In 1965, he organized the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, which was the institutional homebase for Church Growth studies until after his death.
[1] The original goal of the Church Growth movement was to reach groups of people, as opposed to random individuals, with the gospel within the United States.
Stetzer states too many of the churches following the emerging formulas became a socially-engineered mission station, which drew people out of their own cultures, into Christian warehouses and away from their neighborhoods and communities where they lived.
[1] Two key attributes of Church Growth are a passion for the Great Commission and a willingness to apply research to attracting members, including quantitative methods.
[4][5][6] Additional criticism has been level in recent years by authors noting that the church growth movement has coincided with the rise in Christian celebrity culture.