I have worked full-time in ministry for 12 years, and this question/debate always comes up in staff meetings and brainstorms: How do we minimize transactional growth and excel in transformational growth? Before we go any further, let’s define our terminology. Transactional growth is adding members to your church through performance-oriented programs and strategies. Transformational growth comes from evangelistic efforts and community outreach. Sometimes, this is called new believer growth and church transfer growth. The significant contrast between the two philosophies is the contact point between the leadership’s desire to grow and the implemented strategy of the church to grow. 

I’ll say the quiet part out loud: every pastor wants their church to be bigger than it is now. It doesn’t matter if you have 200 people in your church or 20,000; church leaders want more people attending whatever service or program they are implementing, which is natural and a good thing! It means you believe what the church offers is suitable for everyone, and you want them to benefit from the good of your church. Can you imagine attending a church where they didn’t care if anyone came to their services, programs, studies, and groups? How could you financially support such a thing? 

I believe the issue lies not in the desire for growth but in the myopic approach to getting more butts in seats. This issue often leads to charismatic leaders producing fast growth results. Those results are then promoted as the ideal for churches to follow. People are then trained to think that rapid growth results indicate a spiritually healthy church. We now live in a reality where people judge the spiritual vitality of the church they attend in the 30 seconds it takes them to walk from their car to the worship center. Pastors are consumed with the “up and to the right” performance of their staff and programs. If you want a beneficial resource on the effect of modern acceleration on the church, you should read Andrew Root’s The Congregation in a Secular Age. 

My significant conclusion is that you need longer and more nuanced strategies to grow your church. If the church is a body, fast growth is typically insufficient. If we imagine the types of things that grow fast in our literal body, they are nearly all bad. Cancer, fever, viruses, bacteria, and infection all come to mind when I think of fast-growing phenomena in the body. Even fast weight loss or muscle growth doesn’t last long and typically doesn’t provide long-term health benefits. The body needs to grow to be healthy, but that growth should result from consistent discipline, training, and good habits. I would argue a spiritually healthy church has consistent transactional and transformational strategies. 

Pastors and church staff should strive for excellent performance. That model is evident throughout Scripture. It’s also apparent in church history. Take the story of the Biblical canon, for example. Christians made massive strides in the arena of copying, translating, and transporting documents all over the world. Christians adopted the new codex technology in their effort to get the Scriptures into the hands of everyone. There had to be a high level of performance to accomplish their goal of copying the sacred texts and translating them into multiple languages. 

Pastors and church staff should simultaneously live as clean vessels to be used by God to transform people’s lives. This was Christ’s mandate before He ascended into Heaven. Jesus didn’t tell the disciples to create high-performing programs to attract people into the buildings; instead, He mandated that we become agents of transformation in the world. To stay effective in ministry, Christians must take up the cross of Christ, sacrifice short-term performance, and work through the long process of personal evangelism and discipleship. 

So here’s the challenge for all pastors and church leaders: develop a long-term strategy incorporating transactional and transformational philosophies. Both are crucial to the longevity and spiritual vitality of your church. Strive to be remembered 100 years from now because of your commitment to Christ’s model. Be the church that faithfully served and steadily grew because of its commitment to excellence and to the spiritual transformation of people.