Bigger Not Always Better
Illustration
by J.I. Packer

When I came to North America, I found that most churches, pastors, seminaries, colleges, and parachurch agencies and agents were in the grip of this secular passion for successful expansion in a way I had not met in England. Church-growth theorists, evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and others all spoke as if:

  1. numerical increase is what matters most,
  2. numerical increase must come if our techniques and procedures are right,
  3. numerical increase validates ministries as nothing else does, and…
Christianity Today, by J.I. Packer