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…