We live in an age when church cooperation, both formal and informal, is considered a high value. The World Council of Churches is a pioneer in international church unity. The National Association of Evangelicals gains strength in America each year. Separatism, fashionable during the 1930s and 1940s, seems to have little appeal to the general evangelical public anymore. Staunch denominational loyalty among church members is at a low ebb; many people nowadays look for more than traditional denominational distinctives in a local church they are considering joining.

Cooperation being the "in" thing these days, the danger of what we are calling hyper-cooperativism increases. I need to say here that this chapter is in no way intended to suggest that interchurch cooperation is a bad thing in itself nor is it a church disease. It is not in any way an antiecumenical polemic. I believe we need more Christian unity manifested in more tangible ways, not less.

Jesus' prayer "that they also may be one ... that the world may believe" (John 17:21) is a directional word for us today. Those familiar with my writings about spiritual warfare will know I am convinced that the wider the agreement we have among Christians, the greater will be our spiritual power as a church. Having said that, I will nevertheless argue in this chapter that cooperation among churches is more useful for accomplishing certain goals than it is for others.

Interchurch cooperation can be useful for social action projects, for providing relief to victims of earthquakes or famines, for sponsoring theological seminaries, for promoting cordial relationships between ministers and for programs of joint enrichment among churches of different cultures. It can also be useful for militant spiritual warfare over a city, for taking public positions on certain political issues such as abortion or taxation of church properties, or even for projects involving E-2 or E-3 evangelism at home and abroad. If our goal at the moment is evangelism that will result in church growth on the local level, however, the cooperative programs that have been tried to date have not proven effective.

Church cooperation, as I have said, is a good thing. Hyper-cooperativism occurs, however, when an attempt is made to use cooperation for unwise purposes. It is frequently not just neutral, but in certain circumstances it can become counterproductive.

A FALSE PREMISE

For at least three decades, evangelicals, who have typically professed to be committed to effective evangelism and church growth, have been told that one way to evangelize more effectively is to cooperate interdenominationally on a local or regional level. Citywide evangelistic efforts have become popular and have constituted a prominent method of doing evangelization in American since the early '50s, and even before.

Some of the parachurch evangelistic agencies that have materialized have solicited resources both from the churches of a given city and from their church members to conduct a program of citywide evangelism. Their premise, whether explicit or implied, has been that through supporting the citywide cooperative evangelistic effort, more unbelievers will be won to Christ and folded into the participating churches than without it. Some evangelists will not accept an invitation to come to a city unless a certain degree of interchurch support for the crusade is secured beforehand. The underlying assumption is that the more cooperation, the more fruit will be born by the evangelistic project.

This premise has shown little or no evidence that it is valid. Research done to date about citywide evangelism seems to indicate that just the opposite may frequently be true—the more churches cooperate interdenominationally in evangelistic projects, the less effectively they evangelize.

Of the several reasons hyper-cooperativism frequently reduces evangelistic effectiveness, perhaps the most important is that cooperative efforts tend to dilute the centrality of the local church. Citywide evangelistic efforts involving the churches of just one denomination may have more potential than interdenominational efforts, but the strongest of all is local church evangelism.

In the typical citywide effort, the meetings are held in a neutral place, such as a stadium or a civic auditorium, and consequently in the minds of the unbelievers who attend, there is no natural or necessary connection between making a decision for Christ and commitment to a local church. Unless the local church remains central, the kind of evangelism that produces fruit that remains and results in church growth will be minimal.

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF COOPERATIVE EVANGELISM

Evaluation of the results of any evangelistic program will, naturally, depend on the goals set for it. The assumption in this book, as in all church growth writings, is that evangelism should result in church growth. The premise is that a thorough conversion will involve a dual commitment: (1) commitment to Jesus Christ and (2) commitment to the Body of Christ. An important difference must be kept in mind between evangelism that results in decisions for Christ and evangelism that results in disciples of Christ.

Having said that, however, it must also be added that many citywide evangelistic efforts have brought positive results that cannot be measured directly in church growth. Some of them are as follows:

E-0 Evangelism. In the previous chapter, we described E-1, E-2 and E-3 evangelism. E-0 evangelism is the other category in the series. It signifies winning to Christ a person who is already a church member, but who has never made a personal commitment to Christ. Theoretically, all church members should have made a commitment to Christ, but we all know that many have not. The percentage will vary from church to church, but virtually every church has some members who are not yet saved or committed or born again or converted or whatever terminology may be appropriate to a certain tradition.

Recent surveys show that although 56 percent of American adults are active church members, only 36 percent are born again Christians. That leaves 20 percent who probably need E-0 evangelism. We are probably talking about 50 million people!

When E-0 evangelism occurs, the church, of course, does not grow visibly, because the individuals are already members. But it becomes a better church, it grows in quality; and that is certainly a commendable thing.

