Growth and Change

Book Review (Andrew Heard)

This is a great book, very timely and needed; you should read it.

It’s also a book at war with itself.

Here’s Heard’s thesis in a nutshell: church leaders ought to be concerned about outcomes (A: people getting converted, B: people growing in maturity as disciples), and be willing to make the changes necessary to see that happen. That’s the title, right? Growth and Change.

And so, the book is partly making an argument against a view of ministry that isn’t concerned about outcomes but rather, and Heard is caricaturing a bit, “just be faithful”. And here’s where and why the book is at war with itself: Heard is very aware of the theological push-back to certain of his propositions, and he’s always, always holding two things in tension.

Which is actually a great thing. Countless times I wanted to say, “Yes, but…” and exactly my concern was addressed over the page. That shows that Heard, unlike some of the discourse I’ve heard about this book, does genuinely understand the hesitations and concerns and ideas that would critique his argument.

For example, he begins very early on by talking about ‘the danger of a passion for growth’. There is a very real danger in focusing on numbers and outcomes, and Heard is aware and alive to it. Then he turns right around and reminds us of the necessity of a passion for growth (ch 3), because the gospel is about the message of salvation through Jesus.

Chapter 7 is about responsibility, and the responsibility for leaders, in terms of outcomes. It’s also the chapter that attempts to wrestle (just a little!) with divine sovereignty. And this is a great example both of the tensions within the book (excellent), and its need for theological sharpening (regrettable).

Heard’s argument in this chapter is simple: we are responsible for the fruit of our (ministry) work. And here he takes on the language of inputs (things we do) and outputs (the consequences and outcomes of that work).

So, we do X (“preaching, prayer, visiting the sick, rebuking and encouraging people, studying the Bible, gathering God’s people…” etc) and the desired output is conversion + growth in maturity.

In a secular, business context we’d always say that the leader is responsible for the outputs, and held to account for them. But in Christian ministry contexts it’s common to sever the direct connection, and say “just be faithful in the inputs, and outputs are up to God”. Heard critiques this idea, pointing to Scriptural passages that speak to responsibility for outcomes, and yet also to Scripture passages that speak to God’s sovereignty. And as he works through this material, Heard is well-grounded, respects both sides of the tension, and you ought to agree with him – God is sovereign and yet works through our actions in a way that doesn’t negate our responsibility for those actions.

But here’s part of his attempt to summarise the connection: “What I’m wrestling to express is what theologian DA Carson has labelled ‘compatibilism.’… Perhaps a shorthand way of summarizing this is to say that while we don’t control outcomes, we do influence them”. (p118)

Given that DA Carson wrote the foreword, he might have judicially made a comment on this, because I think Heard’s formulation of compatibilism here isn’t consonant with Carson’s. The way Heard puts it here is closer to a view of divine sovereignty that says something like, “God is responsible for ultimate outcomes, but leaves the details of how we get there up to us; there’s high level sovereignty, and low-level freedom.” That’s not Carson’s compatibilism, or standard Reformed compatibilism, or probably even what Heard himself thinks. It’s a view that there’s a ‘level’ of sovereignty up there, and then a level of freedom and permission in which we are free to sandbox our way through life.

The chapter that follows, by the way, is really quite good. It takes those tensions and applies them to the heart, and makes the case that we should be both resting in a trust in God’s sovereignty, and also urgently seeking to do all we can, to use all our resources, to learn and change as needed, to see people come to faith in Jesus.

There follows on from this a chapter entitled “Theologically principled pragmatism” which argues carefully, and aware of the dangers on both sides, for a pragmatism (that is, a consideration of how means creates ends, and so adjusting our means to achieve certain ends), but one that is theologically grounded and guarded. Ends don’t justify means. Many things are not permissible or right in pursuing proper ends.

And again, I don’t have a quibble with the main point of this chapter. “And yet…” (start rant) I recently heard a senior denominational minister get up and argue, very pragmatically, for a focus on a single demographic.¹ Why? Because ‘God just seems to save more of X people, that’s the way he works’, and ‘this will build our churches up’. That’s theologically unprincipled pragmatism. It’s wrong, because it’s theology is poor. It says, “we should invest more resources in X people because we get more for our churches out of X people” and “we seem to have greater success in reaching X people so we should invest more in reaching X people”. The second is circular, and the first instrumentalises people. The dangers that Heard is misheard are real and significant, because this is exactly the things his book should be warning against.

