Report of the Executive Director of Church Extension
Daniel G. Ziegler
EFFECTIVE EVANGELISM
It is our great privilege and profound responsibility to be engrossed in the work of evangelism. This task is not a hobby in which we may dabble, it is not a “take it or leave it” option to be engaged in by some believers and ignored by others; it is an obligation to be entered into by all of us, all of the time, for all our lives.
Whatever other good and great things there are for us to do, they may not and must not replace or crowd out evangelism. If a church were consumed with concern to worship the Lord rightly and to minister mutually to her members — and did so superlatively but neglected evangelism, she would be a disobedient and disgraceful church.
In addressing the evangelistic work, we have a great body of gripping and compelling propositions of the Scriptures that inform, inspire and impel our plans and our labors.
Scriptural Propositions
1. We have Christ’s commission to make disciples and promise of His presence (Matthew 28:18-20).
2. We have assurance that He will build His church (Matthew 16:18).
3. We have the Gospel, which is God’s power for salvation (Romans 1:16).
4. We have the Holy Spirit, who empowers and gives boldness for evangelism (Acts 1:8, 4:31).
5. We have Christ’s love to compel us to evangelize (II Corinthians 5:14).
6. We have the fear of the Lord to motivate us to persuade people (II Corinthians 5:11).
7. We have an inner conviction that should lead us to conclude, “I have become all things to all persons so that by all possible means I might save some” (I Corinthians 9:22).
8. We know that the more people reached by God’s grace, the more thanks and greater glory God receives (II Corinthians 4:15).
9. We know that we cannot please the Lord except by faith (Hebrews 12:6); we also know that faith without action is dead (James 2:17) and that true faith is active, it works (Hebrews 11).
10. We know that our labor is not in vain in the Lord (I Corinthians 15:58).
11. We know that “every work for Jesus will be blest, but He asks of every one his best” (Hebrews 6:10, I Thessalonians 1:3, John 15:8).
12. We know that our prayers open doors for evangelism (Colossians 4:3) and pave the way for the message to spread rapidly and be honored (I Thessalonians 3:3).
13. We know that by financial support for the Gospel we may make friends who will be in heaven to receive us into eternal dwellings (Luke 16:9).
14. We know that we may enter into Gospel sowing and reaping; that the results of evangelism are in proportion to sowing (II Corinthians 9:6); that we may reap where others have sown (John 4:38); that as disciples are made, “… the sower and the reaper may rejoice together” (John 4:36); and that as we so labor along with others, “God makes things grow” (I Corinthians 3:6).
As we proceed to tell the good news and persuade people to accept and embrace it, we shall believe without reservation that “salvation is the work of God from its commencement to its consummation.” (Article XVII, Faith and Order). But we shall not so hold that truth as to rationalize any inaction or indolence on our part, as though the Lord would do that work without us, and thus excuse us from doing what He has directed us to do.
We shall not succumb to the notion that faithfulness and productivity may somehow be set over against each other and that our Lord “does not ask us to be successful, but only to be faithful.” Faithfulness and effectiveness are both part of obedience. While our faithfulness may be difficult to quantify, productivity may be quite precisely measured. In the parable about faithfulness, Matthew 25:14-28, the master entrusted valuable property to three of his slaves, with explicit or implicit direction that they were to trade with it so as to produce a profit. Two of the three doubled the value of their trust (the quantification is clearly set forth) and were commended as “good and faithful” (vv. 21, 23). The third was not successful — there was nothing to count — and he was called “wicked and lazy” (v. 26).
We have been commissioned to make disciples — and disciples may (and should) be counted. Good undershepherds carefully count sheep (Luke 15:4), not that they may sleep, but rather that they remain awake and alert (I Thessalonians 5:4-6). These shepherds will draw conclusions from their counting and promptly take appropriate actions (Luke 15:4,5). The Chief Shepherd, who has called on us to shepherd His sheep, has plainly told us that we shall have to give an accounting to Him (Hebrews 13:17). The time will come when He will ask us to “Give an account of your management” (Luke 16:2). We’d better be able and careful to count now, lest we be unable to account to Him then.
Churches That Count
Bible Fellowship Churches regularly count their members, and the counts are carefully compiled, recorded and published — and have been for a century. For a church to count members, and then not think about the counts or do anything in the wake of the counting is like James’ example of the man “who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” (James 1:23,24).
After the membership count has been made, it’s time for questions. Have we grown this year, remained the same or declined? If we have grown, who were added, why and how did we win them? Are there others like them who can be brought to Christ and our church? If the membership decreased, who did we lose and why did we lose them? Have we diligently sought and tried to restore our straying sheep?
