Growth and Change by Andrew Heard, Book Review
“My purpose in writing this book is to promote change” (p.10) writes Andrew Heard. The purpose, audience, and logic of this book are clear. The style is easy to read, full of biblical quotes, and designed to challenge and compel. Written by a successful evangelical practitioner, it’s a nice blend of how-to built upon what Heard calls biblical or theological principles. I enjoyed this book, despite a couple of niggling questions. Most people will find it helpful – it’s well worth the read.
The book basically follows a sustained argument. God created a good world, now fallen and separated from him. God is redeeming people to himself through Christ, using us – his church. Therefore, the church ought to be growing as more people come into the kingdom. We need to change in order to grow more.
It’s at this point we meet Heard’s intended audience. Evangelicals, with the same biblical convictions as himself, whose churches are not changing and growing. They have settled for being faithful, but their faithfulness is not resulting in fruitfulness.
Heard then takes us back to ‘first principles’. Namely, that all things were created to be under Christ, some are returning to Christ – others are destined for hell; the cross as the solution; life as a time to choose; God’s love for his creation; and the imperative for us to call people back to Jesus.
Heard’s intended audience will agree with the above list. So it follows that if all were created to be under Christ, and failure to do so results in eternal damnation, then faithfulness is not our task. Having a heart for and saving the lost – or fruitfulness – this is our calling. Our task is not primarily to help others and ourselves become more fulfilled people. Our context is that death and judgement are coming for all. People’s greatest need is forgiveness. This is God’s heart, that none should perish, so we need to God-like, change and focus on gospel growth.
Heard has knowingly walked us into a theological and practical conundrum. Who causes church growth? Is it God or us? If it’s God, isn’t faithfulness the correct paradigm? We plant and water, but only God can cause the growth, right? Heard walks us out of the conundrum, “our inputs aren’t directly or irrevocably tied with outputs. But this does not mean we have no responsibility; there isn’t no link between inputs and outputs (p.118).”
Heard is seeking to find the “middle ground between… hyper-Calvinism at one pole and Arminianism at the other. [His]… shorthand way of summarizing this is to say that while we don’t control outcomes, we do influence them (p.118, emphasis his).” At this point I am nervous. I do not think this debate sits on a continuum. Either God is sovereign, or he is not. Either humans are autonomous actors, or we are not. Heard claims to be a Calvinist, but human ‘influence’ is not a Calvinist expression. I think there are preferable ways to navigate this conundrum.
Heard is at pains to show that Christians, particularly leaders need to practice and lead ministry inside this tension. With a God-like heart for the lost, concerned and proactively seeking sinners, yet content under God’s sovereignty and redemptive plans. Having outlined his middle ground in this tension, Heard then leans as far to the human responsibility side as he can allow himself.
For Heard, God has created an ordered world, where our inputs result in predictable outputs. It’s now up to us to be as strategic and effective as we can be, working inside creation principles and in line with God’s mission. Here Heard’s pragmatism shines through. The final third of the book is instruction to the faithful about how to be more fruitful, by being more focussed, strategic, and outcome focused. There is much insight here.
Key ideas in this final third include preaching that is practical, aiming for and measuring evangelistic effort and conversions, casting gospel vision, and working hard. This focus on outputs can put stress upon the leader. Heard has a chapter on dealing with the stress of ministry, while remaining focussed and productive.
No book can say everything, and Heard’s book is no exception. He has carefully constructed a thesis, and even detoured to address an unavoidable conundrum. My reservations about this book have more to do with what Heard does not say – other tensions he does not address.
God desires that all should be saved (1 Tim 2:4), and he is not wishing that any should perish (2 Pet 3:9). Yet God does not choose to save, love, call, or predestine all. Heard writes much of God’s love for the lost, something of the dangers of hyper-Calvinism, but fails to explore the contours of this tension. Likewise, Jesus is building his church (Matt 16:18), but this does not mean the church is always growing in all places. How do we explain this tension? Another under-explored tension is how both Jesus and Paul respond to people’s eternal and temporal needs and contexts.