The Rite of Passage. Anthropologists tell us that most societies have developed certain prescribed ceremonies that give visible public sanction to the milestone events in the life cycle of individuals. Big evangelistic crusades provide occasions for such so-called "rites of passage," both for the children of believers who feel a need to express their faith publicly, and for others who may have already decided to become Christians and who are looking for an appropriate opportunity to finalize their decisions. In all probability, both of these kinds of people would have eventually made professions of faith with or without the crusade, but the citywide evangelistic crusade is as good an opportunity as any to do it.

Public Exposure to the Gospel. Citywide crusades tend to bring Jesus Christ to a high level of public attention. Television and radio spots, billboards, bumper stickers, large meetings reported in the newspapers, all help to draw public attention to the message. How much this actually aids in the total process of evangelization may vary according to the situation. Its effectiveness also depends on the previous level of awareness of the general public. In most cases, it can be listed as another positive benefit.

Privatized Christians. As Thomas Luckmann and other sociologists of religion have pointed out, the phenomenon of "privatized religion" has been on the increase in America. Although this includes religious expressions other than Christianity, undoubtedly, an increasing number of Americans may have been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, but they do not belong to a church, nor do they have any immediate intention of joining one. Many undoubtedly are TV Christians. In their pyjamas and slippers, they may watch Robert Schuller or Jerry Falwell or James Kennedy or others, while sipping coffee and munching a Danish pastry. They send contributions to these programs, and consider them their surrogate churches.

Undoubtedly, many such TV Christians are truly committed to Jesus Christ. They grow in their faith Sunday by Sunday. They read the Bible and pray regularly. The Church Growth Movement, however, considers this an incomplete commitment. As I have said, we teach that a full commitment to Jesus Christ involved a simultaneous commitment to His Body, the Church. The Bible indicates that authentic Christians are to relate to each other in the Body of Christ (see 1 Cor. 12), using their spiritual gifts to minister to one another.

Some, of course, are privatized Christians by necessity. They are aged or disabled and could not leave home and attend church if they wanted to. Others are TV Christians by choice. Although I must admit that it is better to be privatized Christian than no Christian at all, I do not believe this should be encouraged as a substitute for responsible church membership. Nevertheless, it must be affirmed that Christians who may not join church are often a fruit of citywide evangelistic efforts.

FALLING SHORT OF EXPECTATIONS

E-0 evangelism, evangelistic rites of passage, increased public exposure to the gospel message, and privatized Christians are all positive results of cooperative evangelism. But none of them fully meets the expectations of the average pastor who leads the church into special large-scale evangelism programs. Deep down in their hearts, local church pastors want those programs to help their churches grow through reaching unchurched men and women with the message of Christ and folding them into fellowship in their congregations. To the degree that this doesn't happen, they predictably feel let down.

Biblically, the goal of the Great Commission is to make disciples. Making disciples is the only imperative verb in the Commission as found in Matthew:

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you" (Matt. 28:19,20).

Going, preaching, baptizing, teaching and whatever else is necessary to make disciples—these are all important, but the final goal is to make disciples. In a rare exception or two, such as Joseph of Arimathea, biblical disciples were what we would today call church members. They are described as continuing "steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers" (Acts 2:42).

When authentic disciples are made, churches add them to their numbers and grow.

Evangelistic associations that report their final results in terms of attendance at crusades, decisions recorded, Bible studies joined or anything less than responsible church membership, are fulfilling the Great Commission only partially. The very nature of most cooperative evangelism, as we have seen, hinders making church membership the bottom line against which to measure and report their success or failure.

THE FOLLOW-UP GAP

I began to understand some of the reasons for what I like to call the "follow-up gap" when I studied the vast Evangelism in Depth program conducted in Latin America some years ago. The follow-up gap, in my definition, is the difference between the number of persons who make recorded first-time decisions for Christ during an evangelistic effort and those among them who eventually become responsible church members.

Evangelism in Depth was the largest-scale attempt in cooperative evangelism in the history of Latin American Protestantism. It involved, for an entire year, virtually all of the Protestant churches in a given nation. Behind it were some of the best evangelical minds, and the program was originally designed specifically to correct the follow-up gap discovered in crusade evangelism. Despite all the prayer and money and personnel invested in a large number of Latin American nations, however, the follow-up gap persisted after the dust of the excitement had settled.

Hyper-cooperativism was by no means the only element contributing to the lackluster showing of Evangelism in Depth. It was however, one of the more significant factors. It tended to reduce the message to the least common denominator. In one country, for example, the so-called Wordless Book was banned from the children's program because the committee chairperson disliked the red page, which was designed to teach children about the blood of Christ. The program attempted to keep the focus sufficiently on the local church, but the total effect on church growth was disappointing.

Significantly, toward the end of the decade when disillusionment with Evangelism in Depth was surfacing, some denominations were severely criticized for refusing to enter the nationwide program when it came to their countries. Their feeling that Evangelism in Depth would tend to retard their already vigorous growth patterns was not considered legitimate. Some were accused of being divisive because they chose not to cooperate. Those denominations for the most part, however, weathered the accusations and kept growing because they believed they could evangelize better by doing their own thing in their own way. The end results was that they were probably right.