Dever: As long as quick numerical growth remains the primary indicator of church health, the truth will be compromised.

More than once Jesus said that his people would demonstrate their love for him by obeying his commandments (John 14:15,23). And the obedience which interests him is not only individual but corporate. Together individuals in churches will go, disciple, baptize, teach to obey, love, remember, and commemorate his substitutionary death with the bread and the cup.

Jan Hus, the fifteenth-century Bohemian reformer, put it this way: "Every earthly pilgrim ought faithfully . . . to love Jesus Christ, the Lord, the bridegroom of that church, and also the church herself, his bride."

The enduring authority of Christ's commands should compel Christians to study the Bible's teaching on the church. Wrong ecclesial teaching and practices obscure the gospel while right ecclesial teaching and practices clarify it. To put it another way, Christian proclamation might make the gospel audible, but Christians living together in local congregations make the gospel visible (see John 13:34–35). The church is the gospel made visible.

Today many local churches are adrift in the shifting currents of pragmatism. They assume that the immediate response of non-Christians is the key indicator of success. At the same time, Christianity is being rapidly disowned in the culture at large. Evangelism is characterized as intolerant, and portions of biblical doctrine are classified as hate speech. In such antagonistic times the felt needs of non-Christians can hardly be considered reliable gauges, and conforming to the culture will mean a loss of the gospel itself.

As long as quick numerical growth remains the primary indicator of church health, the truth will be compromised. Instead, churches must once again begin measuring success not in terms of numbers but in terms of fidelity to the Scriptures.

Dever, M. (2012). The church: the gospel made visible. Nashville: B&H.

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