Do all Healthy Churches Grow?
The reason why God's vision for your local church may not be forever growth
Many people I’ve talked to over the last couple of years still have some habit, hobby, or practice they have carried with them out of the COVID-19 stay-at-home quarantines of 2020. Some people really got into working out (I, on the other hand, have spent 2023 and 2024 undoing the stress eating I did in 2020 and 2021!). Some people learned how to play the guitar or brushed up on a second language. For me, it was gardening. What began as a couple of tomato plants during COVID has now blossomed into a fully operational backyard garden four years later, complete with a variety of vegetables.
But I never abandoned the tomatoes. Each year my youngest daughter and I plan next year’s garden, I give Tara assurances that I will reduce the amount of space devoted to tomato plants—and usually end up going overboard when push comes to shove. I’ve learned a lot about tomato plants over the last several years…and, quite surprisingly, the Holy Spirit has taught me quite a bit about spiritual formation, and even the local church, through something as simple and seemingly-unrelated as the tomato plant. In fact, I’m actually of the belief that a pastor cannot fully appreciate the concept of spiritual formation/discipleship, without spending at least one Summer season tending to some sort of fruit-bearing plant.
One of the things I learned early on about tomato plants is that every variety falls into one of two essential categories: determinate and indeterminate:
Determinate tomato plants refer to tomato varieties that grow to a finite size and stop growing. These are good "container plants”, since they take on more of a bush shape, don’t reach more than four feet tall, and don’t continuously expand throughout the season.
Indeterminate tomato plants refer to tomato varieties that continuously grow in a vine-like manner throughout the entire season. They flourish best when caged, staked, or trellised, as they can grow over ten feet tall with the proper support.
What do tomatoes have to do with church growth?
In my particular branch on the Christian family tree and in my work as a missiologist, I frequently have conversations about, and consult with organizations, on the subject of church growth. For the record, I think it’s great that churches grow! But one of the phrases that gets thrown around a lot is that “all healthy things grow.” The implication is, therefore, that if a church is healthy it will naturally grow (and the reverse is also implied…if a church is growing it is naturally healthy!).
But as we see from the world around us, that statement just isn’t true.
You have heard it said, “healthy things grow,” but I say unto you, “not everything that grows is healthy.”
Consider a tumor or black mold or a tapeworm or a list of felony indictments on a candidate running for office—not everything that grows is inherently healthy. Some very, very unhealthy things grow—often unhealthy things grow because they feed off of healthy things. Selah.
What’s more, consider the indeterminate tomato plant that grows for a season and then reaches maturity and concludes its growing. Shoot…consider the human being! Our bodies stop growing fairly early on in our maturation as people. Continued growth past the age of maturation is considered disordered, not healthy.
So while it’s true that some healthy things perpetually grow (such as indeterminate tomato plants and the list of books on my Amazon wish list), it is also true that unhealthy things grow, too—often at the expense of healthy things. And it is additionally true that some things that are healthy actually stop growing.
So what is the local church?
While some churches may be designed for perpetual, ongoing, forever sort of growth, this type of growth presents unique challenges that just about any megachurch pastor will be honest with you about. Discipleship is a challenge. Helping people engage in the community beyond the surface level is a challenge. Forming people to take ownership of their own involvement in the mission of God is a challenge. Sometimes even connecting with the reality of what’s happening in one’s own community can be a challenge. Some churches handle this sort of indeterminate growth better than others. But is the destiny of every local church indeterminate growth?
No.
Some churches (and I would argue, to an extent, all churches) are called—are destined for a different type of existence.
The Reproduction of the Determinate Church
Some churches are called, like a determinate tomato plant—like a determinate human being—to be a determinate church. They are called to reach a stage of maturity and then actually stop growing. (Some folks reading may think I’m committing a heresy!)
That doesn’t mean that determinate plants—or determinate churches are unfruitful though. It means that how their fruitfulness endures is not by the continued growth of the plant itself but through the propagation of it.
I can take a cutting from each of my determinate tomato plants, stick it in a jar of water, and within a few weeks watch roots begin to shoot from the cutting. Or I can take the seeds of one of the tomatoes that fruit, place them in a damp paper towel and a plastic bag for humidity and watch new life spring from those seeds. Either the cutting or the seedlings then must be planted into the ground so that the life of the mature plant lives on through multiplication. One determinate tomato plant is capable of producing thousands of new plants, not through its own growth, but through its multiplication.
Human beings are obviously the same way. We reproduce not through perpetually growing, but through multiplication. My wife and myself have three children who will mature and raise their own families. More than likely I will have more grandchildren than I had children—and more great-grandchildren than I had grandchildren. That’s the principle of multiplication in a determinate species.
The same is true with the determinate church. “How large is too large for a church to be” is a question I’m wholly uninterested in. Different thinkers have given their exact number over time, but I don’t think there’s a magic number. I think maturation is the goal. And once maturation takes place—whether the church is 50 or 50,000, multiplication is what’s in order.
That means cultivating new congregations, planting new churches, revitalizing old churches—and all of this new life being built to be multipliers on their own.
The irony of my metaphor is that both determinate and indeterminate tomato plants eventually die. And both have the ability to multiply. But when rapid, continuous fruit-bearing happens, sometimes we can overlook the need to prepare for the next season by multiplying from the growth of this season. Selah.
So while it’s not necessarily true that all healthy things grow—what is true is that all healthy things multiply. The caveat (which is a subject for another time) is that multiplication isn’t a guarantee of health any more than growth is. Health is something that must be tended to in its own rite. But whether your church has experienced year over year, continuous growth, or you struggle to get people to even show up on Sundays, begin to pray that God would birth in you and your congregation a new vision of church multiplication—a vision that ensures continued fruitfulness season after season for generations to come.