In what direction has our membership been going over the past five, ten, twenty-five years? Why? If we are growing, what can we do to sustain that growth and increase its momentum? If we’re declining, how can we stop and reverse the decline?
What factors outside of our control in our community, state, region, nation, world (contextual factors) have affected our growth or decline? What in our local church (institutional — local factors) and our denomination (institutional — national) have influenced decline or growth? What can and should we do to change things that are under our control so that growth or more growth can occur?
For all of this thinking and questioning to be of value, it should lead us to specific strategies, plans and goals that will help us make more disciples and grow, or grow more rapidly.
The other key statistic that we gather and record year after year is the number of baptisms. Baptism in water is the once-for-all means by which one declares one’s conversion and allegiance to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. It is the first act of obedience that one offers to that Lord. It is part of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19). Counting baptisms gives a precise number of disciples made during the year; baptisms are very easy to perceive, quite simple to count. The membership additions also include people who were already disciples who transferred to the church from other congregations. The count of baptisms is our best measure of conversion growth. It should be our desire and goal to win more people to Christ and thus to increase the number of baptisms.
Using these two key statistics, we may derive an evangelism efficiency rating (EER), the number of disciples that 100 members make in a year. The more efficient a church is in evangelizing, the larger the number.
Because the Bible Fellowship Church has had essentially the same definition of membership and baptism throughout its history, comparisons may be made for various eras or time intervals. Because the EER is indexed to 100 members, it allows comparison of one church with another or with a cluster of churches or the whole denomination.
The EER is meant to be used to track trends, to raise questions, to stimulate the formation of evangelistic strategies, specific plans and goals that may focus our work and our prayers.
A Denomination that Counts
The twentieth century growth history of the Bible Fellowship Church may be divided into seven eras. The first three are simply decades. The fourth and fifth are defined by the major contextual events that shaped and dominated them and the final two by marked institutional trends. There is some variation in their length, but the use of the EER, by indexing to a base of 100 members and averaging, corrects for the variation.
% Growth EER
The First Decade, 1900-1909 66.8% 18.7
The Teens (World War I) 1910-1919 35.7% 11.7
The Twenties, 1920-1929 48.4% 9.5
The Depression Era, 1930-1938 31.8% 9.3
World War II and Postwar, 1939-1953 14.9% 4.6
The Great Stagnation, 1954-1970 – 0.8% 4.5
Return to Growth, 1971-1990 39.4% 6.4
The three most striking periods are the First Decade, with its remarkable growth, 66.8% and very high EER — each 100 members won 18.7 disciples per year; the Great Stagnation, when growth ground to a halt (the denomination had exactly 100 fewer members in 1970 than it had 16 years earlier, and the EER averaged 4.5), and the Return to Growth era with its dramatic reversal of the previous period.
Contextual factors can have powerful effects on church growth. They are mostly, if not completely, beyond the control or influence of the church and are sovereignly arranged by God. They include such phenomena as political and economic events, wars, demographic trends, values shifts, etc. None of us now alive has firsthand adult recollection of the first decade. It is probable that institutional factors in the remarkable growth rate and EER of that period include a clear sense of group identity, strong individual leaders and the formation of new structures for growth, such as the Gospel Herald Society and the Gospel Workers Society.
Our non-growth in the Great Stagnation Era is probably not attributable to contextual factors. That judgment can be made on the basis of comparison with other congregations or denominations of similar beliefs, practices and outlook. Most American churches were growing while we were languishing. Some powerful institutional factors at work to inhibit growth include the transition from autocratic leadership to a pluralistic group style, and a thorough reconsideration of our beliefs and form of government, with fairly radical changes in both such as are seldom found in any denomination. This may have caused considerable ambiguity and confusion in most members’ minds as to who we are and what we believe. Further, the transition entailed the expenditure of tremendous amounts of thought and energy on the reformulation that might otherwise have been directed to outreach and evangelism.
Probably a mixture of contextual and institutional factors contributed to our most recent Return to Growth. In recent years many evangelical denominations have been growing while non-evangelical groups have been declining sharply. Some contributing phenomena are the “high tech-high touch” reaction, a turning by some from a materialism that cannot satisfy the spirit and a reaction to the rampant secularism that has led the departure from historic values associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the fact that most of the churches have been located in places where the population has been increasing.
Some internal factors that have fueled our growth in the past twenty years include growing unity around the new Faith and Order — doctrines and church government, the construction of new, larger church buildings, the acquisition by many of our people of “church growth eyes” and adoption of a more overt and aggressive goal directed strategy and style, and the sharp increase in new church starts, from nine in the previous twenty years to 29 in the seventies and eighties.
