Growing church

As a new subscriber to The Alabama Baptist, I have enjoyed reading about what is going on at other churches in our state. It has been encouraging to see how other brothers and sisters in Christ are using their time and resources to spread the good news and to disciple the people in their church families. I was, therefore, surprised to read the article by Rick Warren and his ideas for a growing church. He states that God wants His church to grow and doesn’t want it to stop growing. How does Rick Warren know God’s mind about which churches He will grow and which churches will be dissolved or remain relevant to that particular place just as it is? Where in the Scriptures does God give us an example of a church being a superstructure? It seems to me God uses many means of growing His church. Most of the time that means sending out and establishing new bodies of Christ in other places.

You might be interested in quoting another saying by Rick Warren such as “The back door of the church is always open for those ‘old people’ who don’t like the new way of ‘doing church.’” He seems to have a purpose to drive the church to corporate ways and to not trust in God’s purpose for each individual church in the full picture of bringing glory to God through His Son Christ Jesus.

Judy Wilson
Birmingham, Ala.