Baby boomers were the first American generation that did not follow their parents to church. This led to declining church attendance and church growth became a focus of study.

Donald McGavran: 3rd generation missionary in India and he received his PhD in Education from Columbia University. He was influential in the understanding of missions as working within different cultures rather than just working with one culture in which every culture was working towards the Western culture.

• At first was fine with "mission station" missionary work
• Later, he began to question the effectiveness of the "mission station" approach, which he began to see as a combination of Western culture and Christianity, and as a propagator of Western culture.
• Life was separated into spheres
• Hierarchies
• McDonald-style franchising
• Increases control, efficiency, measurement
• Culture is changed, and creativity is stifled
• No one was coming to faith with the "mission station" approach.
• Could it have been because they didn't want to be Western?
• McGavran asked: maybe people didn't have to leave their own cultures? maybe cultures could be redeemed? Maybe the barriers to faith were not theological but socio-cultural? (this last question was important in the founding of the School of World Mission).

In the 1940s, missionary training was focused on apologetics, with no emphasis on culture. With time, there was an increased focus on culture/anthropology.

• McGavran started to advocate "people movements" (faith spreading through family and friends rather than through institutions)
• Did not remove converts from their context (did not say "stop hanging out with those people")
• Nominality results when people are forced to change aspects of their culture
• The Christian movement grew through relationships, not through institutions
• "Insider movements" are a type of people movement - where people become followers of Jesus, but remain in their Hindu/Islamic/other contexts.
• The mission station was actually a hindrance to the mission.

Similarities between the mission station and the modern Western church:

• Faith is professionalized
• Inward-focused
• Focused on setting up infrastructure
• Building of programs that may not be needed
• Separated from community
• Forcing cultural changes based on preferences

Outsiders are more likely to make mistakes in the contextualization of the gospel. It was Paul, not Peter, who spoke in Athens (Paul was an insider to Athenian culture whereas Peter was not).