# Growth Of Something Substitutes Escalation For Relationship ## Claim An institution chasing "growth of" something — more of the same, without end — has substituted escalation for the bounded, relational deepening that actually sustains it, whether the currency is money, membership, or attention. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Scope & conditions - Holds for institutions (churches, companies, open-source projects, communities) whose stated purpose is relational or formational but whose operating metrics reward indefinite expansion with no terminal point. - The distinguishing test is Root's own: does the growth have a shape and a stopping point appropriate to what's being grown (a puppy stops at 60 lbs; discipleship has a telos in Christlikeness), or does the logic demand more indefinitely? - Doesn't establish that all growth pursuit is illegitimate — organic growth as a byproduct of health is explicitly distinguished from growth pursued as the goal itself. ## Evidence Andrew Root argues American Protestantism's post-1970 fixation on numerical growth is a specific, dateable phenomenon: before the U.S. economy's compounding-growth "special century" (1870–1970) ended, church growth simply happened as a cultural byproduct, and no "church growth" strategy literature existed because none was needed. When that economic tide receded, the same capital logic Marx describes in the M-C-M' circuit — money invested to produce more money, with no terminal end — got absorbed into congregational life. Root's own distinction names the failure precisely: "growth of" something (escalation without end) versus "growth into" something (a relational deepening with a shape, like a child growing into an adult). His closing theological claim: "Yahweh doesn't want clogs in a machine of escalation. Yahweh wants children to be in community with, to be in relationship with." ## Links - [[NAR and Charismatic Authority Critique MOC]] — unbounded growth as a substitute for the thing an institution was actually for - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Growth Pressure Corrupts Institutions More Than Villainy Does]] — because contrasts: that note locates institutional drift in external financial pressure from investors/stakeholders; this note locates it in an internalized capital-logic substituted for relational purpose — different mechanisms producing similar drift. - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/An Aggregate Score Cannot Tell You Who to Act On]] — because extends: both claims distrust a single escalating metric as a proxy for the underlying health it's meant to represent. - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Faith & Theology MOC]] — because applies-in: a diagnostic for congregational metric-chasing specifically. ## Tests / falsifiers - If a church or institution pursuing unbounded growth metrics shows no measurable erosion in relational/formational outcomes (member depth, retention of meaning, not just headcount) compared to one with bounded growth goals, the substitution claim weakens. - If "growth into" institutions turn out to plateau and decline at the same rate as "growth of" ones once external pressure hits, the distinction isn't actually protective — it's just a different vocabulary for the same dynamic. ## Maintenance - Last tended: 2026-08-16 - Next review: 2026-11-16 ## Source - [[3. Resources/Literature Notes/The Idolatry of Church Growth (Andrew Root)]] — reports the "growth of vs. growth into" distinction and its economic-historical grounding this claim is drawn from.