John Stott on Church Growth

Here's a strategy for church growth that you don't hear about every often in our new "mega-church" church culture. From chapter 11 of John Stott's, The Cross of Christ:

His death (Jesus) reminds us that suffering is the key to church growth, since it is the seed which dies which mutiplies. (John 12:24)... In theory we know very well the paradoxical principle that suffering is the path to glory, death the way to life, and weakness the secret of power. It was for Jesus, and it still is for his followers today. But we are reluctant to apply the principle to mission the Bible does. In the shadowy image of Isaiah's suffering servant, suffering was to be the condition of his success in bringing light and justice to the nations.