Pragmatism in the Church
Pragmatism (noun): an approach that evaluates theories of beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application.
Before we begin to explore the subject of pragmatism it is important to clarify that pragmatism itself isn’t wrong, there are many occasions where a pragmatic approach is sensible and even common sense being applied to a situation. For instance, if I know that I am at my most productive and creative in the morning and early afternoon then it would make no sense for me to work late at night instead. Another example might be a business that has found a profitable strategy that leads to a steady revenue and would naturally want to sustain that, or a sports coach with a successful team and formation will want to be pragmatic in keeping a winning formula.
So there is a time and a place for pragmatism in life, but when we look to apply pragmatism to spiritual things this is when it becomes problematic - when we try to employ it as a philosophy in the area of truth and faith. The American theologian R.C. Sproul defines it like this:
“Pragmatism is the only philosophy native to America. Pragmatism eschews any hope of discovering ultimate truth. It is skeptical with respect to objective principles of righteousness and defines truth as ‘that which works.’ In this philosophy, the end always justifies the means. The driving force behind decisions within the scope of pragmatism is the force of expediency.” [1]
You may well have noticed that in more recent years there has been an increased move towards church growth and attendance, many churches now have large staff teams and run several different mid-week courses and programmes that cater to many different age groups and needs. Whilst it is always heart-warming to witness a church that is genuinely growing numerically and spiritually, the shadow side to this is that the larger a church fellowship becomes, the greater the risk of succumbing to pragmatism.
The philosophy of pragmatism is: “If it works, then it is true.” Taking its origins from the 1870s, Pragmatism has continued to be a popular means of evaluation and assessment, particularly in the area of business and commerce. It is the idea that if something works and can be successfully replicated, then that idea or model is desirable since it has been proven to work and consistently yields good results. This would certainly be an advantageous philosophy in business and commerce, since the aim is to sell products and services and produce revenue, with the proven “cash cow” being the desired byproduct of a successful strategy and product. This same approach has been transferred across into church leadership, and in more recent times there have been several different leadership books and conferences aimed at church leaders which are essentially little more than merely importing business management strategy into church governance.
The result of this has been the cultivating of a pragmatic philosophy that if the church is growing greatly in number, then the leadership must be doing something right. There may also be the belief that God is blessing the ministry in the church because of the growth in numbers in attendance. But this philosophy is spiritually naive and unbiblical, for the simple reason that if a church minister is taking their lead from a book that takes its roots in worldly business management techniques for commercial success rather than the Word of God to pastor a church, then they are not building a true church but rather, a religious institution. The author and theologian Dustin Benge makes this observation:
“Some churches view their governance as though the church were a business, with a chief executive officer to rule over their congregation. Others want entrepreneurs who are continually innovating because they think numerical growth comes through clever techniques. However, these worldly leadership models nowhere resemble the biblical pattern of leadership within the body of Christ. Biblical offices are incompatible with management of earthly organisations because they have the utmost honour of representing the Lord Jesus Christ, the church’s supreme head.” [2]
Many church leaders today are in real danger of thinking that they are leading spiritually when in reality they are merely using worldly, tried and tested methods to draw people into attending a religious institution that is being run like a corporation. Many of these leaders are “running an organisation” rather than leading a church, and their barometer for success is not measured by discipleship but by numerical growth. Some of these leaders do not appear to be concerned that most of their congregation are stuck on spiritual milk, many of whom may not even be born-again believers but merely attendees who are under the illusion that they are Christians.
This is where the idea that “if a church is growing numerically then God is blessing that church” does need to be held up to humble and wise spiritual discernment. Could it be that the very thing that is attracting great numbers of people on a Sunday isn’t God at all, but a potent combination of worldly attractions? With regards to the young people, could it be the lively worship band on the stage and the sense of enjoyment and catharsis that comes from being in a large gathering of people? Could it be down to a large number of attractive, single young adults and an engaging and humorous speaker? When it comes to the families present, could it be the children’s ministry and the belief that the church will disciple their children for them so that they don’t have to?
The important question we need to ask is: what is attracting people? Is it God or something else?
