What Kind of Impact?

A recent survey was conducted and published that listed the Top 50 Most Influential Churches. The list is not surprising for the most part, at least in terms of the names. Most of the “famous” names are there, perhaps with the exception of John MacArthur and Charles Swindoll. There are two father/son pairs (Stanley and Young), a wide theological and denominational divergence, and wide geographic spread. But they were all chosen by two thousand church leaders as churches of influence. (We should note that the survey is apparently not about theology and doctrine, but about influence.)

More recently, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we have seen a great outpouring of support and aid to displaced citizens, many of whose homes are still underwater and will be condemned as unlivable. Many of these support efforts are originating in churches, particularly (it seems to me), Southern Baptist churches, though I do know of some independent Baptist churches, as well as other churches that are also involved. While some may view hurricane relief as a "social gospel" type of effort (which has some problems), I am not sure that such an effort is useless. After all, wouldn't 1 John 3:17-18 and James 2:14-17 plug in here, as well as Galatians 6:10? These are churches who believe that they should have some sort of material impact in the current devastation.

In both of these cases, we see churches making some kind of impact through their ministries.

Which brings me to this question: How do we measure impact? Is impact measured by size? Well, I would like to rebel against that idea, but something tells me that a church who is not reaching the people in their community is not having much impact. The church may be right doctrinally and theologically (which is more important), but it is hard to call them an impact church. A church that stays the same size year after year seems likely to not be having an impact, unless multitudes are dying every year.

Is impact measured by visibility? Certainly churches that are known are known for a reason ... They are having some kind of impact. A church that is not known, even in its community, will find it hard to be a church of impact.

In short, I am not sure how to answer this question. Here is what I think may happen too often: Churches that are willing to have no cultural and community impact so long as they get the bills paid. It seems at times that churches of a fundamentalist bent are satisfied to be a "good ole boys" club. I don't mean that they set out to be that. But I think somewhere along the way, we got too scared of culture, and too scared of people who don’t already agree with us. I think we never learned to talk to people who don’t share our worldview. To be sure, we started down that path with good intentions—purity, holiness, obedience. But has the path led us too often through hedges that are too high to see over, and too high to climb? Has our distaste for secularism, sexualism, humanism, politicism, and relativism led us to isolationism? Are we just hanging on for the end?

I think that fundamentalist churches need to rethink what it means to have impact and influence in the community. While my church may never make the Top 50 list in the magazine, I am not sure we would make the Top 50 list in our community, and that bothers me. It bothers me when I hear fundamentalists say we shouldn’t even try to make that list. Personally, I wonder why we should be satisfied when all 50 churches on that list are not fundamentalist churches, much less that none are. I am not saying we need to set up our ministries to make a list. I don't think any of those people on the list had that mindset. I don't think we need to raise millions for hurricane relief to have an impact. I think we need to engage in culture, the world in which people live in our communities, and learn to communicate with them.

The world needs the gospel, and the fundamentalist churches are typically the ones holding strongest to the biblical gospel. But I fear we spend too much time “preaching to the choir.” We cannot stop short of full impact under the guise of separation and theology. Both are vitally important to an obedient church, but a church that has no impact is not obedient, no matter how separated and theological they might be.