Church Growth and Luke 15 - Peter Anderson

In his 2002 survey of Scottish churches Dr Peter Brierley predicted that the 11.2% of the population then attending church would drop to 6.8% by 2020. Assuming this prediction is true then each week around 240 stop attending church in Scotland. I believe that the solution to a nation moving away from God is for churches to radically realign themselves with Jesus' mission. Jesus had a very clear mission: "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. …I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Matthew 9:12-13, NASB).

A mission statement is meaningless unless it dictates how we spend our time and money. For Jesus His mission drove Him to actively spend time with sinners. In the opening verses of Luke chapter 15 we find the religious leaders complaining that Jesus "receives sinners and eats with them." The word "receive" is the Greek word "prosdechomai", which Luke uses six other times in his gospel. It means to eagerly await and look for. With this passion for mission I moved to Edinburgh in 1998 with the simple goal of starting a church by reaching "sinners"; with God's help we've worked hard at presenting the gospel as strongly and as clearly as we could to as many as possible in our city. As a result since 2002 we've recorded over 2000 responses to the gospel in our services (25% have been first time decisions) and the church has gone from 4 of us in a flat to 600-700 gathered on a Sunday in two locations.

In response to the criticism of the Jewish leaders Jesus goes on in the rest of Luke 15 to tell them three parables as illustrations of God's heart for lost sinners. In the first two, the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7) and the parable of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10), He gives us heaven's perspective - revealing God's passionate search for the lost and heaven's celebration over sinners who repent. But in the third parable, the parable of the lost son (Luke 15:11-32), as well as giving us a wonderful revelation of the Father's heart He also gives us an insight into our human responses to Him.

He starts in Luke 15:11 by introducing the characters: "There was a man who had two sons." The man represents God, the older son represents the people with a religious mindset and the younger son represents the sinner who repents. Let's consider each one.

The younger son

Jesus said "…the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country…". He then goes on to describe how the son becomes progressively more aware of his need. Notice in Luke 15:32 how the Father describes this son in his needy state, He describes him as "dead" and "lost". While many churches today don't like viewing people far from God as "sinners", "lost" or as spiritually "dead", from God's perspective that's what they are. Unless we recognize how utterly lost people are living without God then we'll be passionless in our endeavours to reach them.

The older son

From verse 25 onwards we see the older son's reaction to the Father's acceptance of the younger son. Instead of celebrating with heaven over the sinner who had repented he was jealous. Throughout the gospels we see the religious minded being jealous of Jesus' success (Matthew 27:18 and John 11:48), we can also see Paul in Acts getting the same response (Acts 13:45). When we hear of another church authentically growing do we find in us an older brother response which instead of rejoicing at their success we seek reasons to criticize? One thing I've started doing in recent years, as a way of counteracting an "older son" mentality, is to share praise reports in our congregation of how other churches in our city are growing through new birth.

The Father

The Father's response to the homecoming son was "…bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet…". This is a wonderful description of God's grace for repentant sinners. The Father gave instant acceptance and restoration to the younger son without waiting for him to evidence his repentance. If we're to be churches who pursue Jesus' mission and actively "receive sinners", then we've got to deeply understand grace and believe that the gospel has power to truly transform people.

Peter Anderson is the Senior Pastor of Destiny Church in Edinburgh. In 2003 he left his job as an Architect and become the first staff member at Destiny as the full time pastor. Since then the church has grown from a 4 to 600 - 700.