Introduction

• All things that God designs (“biotic” things) grow “all by themselves”: you plant the seed and you water it, but it grows into an adult plant all by itself.
• The opposite of this is “technocratic"growth, where we do all the work ourselves. It’s like pulling a cart with square wheels rather than round ones; nobody has a bad heart, but one way takes a lot more effort than the other.

Ch. 1: Eight Quality Characteristics

• This was a result of a study of 1000 churches in 32 countries in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia (Russia, South Korea, India).
• Data:
  

  Number	Topic	High quality, growing	High quality, declining	Low quality, growing	Low quality declining
  1	% pastors graduated seminary	42%	40%	62%	85%
  1	Regularly seek trusted outside help	58%	35%	24%	12%
  2	My personal ministry matches my gifts	68%	73%	11%	9%
  2	Lay volunteers receive training	63%	60%	22%	12%
  3	Times of prayer are an inspiring experience for me	71%	65%	67%	52%
  3	I am enthusiastic about my church	76%	70%	52%	33%
  4	Has department leaders for individual ministry areas	85%	80%	65%	32%
  4	I consider our church to be tradition-bound	8%	11%	32%	50%
  5	Our worship service targets primarily non-Christians	3%	4%	3%	1%
  5	Attending worship services is an inspiring experience for me	80%	72%	60%	49%
  6	It is more important to attend small group than church	29%	25%	13%	6%
  6	I have a group in this church where I can discuss personal problems	71%	67%	51%	41%
  6	We promote multiplication of small groups through cell division	78%	60%	21%	6%
  7	Pastor knows which members have gift of evangelism	70%	65%	43%	21%
  8	There is a lot of laughter in our church	68%	63%	46%	33%
  8	How often have you invited someone from church to coffee or a meal in last two months?	17x	16x	13x	11x

• Discussion:
1. Empowering leadership
• Leadership style (relational, goal oriented, or partnership oriented) were not different between growing and declining churches.
• Most of the high quality, growing churches were led by unknown pastors; you don’t need to be a megastar.
• Highly gifted leaders cannot be copied; they do not provide a reproducible template.
2. Gift-oriented ministry
3. Passionate spirituality
• Both passion and good doctrine are required for a growing church.
• “On the other hand, ‘pure doctrine’ alone, as countless examples illustrate, does not induce growth.” (27)
4. Functional structures
• People tend to view structure and life as opposites, but the difference between living and non-living things is in their structure—how the things in them relate to each other.
5. Inspiring worship service
• “Inspiring” means the Holy Spirit is active. He notes inspiring services draw people “all by itself.”
6. Holistic small groups
• Multiplying small groups via cell division is the most significant feature of growing churches.
7. Need-oriented evangelism
• This study confirmed C. Peter Wagner’s hypothesis that no more than 10% of Christians have the gift of evangelism. Growing churches use those who have the gift in evangelism and use others in other ministries.
• Both growing and declining churches have the same amount of non-Christian contacts (8.5), so new friendships are not necessary.
8. Loving relationships
• A church may not be missing any of the elements and still not be growing. There is also not a “key” element.
• All churches that reached a “quality index” of 65 (all elements are 65 or above) is a growing church, and in his experience visiting such churches he feels a strong sense of the Holy Spirit.
• The goal is not attracting more people to the service, but becoming better in all the eight areas. (As that happens, numbers will increase).
• All churches, regardless of size, tend to bring about 30 people to Christ every year. In a small church this could be 30% growth, which is much more efficient that 30 people in a 1000 person growth. Members using their gifts also declines as church size increases.

Ch. 2: The Minimum Factor

• Instead of trying to improve everything at once, work on the category that is weakest first. A barrel made of wood staves can only hold as much water as the shortest stave. If that one is lengthened, it now can hold more water.
• Beware of models and personal testimony. Just because something worked for me doesn’t mean it will work for you. A model may be helpful, but the problem is rarely a single thing, and is usually a set of things that all have to be solved to see progress.

