The Quality Church (Part 1)
Leadership begins a search for the parameters of faithfulness
C. Peter Wagner and Richard L. Gorsuch
January 1, 1983
Long years of measuring church growth have left a crucial question largely unanswered: What is the quality of a church that pleases God?
Beyond a prize-winning Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, or 21,609 conversions in 1981 at First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, or a 10,000-seat sanctuary for Huffman Assembly of God in Birmingham, Alabama, or 275,000 members at Full Gospel Central Church in Seoul, Korea, the question still lurks. The superchurch with a photogenic, magnetic pastor-is it really a church? Is its message the gospel? Is it healthy or just fat? Is bigger better?
The Quest for an Elusive Gauge
Up to now, we have stumbled along with highly subjective methods of evaluating quality. A number of self-appointed church critics have set up personal standards and judged others by them. Such an approach, while widely used in our society to assess drama, art, motion pictures, and vintage wines, has not worked particularly well for analyzing churches.
Many denominations, of course, have corporately drawn up internal criteria. These serve very well to establish and maintain boundaries between themselves and other denominations and also to sustain certain internal levels of religious commitment- both positive factors for maintaining vitality. They are useful for gauging the quality of a given church from year to year.
But the disadvantage is obvious: What is good for one might not be good for another. Pentecostal churches will measure what percentage of their members have been baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoken in tongues. Southern Baptists don't agree. They measure Sunday school enrollment. Episcopalians don't agree. They measure how many take Communion. Quakers don't agree. They measure how many stand up ...
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