Right now I am sitting in a meeting listing to my friend Chuck Hunter speak from his paper, "How We Evangelize Pre-Christian People; Four Strategic Themes." It is part of his forthcoming book The Apostolic Congregation: Church Growth Reconceived for a New Generation (no links because it is not out until Sept. 2009, but you can see his earlier writings here).

Here is a picture of Chuck (George) Hunter talking with Carl George.

While I am at the meeting, let me share a little about the group, its situation, and its future.

The American Society for Church Growth meets every year. But, the last few years have been a challenging time and they are rethinking some things. The incoming president, Bob Whitesel, proposed last night to change the name ot the "Network for Great Commission Research."

I am one of those who believe that the Church Growth Movement lost much of its way from its original missiological and research roots (along with some theological concerns I have shared elsewhere). While doing my Ph.D., I specifically chose not to study Church Growth and did my Ph.D. in missiology because I thought missiology was the tool we need today.

So, I was a little surprised when two years ago, Gary McIntosh (pictured here talking with Dan Reeves) asked me to speak on this at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Donald McGavran's book, The Bridges of God, at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena.

Gary asked me to present both my concerns about, and my challenge to, the Church Growth Movement-- and I did so here in this paper, "The Evolution of Church Growth, Church Health, and the Missional Church: An Overview of the Church Growth Movement from, and back to, Its Missional Roots"

The introduction shares a bit about how I felt while presenting my paper right after Gary McIntosh presented an overview McGavran's life. So, I wrote about that challenge in the intro to the paper:

I felt challenged because the American application of the Church Growth Movement has, in my estimation, moved away from McGavran's original emphasis of mission. While still valuing the approach and learning much from it, I desire to honor the request of those who invited me by sharing a personal journey out of mainstream Church Growth into a more missional approach.

I think there is much we can learn from research and hope that the missional church emphasis (with which I more closely identify) does not abandon well-done research as it rejects the excesses of the Church Growth Movement. Simply put, I pray we have the wisdom and discernment to learn the best from the Movement-- and I believe that includes its missiological and research roots. And, for that matter, I hope the movement returns to those roots.

Back to the meeting... there are some remarkable thinkers and writers here (just look at the pics!) and I look forward to learning from them. My shelves would be much lighter if it were not for their books!

Updated: The paper will be in a future academic journal so I can't post it here (yet). In the meantime, below is a Wordle of the paper: