Church Growth Modelling

Institutional Model of Church Growth

As a church denomination grows it needs to develop structures to support the denomination: full time ministers, training, buildings, governing bodies etc. However, the larger the church becomes, the greater effort is needed on maintaining the institutional structures, thus less effort is available for conversion and recruitment.

The model predicts that growth comes to a halt, and that without interventions to dismantle some denominational institutionalism, the church denomination eventually dies due to institutionalised lethargy.

This is a sociological model whose purpose is to understand church growth and decline using principles from the sociology of organisations and religion.

Institutionalism

As a church denomination grows resources are needed to support its organisational structure. Such resources once set up need to be maintained. They can acquire a purpose for their existence on their own, apart from their need to support the mission of the church to convert and thus recruit people. As such the resources tend to be easier to construct than to dismantle, and still get maintained after their usefulness to mission has waned. They cannot be easily scaled back just because the numbers in church decline.

The greater these institutional resources, the more institutionalised the church. This will be represented by a single soft variable "Institutionalism".

Examples of institutional resources include:

Physical buildings. Growing congregations move from rented buildings to purpose built ones. Once built they cannot be easily reduced in size if the congregation declines leaving fewer people to maintain the same sized building.
Paid ministers. As churches grow they can afford to turn lay ministers into paid ones. When they decline it is not so easy to shed paid staff who now rely on the church for their livelihood
Ministerial training. As churches grow and mature they can afford the time and money to invest in training and education of ministers. This creates a more specialist role for ministers, and a higher entry bar for novices. Thus a declining and smaller church may not find sufficient people to fulfil the ministry positions whose entry standards remain intact.
Church programmes. Growing churches increase their number of programmes, internal and externa,l to assist growth and help the community. Once the church declines the programmes demand more individual effort to maintain due to less available people, thus less effort is available for evangelism.
Centralised leadership and support staff. As denominations grow they require central staff, bishops, moderator, support staff to function. Such staff are not easily shed in a declining church, which cannot quickly reduce the number of dioceses, presbyteries etc.
Governing bodies. Growing denominations add local and national governing bodies to function. As the church declines the number of such bodies does not reduce at the same speed so that too much time is spent in now redundant or inappropriate administrative structures.
Territorial boundaries. Growing denominations allow congregations to develop parish boundaries over which they have control. When the denomination declines, still successful congregations are prevented from expanding into areas controlled by dying congregations.
Internal politics. As denominations grow people inevitably generate sub-networks to maintain a group of people they can get to know. Such networks encourage like-mined people to bond together, thus creating different factions. Such groupings become unsustainable as the denomination declines but the political emphases of the groups may still control the denomination and prevent newer renewal groups.
Pastoral needs of church members. As churches grow people are able to rely more on the pastoral help of professional ministers, rather than lay support. As churches decline people are reluctant to fall back on the care of lay people, many of whom no longer have the skills to support others . People prefer to see a "proper" minister rather than a lay person.
Expectations of church members. As churches grow they have most religious services in the hands of professional ministers. The people's expectation is that a church is not a church unless it has such a minister, often fully trained and full-time. That expectation persists in declining churches giving a lack of confidence in lay-run churches.
Expectations of society. As churches grow and become part of the fabric of wider society, that society has high expectations of what church can deliver, and the professional standing of its leaders, expectations that cannot be met by declining and now smaller churches.

Assumptions

The model consists of one group of people: Church, measured by attendance or membership of the denomination. Church adds people according to its size due to the activity of members, R1; and loses people according to its size, B1. There is one other variable: Institutionalism, representing all the organisational structures put in place as the denomination grows. Institutionalism undermines the ability of the church to add people to its ranks, B2, as more time is needed to maintain the organisational structures. The three loops are represented in the causal loop diagram:

The full dynamic hypotheses are:

Dynamic Hypothesis	Description
Church recruits in proportion to its size (R1).	The larger the church, the more people are available to seek and disciple new converts, and resource structures that assist growth. Thus more are added and more growth results.
People leave church at a constant proportional rate (B1).	This includes people giving up the church, and deaths. The reason people leave are personal, thus the rate is proportional to the church size, i.e. "per capita". Those who leave may rejoin as the source of recruits is potentially infinite.
As churches grow they become more institutionalised, thus reducing the effectiveness of their recruitment (B2).	The more people in church, the more it becomes institutionalised, thus the less are added to the church.
The nearer the church gets to institutional capacity, the harder it becomes to become more institutionalised (B3).	Institutionalism can increase quickly when churches are small, but as churches become large networks of congregations institutionalism saturates to a maximum. The very nature of an institutionalised organisation is to resist change, thus there is a fixed capacity to possible institutionalisation.
There is internal pressure to reduce institutionalism (B4).	There are people within church who attempt reduce institutionalism, perhaps because they see its dangers, or because they are rebels. This is done in proportion to the degree of institutionalism, i.e. the more institutionalism the more effort there will be to reduce it.
The desire of institutionalised people to increase institutionalism (R2).	There is a counter force to B4 from people in the church who wish to increase institutionalism, perhaps because they see its benefits to them, their churches, or perceive the institutional forms to be good. This is done in proportion to the degree of institutionalism, i.e. the more institutionalism is the more effort there will be to increase/maintain it, given the slowing effects of B3.
Unlimited pool of unbelievers.	The size of society outside the church is infinite.

Births are ignored but children born to church members can be assumed recruited the same way as those outside the church.

Flows

Unbelievers are added to the church according to size of the church (R1), but reduced according to institutionalism (B2). Church members leave at a constant rate per person (B1). Institutionalism is generated according to the size of the church (B2). Institutionalism is easier to generate as it grows (R2), but harder to generate as it approaches capacity (B3). Attempts to reduce institutionalism occur at a constant per capita rate (B4).

system dynamics model of bounded resource

The leaving feedback loop B1 has constant impact. However because loop B2 reduces the recruitment effectiveness of the church members, the reinforcing loop R1 has diminishing impact on recruitment. The limit to church growth is reached when the recruitment rate matches the leaving rate, after which the church declines.

Scope of Applicability

The Institutional Model is applied to a whole denomination, or a collection of national denominations, and is less applicable to an individual congregation. It is similar in form to the Self-Enhancing Resource Model which models limits to congregational growth.

Model Parameters

The behaviour of the model is controlled by a number of parameters that reflect the church's effectiveness:

Parameter	Description
church recruitment rate	The potential rate of recruitment given institutionalism is negligible.
church leaving rate	The fraction of church members who leave each year.
growth rate in institutionalism due to church size	The effect church has on the rate of increase in institutionalism if there are no internal pressures to either increase or decrease it, and it is far from capacity. (Not in diagram)
pressure to keep institution	The internal effect church members have on increasing institutionalism if there is no internal pressures to decrease it, no effect of church size to increase it, and it is far from capacity. (Not in diagram)
attempt to remove institutionalism	The fractional rate at which institutionalism can be removed, given there are no pressures to increase it.
max institutionalism	The capacity or upper limit to institutionalism. With a scale transformation this can be set to 1 without affecting the behaviour of the model. This fixes institutionalism units as a fraction of its capacity. (Not in diagram)

Results of the Institutional Model

Church starts by growing (R1), with the institutionalism also growing (B2 and R2). However church growth slows as the impact of B2 reduces that of R1. Church growth slows as the impact of R1 falls below the impacts of B1 and B2. Eventually recruitment falls below the leaving rate and church declines. Without intervention then institutionalism declines too slowly to prevent the church from becoming extinct.

Church Growth Modelling

Models

Results

Misc

Model Construction

Extended Institutional Model

Used for application to GB Methodist Church.

Growing population, delays in cause and effect, internal pressures for institutionalism.

Model Results

Decline Caused by Institutionalism

Application to GB Methodists

Data fit to the model.

Growth & Decline of Welsh Presbyterians

The connection between revival and institutional growth and decline.

Model Justification

Can be found in:

Ichak A., 1988, Corporate Lifecycles

Michels R., 1911, Political Parties

Olson M., 1974, The Logic of Collective Action

Moberg D.O., 1962, The Church as a Social Institution.

Related Blog

Institutionalism and Church Decline

Response to comments by others on the negative effects of institutionalism on church growth.

The Rise and Decline of British Methodism

Application of the Institutional Model of Church Growth.