Exponential growth

OK, this is a rant. Pure and simple. I just got tired of people talking about exponential growth, particularly with regard to churches. I’m not against church growth … far from it. But I’d prefer it two steps down from exponential. I like arithmetic growth.

Let’s pick an example that Australian Christians should be able to relate to. Say you start a church, and there are 10 people. Things go pretty well, and at the end of the year, you have a congregation of 100 people. ‘Wow!’ someone says. ‘Exponential growth! Let’s keep that up!’ Exponential growth is problematic, though. It’s either too slow or WAAAY too fast.

Here’s a table with the different simple types of growth that are available.

So how does this work?

Arithmetic growth is pretty easy to calculate. The difference between 10 and 100 is 90, so every year you add another 90. I’d regard this as sustainable.

Geometric growth is pretty easy too. 10 is 1/10th of 100, so every year you multiply by 10. I don’t know how long such growth could be maintained.

Exponential growth is trickier. 100 is 10 x 10, so every year you multiply your attendance by itself (squaring it). Then the sequence goes 10² = 100; 100² = 10,000; 10,000² = 100,000,000, and 100,000,000² = 10,000,000,000,000,000. Clearly ridiculous.

But maybe I’m being ridiculous! Remember I said above that exponential growth can be slow. Instead of going with an exponent of 2 (squaring), we could go with a smaller value. Let’s try a few.

Just so you know, even the ridiculously slow growth of 1.2 turns mean after 2022. The next numbers are 322, 1,022, 4,086, 21,555 and 158,583. So no. Exponential growth is not a good thing.