Kyle Harrison
concept

Church Growth

Church Growth

Across two books in Kyle’s library, “Church Growth” is the question of what actually makes a religious movement grow — and the recurring answer is that strictness and retention, not raw conversion counts, drive sustained growth. In Law of the Harvest, David G. Stewart’s data-driven critique of LDS missionary work makes this its central thesis: the real metric is fruit that remains (John 15:16), not baptisms. With roughly two-thirds of members inactive, raw baptism counts mislead; “poor retention is no more a necessary part of the growth of the Church than sickness is a prerequisite to health.” Stewart pairs this with the sociological finding that high-demand faiths grow faster, not slower — Seventh-Day Adventists (8–11% annually) and Jehovah’s Witnesses retain better precisely because they ask more, since “faiths that require little offer little.”

In Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith, church growth appears through Hinckley’s own framing of why a demanding church attracts people: “We have great expectations concerning our people… It is demanding. And that is one of the things that attracts people to the Church. It stands as an anchor in a world of shifting values.” Both sources converge on the same counterintuitive point — that high expectations are a feature, not a barrier, to growth — and connect to Missionary Work, Convert Retention, and High-Demand Religion.

Where this appears

  • Law of the Harvest — the book’s whole argument is a church-growth thesis: retention over baptisms, strictness as a growth driver, methodology over inevitability.
  • Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith — Hinckley explains rapid growth via high expectations: the Church “as an anchor in a world of shifting values.”

From Roam

Linked from this Roam page (pages that already exist here): Pertaining to God

Referenced in