The statistics demonstrate how dramatically the young churches lead the way in denominational growth. In 1990 the young churches, which have started in the last 25 years, recorded 32% of the denomination’s baptisms, while having only 20% of its members. Those young churches have an EER of 10.5 while their older sister congregations rated 4.2; in other words, the young churches made 10.5 disciples per 100 members while the older ones made 4.2 disciples per 100. The young churches last year were 2½ (250%) more effective in evangelism than the older assemblies. If we really want our movement to grow, we shall pour greatly increased resources into new church formation — people, dollars and prayer. We ought to do this because “the most effective evangelistic method under heaven is planting new churches” (C. Peter Wagner).
Unfortunately the Return to Growth Era has seen a sharp decline in both growth rate and EER in the last nine years when compared with the preceding eleven:
Growth EER
A. The Speed Up years, 1971 – 1980 27.7% 7.6
B. The Slow Down Years, 1982 – 1990 9.2% 5.0
Evangelistic efficiency dropped by over ⅓ and growth rate declined by nearly ⅔ in the more recent period.
The analysis of our twentieth century record of membership and baptisms substantiates the accuracy of the Kenneth Strachan Theorem, “The growth of any movement is in direct proportion to its success in mobilizing its total membership in the constant propagation of its beliefs” (W. Dayton Roberts: Strachan of Costa Rica. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971, pp 86, 157). If we were sincerely to believe that axiom and earnestly to apply it to our work, the Bible Fellowship Church would undergo, in these waning years of the twentieth century, a spiritual revolution and would very likely see a great surge in our disciple making, replicating or even surpassing in our day the great evangelistic effectiveness and explosive growth of that vital fledgling movement in the dawning years of the century.
And people could then look at us — the Bible Fellowship Church — and say, “They really love the Gospel! They really love people! They really love their young churches!” And it would be true.
DEPARTMENT DOINGS
This has been a productive year for the Church Extension Department, with many demonstrable and measurable accomplishments. In one area, the financial, it has been a difficult and perplexing year.
“Bottom Line” Achievements
With this Annual Conference, we bid farewell to the Newark, Delaware, church as it graduates from the Department. Then called the “Glasgow Mission,” this congregation began under the pastoral leadership of Arthur Frisbie in 1976. Three years later, the Russell Ruch family moved from Hatfield, Pennsylvania, (with the Hatfield congregation’s blessing), to Newark as “Priscilla-Aquilla” workers to assist with the development of the church. W. Neil Harding joined in the ministry at Newark in 1982.
In 1984, William G. Schlonecker became lead pastor of the congregation, with Arthur Frisbie continuing as associate pastor. Annual Conference in the following year recognized the Newark congregation as a church and welcomed it to Conference membership.
The church dedicated its new building in 1987, achieved full self-support in 1988 and has continued to grow and thrive since then.
Pastor Frisbie retired from the active pastoral ministry in the spring and was honored by a large congregation on Sunday evening, May 5. He continues to serve as an elder at Newark, DE. At that May meeting I noticed a board on the wall with a large number on it. In response to my inquiry, Pastor Bill told me that the board records the number of clear and overt evangelistic contacts, in which the Gospel is shared, that the members have engaged in during the last year.
In the decade that ended a year ago, the Newark, Delaware, church grew 600% and had a high 8.7 EER. Overt plans and strategies that keep evangelism before the members, like the “evangelistic contact board,” help to set the pace in disciple making and growth.
On September 15, the congregation in Ocean County, New Jersey, elected Dave Markuson and Chris Oliver as its first elders. The Board of Church Extension invites the 108th Annual Conference to recognize the Ocean County congregation as a particular church and receive it into Conference membership. The church, under the capable pastoral leadership of Dean A. Stortz, has been meeting publicly for 18 months.
Two new missions have been opened during the year. At the initiative of the Board of Church Extension, a group of pastors met for breakfast in February to consider the prospect of a new church start in the Upper Perkiomen Valley of Pennsylvania. Upon their recommendation, a core group began to form in a series of five Tuesday evening prayer meetings in April.
Seven of the surrounding Bible Fellowship churches have endorsed the start of the new UPV church. The core group continues to meet weekly in homes for Bible study and prayer. The first Sunday morning worship was held September 22, without publicity. On an interim basis, I have been providing some pastoral leadership for the group. As I write this report, calls have been extended to two men to serve as a pastoral team. The strong core group comprises people from seven Bible Fellowship Churches, two other evangelical churches and one liberal church.
