Warren’s central thesis: the question “How do we grow?” is the wrong question. The right question is “What is keeping us from growing?” The distinction matters because it reorients the entire effort. Growth is a symptom of health, not a goal to aim at.
Biological logic underlies this. All living organisms grow when healthy — they don’t need to be commanded or managed into it. A plant in good soil with enough water and light doesn’t need growth strategies. A plant that isn’t growing is telling you something is wrong: the soil, the water, the light, the roots. Fix the health problem; growth follows.
The same applies to the church as a living organism. A church running programs to produce growth while ignoring health is like giving a sick tree fertilizer without treating the disease. The energy gets consumed by the dysfunction.
Practically this means the diagnostic question changes. Instead of asking what to add, ask what is missing or blocked. What would have to be true about this church’s spiritual life, its relationships, its clarity of purpose, for growth to happen naturally? Restore those conditions. Don’t aim at growth — aim at health, and trust the organism to grow.
Warren credits this insight, and the organic metaphor, largely to Donald McGavran’s church-growth research, which he first encountered in Japan in 1974.