churches are those who empower others: equipping, supporting, motivating and mentoring others. They spend much of their time in discipleship and delegation. They are not necessarily high profile people, and do not try to conduct their ministry alone. While they are concerned about goals and seeking help from outside the church, they are also relationship-oriented. Interestingly, Schwarz finds that formal theological training correlates negatively with the growth and quality of church life, .

2. Gift-oriented lay ministry

An important factor in the quality of church life was that the lay people affirmed that ‘my personal ministry involvements match my gifts’. Schwarz maintains that the pattern of leadership which plans projects and searches for people to fulfil the vision is not as likely to succeed as those who plan on the basis of the skills and talents present within the congregation. The quality of church life grows when people are provided with the opportunity to contribute to the life of the church in ways appropriate to their skills and abilities.

3. Passionate spirituality

It is not important whether people are charismatic or liturgical in their style of spirituality, but that they are enthusiastic about their faith, both in terms of their own prayer life and their church. Schwarz admits that people with quite erroneous ideas may have great enthusiasm and that some strange sects see dramatic growth. Enthusiasm does not guarantee truth. On the other hand, a church which is thoroughly orthodox in its beliefs and practices will not grow unless there is some contagious enthusiasm.

4. Functional structures

Schwarz has found a strong negative relationship between growth and members who say their churches are ‘tradition-bound’. Structures are important, he says. However, those structures must be such that promote the ministry of the church.

5. Inspiring worship

Schwarz maintains that it does not matter whether the style of worship is liturgical or free, ‘churchy’ or ‘secular’. It is important that worship is ‘an inspiring experience’ for the participants. On this basis, Schwarz argues that designing services for those who are not Christians, such as the seeker services of the Willow Creek Community Church, is not necessarily the best way to go.

6. Holistic small groups

Small groups are important to church growth, Schwarz says. The larger the church, the more important are small groups. They are not just a nice addition to the church, but part of the essence of church life. However, it is important that these groups be holistic and not just about Bible study or prayer. Rather, it is important that the application of faith to life is discussed and that members are able to raise matters of personal concern. It is also important for growth that churches consciously promote the multiplication of small groups through cell division.

7. Need-oriented evangelism

Not every Christian has the gift of evangelism, says Schwarz. To push people in that direction can cause great frustration. Rather, those with a gift for evangelism should be recognised and given encouragement. Christians should be challenged to use their existing relationships with others as contacts for evangelism. There is no one program which can be recommended for effective evangelism. Schwarz says that it is important that the evangelistic efforts of the local church focus on the needs and questions of non-Christians.

8. Loving relationships

There is a relationship between the extent to which church attenders spend time with each other outside official church-sponsored events, and church growth. Where people really care about each other, churches grow. In this context, Schwarz finds that there is a significant relationship between the amount of laughter in the church and the growth of the church.

The Interplay of Characteristics

Schwarz maintains that all eight characteristics must be present in a church for it to grow. The combined quality in all eight areas is far more important than succeeding well in any particular area. There are some churches which are poor in some areas but grow numerically because of effective marketing or other contextual factors, he says. However, the quality of the life in a church ultimately depends on succeeding in all eight areas. Because of this, setting goals for the number of attenders is not always helpful. It is more helpful to set goals in the area of quality than quantity (eg ‘By the end of November, 80 percent of all regular attenders at worship services will know their spiritual gifts’).
Incidentally, Schwarz finds that large churches are more likely to be declining and to have poor quality of church life than small churches. The greatest growth, proportionately, occurs in churches of less than 100 members.
If all eight factors are important in church life, the weakest factor can play a critical role. It is appropriate then for a church to work on this weak factor. Schwarz uses the analogy of biological growth. Growth of a plant will not occur unless there is a minimum level of all the vital nutrients in the soil. The extent of growth will depend on the availability of the weakest nutrient. This means that the factor which will lead to growth will be different for each church. While one church finds that a particular program or factor works to develop growth, it is likely that this is because this factor relates to its particular weakness. Such a program or factor will not necessarily work in all other places. Ideally, the church will examine its strengths and weaknesses and will use its greatest strength to work on its weakest point.

Biotic principles for growth

Schwarz opposes the use of blue prints for church growth, either of the kind which suggest a particular program (the super-technical program), or those which are ‘super-spiritual’ relying on particular theology or spiritual principles. One cannot take one model and make it work in every place, he says. Instead, he suggests six principles for growth.
1. Interdependence of all parts of the church, and all parts of leadership.
2. Multiplication should be the aim. For example, the fruit of evangelism should not be converts, but new evangelists.
3. Energy transformation, in which the energies of the people in the church are steered in productive ways.
4. Multi-usage so that the full benefits of energy are used. For example, Schwarz suggests that the best leadership training is not by training programs but by co-leadership in which people are encouraged to participate in actual leadership.
5. Symbiosis in which dissimilar organism live together and find ways of mutually enhancing each other. This, says Schwarz, is much better than either monocultures, in which groups serving only one small group in the community are developed, or competition.
6. Function. Every living thing has its function. If ministry is not bearing fruit - of one form or another - then one must ask what is wrong.
Schwarz is opposed to a purely pragmatic approach which imagines that church growth can be manufactured by doing the right thing. On the other hand, he also criticises those who are ‘super-spiritual’, maintaining that church life cannot be manufactured at all. Rather, he looks for a middle way:
Effort and energy should be invested in ensuring that the institutional pole of church life is in harmony with God’s principles, so that the organic pole can develop unhindered and healthy (p.99).
In other words, the way forward involves doing what we can to set the conditions so that natural qualitative and quantitative growth can occur.

Strengths and Weaknesses in Schwarz’ Approach

Schwarz’s materials are refreshing in several ways. Firstly, they are well presented. The materials are easy to read and to work through.
Secondly, rather than focussing on numerical growth, as have most church growth materials, Schwarz has a more rounded approach. He provides evidence that qualitative growth is important for long-term quantitative growth. His emphasis on looking at all of the aspects of church life rather than adapting a particular program makes his materials more flexible and relevant for a great variety of situations. All churches would do well to consider the characteristics that Schwarz suggests are important and most churches will find that reflection on them will be helpful and stimulating.
However, churches will find that Schwarz’s approach is sometimes too general to know how to remedy their weaknesses or build on their strengths. By identifying characteristics from a world-wide study, Schwarz has had to content himself with some very broad generalities. The strength of this is that he has recognised that there is no one program that will work in every place. Similarly, it must be acknowledged that the broader principles and characteristics he identifies must be developed differently in different contexts.
Studies of church health and growth inevitably produce generalisations. Schwarz has produced some principles which will be helpful in many situations. ‘Inspiring worship’, for example, will mean something quite different in one group to the another. ‘Loving relationships’ will be expressed differently in different cultures. The basis of Schwarz’ research in Australia is extremely limited with only a small number of churches taking part. General principles identified in a world-wide sample will not necessarily apply to churches in any particular context. To use the language of Schwarz, native Australian plants will not necessarily grow in soil that is generally considered to be highly fertile on international scales! Research such as that provided by the National Church Life Survey can be more specific about the characteristics that are important in the Australian context. The table above shows some of the similarities and differences between the analysis of the National Church Life Survey and Schwarz’s work.
Schwarz has not been able to take into account the contextual factors. Thus, he ignores the differences between ministry in urban and rural contexts, or in socio-economically poor or wealthy city suburbs. Nor has he done any work on the people who do not attend churches. His thinking about church life is thus dominated by the current models. Schwarz suggests ways in which the present models may be enhanced. Some of his principles may be relevant beyond the present paradigms. But that is still to be tested.

Philip Hughes