The Upper Perkiomen project provides a good model for starting a new church among other of our churches. That model ought to be frequently replicated in the future. We look for this mission to become a strong church in a spiritually needy target area.
Our New England Team goes from one mission in Spencer, Massachusetts, to two this fall as Dennis Spinney takes steps to form the South County mission in the Webster-Dudley area of the Bay State. A large phone campaign in October will seek to locate at least five families to join together as a core group as the first step toward the new church.
Other Overt Marks of Progress
A year ago the Annual Conference, acting upon a request from the congregation in Staten Island, New York, placed the church under care of the Board of Church Extension as a mission for the purpose of rebuilding.
On September 1, Ralph E. Ritter took up residence on Staten Island as organizing pastor. He is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and has served in ministry in Roxborough, Philadelphia. Brother Ritter feels called and committed to urban ministry. We look to the Lord to use our brother and his wife, Carolyn, in the reestablishing of a credible and vibrant church — our only one at present in New York City.
The Somers Point, New Jersey, primary target area of our shore mission, known as Lighthouse Church, has not proved very receptive over the five years of ministry there. From the start, Egg Harbor Township has also been included in the larger ministry area. On June 7, we took title to a well situated 4½ acre lot in Egg Harbor Township for a future church building site. The small but loyal body of believers had accumulated a major portion of the $40,000 purchase price in a building fund.
Pastor Roger Reitz is leading the people in focusing more of its outreach on growing Egg Harbor Township. He is seeking a public meeting location in Egg Harbor for Sunday worship.
The Newark, New Jersey, congregation continues to grow and mature. It has outgrown its Randolph Place building. After several years of negotiations it seems to be nearing an agreement for the purchase of a much larger building in the same Clinton Hill neighborhood to allow for expanded and extended ministry and further growth.
In September the Newark fellowship participated strongly in the Northern Jersey Billy Graham Crusade at the Meadowlands Sports complex. One of the features of the Crusade was the Love in Action Committee, which focuses on meeting material needs of people. Pastor Bert Baker led the mission’s Crisis Team in applying for a Love in Action Grant to help the Crisis Team become more effective in ministry. Of more than fifty churches that applied, the mission was one of six selected to receive a grant. The $6,500 award is being used to buy a freezer, purchase supplies for distribution and prepare and outfit space for storage and for counseling so that the team may serve more efficiently. Among the needy being helped are the hungry, the homeless, substance addicts and their families and people with AIDS and their families. The Crisis Team will receive for distribution some of the over 40,000 pounds of foodstuffs collected at the Crusade. The mission continues to follow-up many who professed faith in Christ at the Meadowlands.
Other Works in Progress
Christ Community Bible Fellowship Church in Edison also participated intensely in the Graham Crusade. Through arrangement with the Royersford church to use their buses, the Edison mission offered free transportation to the meetings. On the Sunday following the Crusade, three new families were in attendance at worship in Edison. On September 15, members of one of those newly believing families were among seven persons who confessed Christ by baptism.
Worship attendance at Edison in recent weeks has been averaging over 100. The pastoral team of Dennis Cahill and Rick Ravis continues to lead the congregation in spiritual and numerical growth.
In Holmes, New York, the mission, known as New Life Bible Fellowship Church, under Pastor Bob Commerford’s leadership, continues to grow and reach out. Worship attendance is nearing 100 on many Lord’s Days.
Both Holmes and Edison expect to elect local elders very soon and should be received into membership of the 109th Annual Conference in October, 1992.
The Pleasant Valley mission, also in New York, continues to develop steadily and responsibly. David Way, the organizing pastor, serves bivocationally. The congregation meets at the Pleasant Valley Grange Hall.
The ministry at Spencer, Massachusetts, has stabilized during the year, as Pastor Chris Morrison has been able to obtain secure, steady employment right in Spencer. The small congregation has grown in commitment and koinonia and has added a few new people during the year. A successful VBS in August, directed by Dennis Spinney, reached a good number of new children and teens and offered contact with their families.
Calvary Church of Walnutport, Pennsylvania, has completed its first self-governing year after its reorganization under mission status. It has continued to grow. Major physical projects during the year included installation of vinyl siding on the church building and new carpeting on the floor of the sanctuary and the foyer.
Of greater importance is Pastor Larry Smith’s report of new spiritual depth and commitment that have recently come to members of the congregation through their participation in the prayer meeting. Through studying biblical prayers, they have come to understand the nature and content of those prayers and to pattern after them, with dramatic impact on the corporate prayers and on the people who are praying them.