I detect a pattern in Growth and Change. Heard emphasises the human responsibility side of what Christopher Watkin calls a diagonal. Heard’s emphasis also lands on the fall and redemption centre of the biblical narrative, rather than the creation and restoration frame. He does so to encourage gospel zeal, and we all desire that. In his desire to promote change, his frames and biblical references are selective. And yet, as Heard himself reminds us, our task is to present the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27), for in it we find the fullest frames for ministry and mission.
My deepest musings have to do with Heard’s title – Growth and Change. For a book that compels us to change so that more gospel growth might result, there is little discussion of the imperative to change now. Death and judgement are coming, and God has invited us to share in his rescue mission – agreed. But this is not new. Philip Jensen, cited in the book as a voice in Heard’s life, was a strong advocate for growth and change. He raised and mentored hundreds of gospel ministers. My theological education (at Moore) espoused the values Heard expresses. Yet church attendance, conversions, and the numbers of newcomers in church are all in decline.
Is the best explanation for this decline that a generation of church leaders have lost their gospel heart, evangelistic zeal, and settled into hyper-Calvinist faithfulness mode? Is loss of zeal and bad theology causal, a correlation, or a consequence? Why is decline so prevalent at this moment? And is the core of the problem, and therefore the solution, to rally the current batch of leaders?
I suspect not. There are other social phenomenon that Heard’s explanation fails to account for. Why did the Australian church grow in the 1950s? Did the leaders of that era have their theology and focus right, and we have it wrong? Why did Catholics grow faster than evangelicals in the 1950s? What happened in the 1960s onwards? The Australian church has been in percentage attendance decline since the 1960s. Is the core problem the theology and practices of church leaders since 1961?
There is decline across the Western church at large. Have most leaders in the 30 odd Western countries simultaneously got it wrong? Conversions in Korea have been much higher than in other SE Asian countries. Conversions among Persians have been much higher among other Arabs. Are different church leaders in Korea and among Persians the best explanation for the difference in gospel outcomes?
I agree with Heard that we ought to be encouraging Australian church leaders to be outcome focussed, strategic, confident, and passionate. I also agree that there is a current risk of syncretising the gospel into a consumerist self-referential self-help message. Syncretism is an eternal challenge, but has a particular incarnation we must confront at this present moment.
Yet I believe the particular challenges facing the Western church are bigger than leadership. The reasons for decline have more to do with receptivity of our culture when compared to the past. We must learn to articulate the gospel (or begin gospel conversations) in ways that intersect with the yearnings of this age. Heard does not engage with or help us respond to that part of the equation. His emphasis on the desire to change and grow within the leader, gives the impression the leader’s attitudes and beliefs are the biggest part of the problem.
Cumulatively, Heard’s thesis lands in place that is unsettling. If I could channel Sanders, and caricature Heard, it sounds like we are saved by grace, but the kingdom grows by hard work. For Heard, we influence outcomes, and if we can embrace change, have a heart for the lost, be strategic, outcomes focused, and work hard, we can influence the outcomes a little more and affect growth.
Like Heard, I am concerned by church attendance decline, and I believe humans are responsible – entrusted with gifts and tasked to bear fruit. I am even in favour of being more outcome focused and hard work. But this is not best way to frame the solution.
We are but empty vessels, and it is Christ working through us – his power in our weakness, working through his word and Spirit – that is the powerhouse of transformation. We are saved by grace and the Kingdom grows by grace as Christ renews us, individually and corporately. We are effective in his service, is as much as we are in Christ, and he redeems us, his church, his world, and all creation.
Growth has declined, and change is required. But it is too simple to suggest growth has declined because we have failed to change. First, we must explain why we need to change now. How is it that our changing context means we have to adapt our approach to engage this era with an eternal gospel? And second, we must encourage people about how we change in Christ.