Claim. Hendricks draws an explicit strategic lesson: the “sudden” 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall was actually the result of decades of focused, ideologically grounded, strategically-intelligent UC campaigning against communism — and UC church growth requires the same multi-decade campaign discipline with an objective “as clear and simple as that wrapped up in the phrase ‘the end of communism.‘”
Elaboration. Per take-a-time-peace-and-do, Hendricks lists the components of the anti-communist campaign (citing Thomas Ward’s research): published books and pamphlets analyzing communism’s flaws; sustained seminars and conferences across Korea, Japan, US, South America, Europe; campus rallies confronting Marxist student groups; a 1.2 million-person Seoul rally; the CAUSA movement educating “tens of thousands of American ministers and political leaders from all parties in the early to mid-eighties”; all-expenses-paid fact-finding tours of Russia for journalists; cultivation of Russian media relationships.
The takeaway is strategic-cultural, not theological: long-arc systematic investment with a measurable simple objective produces “sudden” historical shifts. Applied to church growth, the equivalent simple objective is just: grow the church. This pairs with stark-3-42-percent-annual-growth-of-early-christianity — both atomics counter UC short-termism with the same lesson: durable growth comes from sustained ordinary work, not crisis mobilization.
Hendricks does not address whether UC actually has a comparable decades-long church-growth strategy in place. The implicit answer is no.
See also. stark-3-42-percent-annual-growth-of-early-christianity, populist-church