Board and Administration
Changes in personnel in every organization always come in time. I’d like to express my appreciation for two men who retired from the Board of Church Extension during the past year. LeRoy S. Heller has been on the board for most of the years that I have served as Director. He served as chairman of the board for over 16 years. He has been a constant — always faithful to his task, ever the colleague, friend and encourager. I am grateful that we could serve as yokefellows for so long. I shall miss him.
Sal Roseti of the Mount Pocono Church served briefly on the board till a change of employment put an end to his availability to attend board meetings. As a merchant, he brought something new to us that we had not had before — a marketing perspective. “Church Extension is the best kept secret in the Bible Fellowship Church!” he said. He went on to explain that though the Mt. Pocono Church had developed within the Department, the members knew next to nothing about our church planting ministry. His input helped to clarify issues and bring the board to its decision to add administrative staff for communication and development. And he helped us to strengthen our commitment to our strategic planning process.
I wish Sal had been able to serve longer with us; I hope he will return to the board in the future.
William Schlonecker, pastor at Newark, Delaware, and Joseph Dugan, elder from Howell, New Jersey, replaced Brothers Heller and Roseti. Being the youngest members of the board and coming from two of the young churches, they bring a fresh and vital perspective that is helpful.
My colleague, Carol Snyder, Director of Development and Communication is a “class act.” She has brought contagious enthusiasm, fresh creativity, boundless energy and strong relational skills with her. And that doesn’t surprise us much — we knew she would!
Some of the major accomplishments in development and communication this year have been: our first mailing to the denomination’s “MasterMail” list, several mailings to our own mailing lists database, adding some 300-400 new names to that database — more than a 10% increase, dramatic upgrading of the quality and appearance of all of the materials we are sending out, production and distribution of the 1990 Director’s Report in booklet form with photos for the first time ever, introduction of a photo prayer card pack and the monthly “Extension Call” prayer calendar to encourage and help people to pray more regularly and more intelligently for our missions and missionaries, and a much upgraded and regular (monthly) production of “It Happened Like This …..”, a single page narrative of the up-to-date working of the Holy Spirit in peoples’ lives through the Church Extension Department and our congregations and church planters.
A $10,000 grant by the Board of Directors from the Fund to Promote Church Extension has helped us to equip our new office with high grade equipment for high quality work.
Our Strategic Planning Group, which is also our Policy and Strategy Committee, continues to identify and wrestle with key cultural analyses, basic values and critical issues. This work is deep, long and hard. We believe it will prove valuable in producing a helpful, viable and credible plan for the Department.
Finances
This recession year has been a difficult one for us in the financial area. It has been our second deep deficit year in succession. There have been repeated cash flow crises. Gifts, really our only source of income, fell short of budget by 24%, and dropped from last year’s offerings by 12%, or over $26,000. Expenditures topped income by more than $18,000. We have just about exhausted our emergency reserve fund; we could not survive a third straight deficit year. We are in a state of emergency.
Yet there have been some financial encouragements. Despite a 7% salary increase for our personnel, a 32% rise in health insurance premiums and a 13-30% hike in postage rates, we have been able to cut expenditures by more than $22,000 from last year’s level.
We continue to receive substantial support from individuals and from churches that are not Bible Fellowship. Income from “other sources” (than BF Churches) amounted to $55,000 during the year, over 26% of gift income. Had we not received this generous support, we would have been out of business.
Five congregations that are not Bible Fellowship Churches have supported the establishment of new BFCs by their offerings this year. They are one Baptist, one Presbyterian and three independent churches. It is interesting to note that each of these five churches, on average, gave $230 more than the average Bible Fellowship Church in the year to support the extension of our denomination. Each of these churches, on average, gave more dollars than 41 of our own churches gave to support the formation of our new churches. Isn’t there some kind of a challenge in that fact?
During the summer we informed our churches of our individual prayer and financial partners of our needs. The response was quick, generous and encouraging. It enabled us to complete the last six weeks of our fiscal year with sufficient cash to pay all bills on time. For this we are grateful. Gift income in July and August 1991 was 18% higher than it was in the same period a year ago. That may be an indication that a turn-around has begun.
Our expense budget for 1991-92 has been cut by nearly $45,000 from last year’s. One of the unfortunate consequences of this austere budget is that salaries for all of our personnel whose incomes are set directly by the board — all organizing pastors of missions, administrators and clerical workers — are being frozen at last year’s levels. “The laborer is worthy of his hire” and these servants of Christ should receive increases. But there will be none.
The other serious implication is that at a time when we should be raising and expanding our commitment to church planting evangelism, we are drawing back. The budget makes no commitment to start any new churches. It is hard to believe this is what our Lord desires of us. How much longer will our churches want us to continue to retreat?