337 - Church Growth Is Not the Point

Church Growth Is Not the Point
By Robert K. Hudnut
New York, Harper & Row, 1975.143 pp. $7.95.

In a period when both clergy and laity are depressed about church statistics and terribly defensive about the health of the church, this book should prove to be a "refreshing stream in an and land." We have learned to live with statistics of decline in recent years, but most of us are not comfortable with them. Our culture judges success by growth. It measures effectiveness by numbers. It's hard to "shuck"

338 - Church Growth Is Not the Point

our culture. Most of us are More morose than we care to admit about where the church is headed.

Robert Hudnut argues very persuasively from a perspective rooted in the Bible that the church's business is not to grow. "The church is in business to recover the holy," he says, "to be recovered by it, to be objectified. That is the point of the church. If it grows, fine. If it doesn't grow, equally fine. The point is not growth but objectification, not size but jolt."

Hudnut's main quarrel is with a church that has lost its rootage in the biblical disclosure of what its life should be. The church has chosen to measure its success by the norms which prevail in secular institutions. So prestige, power, growth, influence mean everything to us when they should mean nothing. It is at this point that he introduces his thesis that the church should be "passive." "It is a matter not of the active church, which says we do, but of the passive church, which says let it be done to us." This theme of "the passive church" runs through the whole book. At one point he speaks of the passive as the experience of being seized. "You are gripped. You are filled. You are overpowered." At another point be speaks of the passive as "the shattering of your self-confidence. Hopefully your self-confidence will be so broken that your only confidence will be in God." The author goes so far as to suggest that the church member is a person that is -manipulated by God." I must confess that I winced a bit at his use of that word. In my circles, "being manipulated" is about the worst thing that can happen to a human being. Yet Hudnut argues very convincingly from the "slave image" of Paul that a Christian takes orders. The author even speaks of Paul as being "steamrollered" by God. The recovery of this kind of obedience is essential if the church is to go passive, which is what the church must do if it is to be the church of Christ. This all encompassing theme shows up in the title of many of the chapter headings, as for example, "The Point Is to Be Reduced," "The Point Is to Be Humiliated," "The Point Is to Suffer."

The book, in many ways, is a Bible study. Every chapter is rich in quotations from both the Old and New Testaments. Some chapters are an exegetical unfolding of biblical incidents or stories. Chapter Five deals with Jeremiah's call and Chapters Six and Seven pick up on Eziekiel's vision. A church group could profitably use the book as a study tool to enrich its understanding of the scriptural base for the church as the people of God.

The new thing about this book is not its conclusions, nor its perspective on the church, nor its careful exegesis of Scripture. What's new is the refreshing way in which these accepted theological conclusions are put. Hudnut writes with a lot of flare. His style is uninhibited. The words flow. Phrases hang by themselves like Fourth of July rocket bursts and then fall into place to smooth out the meaning of a passage. There are many memorable and quotable lines. It's easy

339 - Church Growth Is Not the Point

and delightful reading. Here, for example, are the closing lines to the chapter entitled, "The Point Is to Preach."

The power of the passive is enormous. One man gets twelve. The twelve become eleven. The man goes. The eleven scatter. They don't want it. They can't do it. And they certainly get no credit. They are cursed. They are beaten. They are stoned. They are shipwrecked. They are jailed. They are killed. And, as an angry crowd to whom they had preached said, "They have turned the world upside down" (Acts 17:6). That's the church.

A number of books have been written in recent years that have leveled their big guns on the church. Some have successfully made Swiss cheese out of the institution without prescribing any effective corrective. Robert Hudnut exposes the weakness but also prescribes the cure. It is a book with a lot of love for God and the church in it and should be a helpful resource in these difficult days in church life.

Dan C. Thomas
Webster Groves Presbyterian Church
Webster Groves, Missouri