Ch. 3: Six Biotic Principles

• Technocratic thinking is like assembling a robot according to a set of rules. This works great for machines (and biotic principles do not work for machines: you can’t plant a robot and expect to get a mature robot), because they cannot reproduce themselves. All biotic things can reproduce themselves, and cultivating this ability is how we get living things to grow.
• Technocratic thinking ignores circular repercussions. One African nation established an elephant reserve, which initially caused the elephant population to increase, until the elephants ate all the acacia trees, at which point they had no food and they all died.
• Principles:
1. Interdependence
2. Multiplication: the amount of new churches planted is highly correlated to the quality index of a church.
• We should not be afraid to let things die. A church or ministry that has reproduced many times has carried its DNA to all its children (and their children) and has served its function.
3. Energy transformation: convert opposing forces into forward momentum, like a surfer converts the opposing force of the wave to go forward. High quality and growing churches involve new converts in evangelism, despite the fact that they lack knowledge and maturity (opposing forces). New converts still speak the world’s language and still have many non-Christian friends.
4. Multi-usage: the biotic world makes use of everything. The leaves of trees decay and fertilize the tree. For example, a typical donor model has donors contributing to a project that they are not impacted by (linear, technocratic thinking). A circular, biotic model has donors involved in projects that they see benefits from, which causes a feedback loop.
5. Symbiosis: the two primary models are competition (organisms harming each other) and monopoly (results in lack of diversity). Symbiosis is another model where the diversity in the system actually benefits everyone. When this happens, what I enjoy and what makes the church grow align.
6. Functionality: living things produce fruit, and Jesus expected fruit. We need to check and see what our fruit looks like.
• Biotic patterns: empowering leadership, gift-oriented ministry, passionate spirituality, functional structures, inspiring worship service, holistic small groups, need-oriented evangelism, loving relationships.
• Our intuition tends to produce un-biotic decisions until we get a feel for biotic principles.

Ch. 4: A New Paradigm

• God’s things have two opposite poles to them, and life works through the mutual attraction of the poles (e.g. men and women). In the church, there is a dynamic pole (organic, growing, freedom, “all by itself”) and a static pole (technical, building, order, “man-made”). The dynamic pole produces the static pole, and the static pole stimulates the dynamic pole.
• When we only focus on one pole we get one-dimensional thinking of either the technocratic kind or the spiritualistic kind.
• Monism: the two poles are the same (the static pole) and as long as that pole is “right” (right doctrine, program, politics, etc.) everything will be okay. This leads to technocratic thinking.
• Technocratic thinking is like a vending-machine or magical approach: do this and the result will follow. It might be believing a teaching and you will be definitely saved. It might be do a method and it will have guaranteed results.
• The problem is that technocratic thinking looks for guarantees, whereas as biotically what happens is that the actions stimulate the organic growth, not guarantee it.
• Dualism: the dynamic pole is separated from the static pole, and forms, programs, structures are viewed as spiritually irrelevant or harmful. (86)  This is spiritualism.
• The spiritualistic idea that God does not use structure is more akin to a gnostic framework than a biblical framework.
• The two sides are mutually incompatible, and both perceive biotic principles as from the other camp.
• Biotic growth is not theologically neutral. It is cross-denominational. More importantly, it measures success of a structure or organization on how well it stimulates the dynamic pole. (This is what reformation does.)
• Technocratic thinking looks at things as a straight line (from A to B). Organic thinking looks at things as a circle (effect of B on A). Biotic thinking is like a spiral or a helix: a continuous circle that keeps moving.
• Spiritualists say that you cannot manufacture a church. Technocrats have a formula for doing it. The reality is that the static pole stimulates the dynamic pole, but cannot create it.
• Biotic principles are not pragmatism. Pragmatism is bad for church growth; it rejects the existence of fundamental principles, leads to success as an end to itself, which produces short-term thinking, overlooking the fact that God’s ways are higher than ours, and creates artificial fruit and opportunism. (100-102).

Ch. 5: Ten Action Steps

1. Build spiritual momentum: get on fire for God
2. Determine your minimum factors: note that this should not be done as a self-evaluation, because we typically evaluate our strengths as weaknesses because we have high standards in those areas. Ask about actual behaviors. So, not “how loving is the church (1-10)” but “how often have you invited someone out to coffee in the last two months”
3. Set qualitative goals
4. Identify obstacles
5. Apply biotic principles
6. Use your strengths to improve your weaknesses
7. Use biotic tools
8. Monitor effectiveness: the NCD evaluations should be done on an ongoing basis, because they are just a snapshot in time, and you want to know your trajectory in the eight areas.
9. Address the new minimum factors
10. Multiply your church
11. Address new minimum factors