Sustainability versus Fruitfulness: Which Matters More?

When it comes to churches, does sustainability or fruitfulness matter more? Is it more important for a church to have a long life? Or is it more desirable that a church be productive?

I believe fruitfulness matters more than sustainability, at least when it comes to churches. In two key areas, however, this cuts against the grain of what most folks seem to believe. It probably doesn’t apply to one’s personal Christian journey, and it even runs contrary to what some leading missiologists seem to have theorized about church planting.

First, I agree that sustainability probably matters as much or more than fruitfulness in the life of an individual Christ-follower. The Book of Hebrews, for example, argues that a disciple of Jesus must persevere even in the face of adversity: “Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us” (Heb 12:1). In 2 Timothy 4:7, Paul says he has “fought the good fight,” “finished the race,” and “remained faithful.” 

For the Christian person, sustainability is a crucial metric. Measuring fruit in an individual’s life can be a subjective undertaking. Each person has differing gifts that produce unique kinds of fruit. The fruit of the Spirit, for example, is a product not of human ingenuity or work but rather a gift of God’s work in a person’s life. Finding ways to sustain one’s faith, therefore, is critical.

There’s a second reason why my belief in fruitfulness sounds odd. Leading teachers of missionary theory have long argued for sustainability as a primary goal of church-planting work. More than 150 years ago, the great missionary statesman Henry Venn suggested that church-planters should create self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating congregations. The goal was for indigenous churches to thrive without continuing dependence on missionaries or the sponsoring agencies who founded them.

On the surface, this sounds as if long-term sustainability was the goal. This is known as the three-selves theory (later expanded to four selves). It was a necessary correction to church planting methods that confused Western lifestyles with Christian behaviors.

Imagine a fruit tree that requires hand pollination before each growing season. Such a tree would require meticulous intervention in order for it to produce fruit. It could live a long life without bearing fruit, but fruitfulness would come with huge outside effort. This is the problem the three-selves theory was designed to correct. Venn and later missionary theorists believed that new churches should function in a self-pollinating manner, so to speak. 

The ultimate goal of the three-selves theory, therefore, wasn’t just sustainability—it was the sustainability of fruitfulness! In order for churches to be fruitful, they must be able to flourish and create growth naturally. They must be authentic expressions of everyday life in a given society. If churches are forced to copy cultural expressions of being Christian that are not authentic to the way ordinary people live, then those churches may survive for a long time as quaint relics of a foreign or bygone era, but they will not be fruitful in reaching many people outside the gates of their communities.

I believe fruitfulness should be our priority, especially in a world where the power dynamics in global Christianity are shifting. We should value experimentation and exploration over holding down the fort. In order to find new ways of being fruitful, we can’t simply hang on as worshiping communities. We must find ways to empower the margins and lean into fresh expressions of Christian community. This matters more than sustaining what is familiar and comfortable.

It’s true that life-giving reforms can sometimes be painful and slow, but the ultimate goal should be once again producing fruit, not just keeping the doors open. Church leaders sometimes postpone hard decisions about key reforms because of one or two deep-pocketed individuals or families who keep investing in the unchanged, failed strategies of yesteryear. Let’s instead invest in new methods of growing.

What does it look like to prioritize fruitfulness? First, we should not fear letting some churches die. As long as individuals remain faithful and find new worshiping communities, how does the closure of individual churches negatively affect the kingdom? Churches have always experienced many ups and downs. Many of the most important churches in the New Testament era soon ceased to exist for various reasons, yet God’s church moved on and thrived in new forms elsewhere. There is no harm in reconfiguring the landscape to find fresh ways of reaching people with the good news of Jesus.

Second, I think church leaders should be unafraid to equip and empower some of their members to try new ways of doing church rather than insisting everyone attend a single Sunday morning service. Given our season of decline, such a demand feels like a wrong move. Unless we are willing to experiment with new ways of gathering people in the name of Jesus, we will never discover what new methods work in our day and time. Courageous leadership is necessary.

As the saying goes, “Never let a big crisis go to waste.” The crisis of our time is the precipitous decline of many churches. The Lord will sustain us as long as we look for new ways of bearing fruit in this new world.