In light of Paul’s picture of the church growing as a body grows and as a building grows through the process of its erection, it seems regrettable that the phrase “church growth” should nowadays be used exclusively, as it seems to be, of numerical expansion, when the New Testament idea expressed by this phrase is not of quantitative but of qualitative advance. It is always wisest to use biblical phraseology in its biblical sense, and these texts make clear that the growth of the church in Paul’s mind is not a matter of recruits being added to the community (he had other words for that), but of the community being fitted for its destiny through the transforming power of Spirit-taught truth.