I’m going to skip a few chapters and pick up at ch 12: Leading with Outcomes at the Centre. Here, again, I think Heard has some great material, that is undermined by some fuzzy articulation of those ideas. For Heard, a leading is “seeking to move an individual or group towards achieving an outcome that they would not have arrived at on their own” (p180), and so has both a “focus on outcomes” and “responsibility for achieving those outcomes”. He then brings in a metaphor or analogy, of an archer and an arrow:

“How does an archer fire an arrow? They set up a target, pick up the bow and arrow, carefully take aim at the target, ready themselves to shoot, and release the arrow. If the arrow misses the target, they adjust their aim and fire again” (p181).

Inputs are the things the archer does, the output is the consequence: where the arrow hits. An output-focused archer is interested in whether they hit the target. An input-focused archer, apparently, is interested in their aim, their stance, tension on the bow, and is less concerned with hitting the target or not. Instead, we just move the target to wherever the arrow landed. Now, this is laughable when applied back to archery, but Heard has a point about churches.

And yet, here’s what I think is missing in the way this discussion is articulated. The only thing you can control are inputs. Heard acknowledges too, that you aren’t even completely in control of them. But, by definition, you can’t control outputs, you can only seek outputs through inputs. In the analogy, an archer cannot ultimately control hitting the target. I get the feeling that Heard almost thinks that you can though. And here’s where the interaction with computability and sovereignty should get very complex, but it doesn’t.

What if you’re an expert archer, and you set up to shoot your arrow. You have a good stance, right tension, good bow, adjust for wind, aim correctly. And then… you miss. The question of responsibility then depends entirely on why you missed, and whether that’s something you can or should correct. What if the outcome was not ‘hit’ the target, but ‘arrow penetrates the target’, but then you find out that the target you’re shooting at is armoured? And so on… My point is that the sovereignty question complicates things to the level where we should summon DA Carson back.

Carson tells the story of his own father’s ministry – long years of faithful ministry in Québec which saw very little fruit until quite late in his life, and even then arguably by external changes, not the result of radical changes in inputs in Tom Carson’s ministry. How does that example play back into Heard’s framework?

There’s also another instance here of where theological editing would have made a better book. On p188 we’re treated to another Spurgeon quote about preaching, leading into a discussion of Paul Grimmond’s work on application in preaching. But the Spurgeon quote is offered up as “preaching for response (output)”. That’s not what the quote says though. “The reason you do not succeed [is] because you do not expect to do so. According to your faith so be it unto you”. The content of the quotation isn’t wrested out of context, it tells you several times in the text printed there that Spurgeon’s belief is that a lack of success is due to a lack of faith. I don’t think Heard himself would agree with that theology.

Lastly, on the critique side of things, I think Heard makes a few mistakes in ch 13 when he undertakes a discussion of expected working hours for a minister. Firstly, he seems to be reluctant to hand down specific guidelines, recognising the role of wisdom and the complexity of the question. He should have backed that instinct instead of then offering specific guidelines anyway.² Secondly, his analysis of 6-day work weeks in agrarian and pastoral Israel, and extrapolation to an idealised 60 hour work week which he then seeks to bring forward to a contemporary context is simplistic and, dare I say it, underinformed in terms of social and economic history.

 If you’ve made it this far, you might feel that I’ve been critiquing this book quite a bit. And yes, I have. Mostly because I think it deserves it because it deserves to have been a better book. If I can be cheeky, if there had been more attention to the inputs, it would have a better output. And yet, I find myself both liking this book and wishing its call would be heeded all the more. I do think there’s a danger of “just be faithful” mindsets, of doing the same old thing the same old way and thinking the results will be different. I agree that we should be both diligent and tireless, creative and radical, in assessing what is working and what isn’t working, in order to make disciples of all nations. We should employ every means of human persuasion at our disposal, to grow believers in maturity, and to see other people come to Jesus Christ and put their faith in him as saviour and lord. Our ministries and churches should be shaped by that end, and our practices scrutinised by how they serve that twin goal. And this book is a wake-up call to do just that, even as it holds two sets of very necessary theological and practical concerns in tension. Just the right tension that needs to be held on to.

Photo by Gwen Weustink on Unsplash

1. I almost wrote demongraphic, and then I almost left it in because it was so funny a typo.

2. Frankly, any writer who is hesitant to lay down specifics, should follow their own lead and not.