Understandably, one of the biggest concerns over the last few decades has been the decline in number in the local church, with church members growing older and fewer families and in particular the teenagers and young adults noticeably absent. The church seemed to be “dying out,” and with the concerning absence of young people, the issue needed urgent attention. Now the obvious answer to this should be a devotion to prayer and bringing this great need to the Lord in fervent prayer and intercession, recognising that only God can bring regeneration of the heart and transform the desires of our hearts. It is after all only God who can draw people to His Son, something that Jesus put great emphasis on explaining to the crowds during His earthly ministry:
“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37 ESV)
That is why prayer is so vital concerning church growth - unless the Holy Spirit is moving people’s hearts toward Jesus Christ and drawing them into church fellowship, the church is going to be full of carnal-minded, unregenerate people who think that they are Christians when they are not. Therefore, we are not doing anyone any favours spiritually when we try to use a “bait and switch” approach by luring them into the church by using entertainment as a Trojan horse for Christianity without calling them to true repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. It is a worldly philosophy that removes the supernatural and relies purely on the material when our reliance should be on God and the power of His Holy Spirit because spiritual fruit cannot be produced by human means, regeneration does not come by using attractional church models but by supernatural rebirth brought about by the Holy Spirit. (See John 3:8)
However, instead of dealing with the problem properly and spiritually, church leaders started turning to business strategies to start building the church numbers up again, ambitious as they were to make the church a “successful institution.” The main catalyst for this “Church Growth movement” was the American missiologist C. Peter Wagner, Professor of the Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary. Wagner’s principle was that congregations needed to be built up from groups of people who were of the same kind to each other, the idea being that if they had more in common with each other they would be more likely to remain in fellowship because they identified with their own kind of people. [3]
The Church Growth movement saw segregation as being desirable since it would be more effective to draw people into groups that catered for their particular social class and age range. This could well explain the modern church’s approach to Sunday services, where a traditional service would be attended by older people who preferred formal, liturgical worship, family worship which catered for families and kept the children entertained, and contemporary worship, with its soft rock worship band, atmospheric lighting, and smoke machine, which would appeal to the youth and young adults. What we have in reality are several different churches determined by age demographic who are using the same building. It is my deep conviction that this approach is hurting the church’s discipleship since a family is made up of children, parents, and grandparents and if the Church is the family of God then why are we dividing ourselves up like this? This can be explained in one word: pragmatism, and this pragmatic approach is going to compromise everything in the life of the church, resulting in a church that is full of unregenerate, spiritual goats who will end up outnumbering the true regenerate sheep, as the American missionary-preacher Paul Washer warns:
“If you use carnal means to attract men then you are going to attract carnal men and you’re going to have to keep using greater carnal means to keep them in the church. So what has happened is this: we have these large churches filled with many unconverted, carnal people - but in those churches, we also have this small group of people that honestly want Christ and honestly want His Word and they honestly want to be transformed. They don’t need anything else, all they need is true worship of the true God and Scripture being preached to them and lived out before them, that is all that they want. Now I want to tell you the great sin of the American (and British) pastor, and this has got me into a lot of trouble, but it’s true — that small group of converted people in that local church, all they want is Jesus and all they want to do is the right thing, they want purity, they want truth — they want Christ! But the pastor, in order to keep this larger group of unconverted people, caters to them. So while he is feeding those carnal men and women with carnal things he is letting the sheep of God starve to death and he is going to have to stand before God one day in judgement.” [4]
We have all too often heard tragic stories of children and vulnerable adults being neglected and starved physically, and it is right that we should be outraged at this and want to right this injustice. But what is even more chilling is when we remember that the soul is infinitely more valuable than the body, as the soul is eternal, and yet the idea of the sheep being repeatedly starved spiritually in order to entertain the goats in our churches barely even registers any concern with many modern church leaders. The painful reality is that many of us as church leaders have become carnal ourselves, our focus has often been directed toward money, buildings, and attendance. I do often wonder how we managed to deviate from responding to a call to ministry out of a deep love of Christ, His Word, and His people to becoming soulless entrepreneurs treating people like commodities to build earthly church empires. Since when was the heart of the pastor and shepherd replaced with the ruthless ambition and ego of a corporate CEO? Since when did we stop leading churches and start running businesses in church buildings?
Many church leaders have failed in this regard, and it is high time that we humble ourselves and acknowledge our great failure before God to faithfully shepherd His Church and the serious implications of breaking the promises that were made at our ordination. The American pastor and author Paul Tripp calls on Church leaders to face up to their failure in this regard:
“It is time for leaders to confess that in many places and in many ways we haven’t represented our loving Lord well. It’s time for mourning and repenting as we celebrate the grace that gifts us with fresh starts and new beginnings. It’s time for us to confess that personal ambition often moves and shapes our leadership more than the Gospel does. It’s time to confess that as leaders we have given into the temptation to be ambassadors of something other than our Lord. It’s time to humbly admit that we cannot serve leadership idols and be ambassadors at the same time. How many times are we going to see the same sad story of the demise of a ministry leader, and the destruction of the leadership community that surrounded him, before we recommit ourselves to God’s values and to our ambassadorial calling, and as we recommit, cry out that He would, in love, rescue us from us?” [5]
Paul Tripp’s gracious calling out of wayward church leaders is a vital warning to all of us, and in particular to those church leaders who do not realise that they are in real danger of God stepping them down from their positions in Christian leadership.
Pragmatism in the church is the real pandemic, it has invaded the modern church in the West to such an extent that it has found its way into almost every area of our worship, mission, and ministry. It has been my firm conviction that we are being confronted by the reality that so much of our modern worship is worldly and sensual because we have allowed pragmatism to guide us in our worship and not Scripture. The Covid-19 pandemic had closed many church buildings and greatly limited our ability to worship as we once did and during the lockdowns, I often wondered if God was shaking the church to call us back to true, biblical worship that honours Him. This is significant and it matters for those who are truly serious about God and not just going along for the ride. A true faithful believer understands that there is so much at stake here, you could even say that everything is at stake - salvation and eternal life through repentance and faith in Christ, the presence of God in our Churches, and the power of the Holy Spirit transforming and sanctifying our lives.
I believe that the mainstream Church finds herself in a perilous position, perhaps even having reached the point of no return. The desire to please man and not God has led to a reluctance and in many places a refusal to preach the biblical Gospel and to call people to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Footnotes:
[1] R.C. Sproul “Principle vs Pragmatism” https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/principle-vs-pragmatism/
[2] Dustin Benge “The Loveliest Place” (Crossway, 2022) pp 95-96
[3] Referenced from Ralph H. Elliot “Dangers of the Church Growth Movement” https://www.religion-online.org/article/dangers-of-the-church-growth-movement/
[4] Paul Washer, “Why most churches are teaching a False Gospel” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ5A-gCkOCc
[5] Paul David Tripp “Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church” (Crossway, 2020) p109