How Does Your Church Measure Success?
Brooks Falls, Alaska
Let’s say you go to a conference of Lead Pastors and you’re sitting at a table waiting for the first speaker. A pastor sitting next to you starts a friendly conversation with, “So, how’s your church doing?” That question is Innocent enough…right? Does your mind immediately go to your church’s attendance? Is your immediate response, “Well we’re up 9% versus a year ago.”
Church attendance is important…don’t get me wrong. But is it the best way to measure the success of a church? Numbers are helpful to inform us, but they should never define us. Let's not measure attendance as much as we measure engagement or discipleship.
Attendance. The Good and the Bad.
Let’s talk about attendance a minute…if all your attendance growth is from transfers…is that good? Is there something wrong with a small church? What if all these small churches are a part of God's strategy? It seems like God's strategy for 2000+ years has been to have a whole lot of small churches. It seems like over the last 30 or 40 years, we’ve given the typical small church the impression that if you’re not getting bigger, somehow, you’re failing. How do you manage the tension between a God given desire to reach people and that not very healthy pressure to grow, grow, grow. What do you do about that?
In any church, it's not so much about how many people are in attendance, it’s more about are people engaged in the life of the church? Are they being discipled? Is the church having an impact? Are we influencing our community? Are we making a difference?
What should we measure?
What we need to do is look at the qualitative markers of church health. Are people signing up to help in ministry teams? Are people excited about inviting people to the church? When they show up, do they fill out the back rows first or the front rows first? Is your church getting younger, or is your church getting older? When the service is over, do people run as fast as they can for their cars? Or do they hang around until you’ve got to push them out the doors? When somebody's sick, how easy is it to get people to sign up for the meal train to bring food for that sick person until they're feeling well again? Or do they sign up like crazy and want to help as much as they can? How many visitors do you have each week? Is your congregation inviting people or are they embarrassed to invite their friends, co-workers, and neighbors? These are all nonnumerical ways to determine if your church is healthy.
We’re called to make disciples
I heard a pastor describe the tension between church growth and discipleship like this, “Imagine a conversation near the end of Jesus’ time on earth before he ascended into heaven, he gathers his disciples and he goes, okay guys, here's the plan. I'm going to build my church. You're going to go make disciples. And they respond with, got it…we're going to go build your church. And he goes, no, no, no. I'm going to build my church. You're going to go make disciples. And they go, oh, we've got it. We'll go build your church.” It feels like we've been having this argument with Jesus for 2000 years where Jesus continually keeps coming in and saying I'm not calling you to build my church. I will build my church. I know what I'm doing. I will do that, please go make disciples.
Is Discipleship part of your annual strategic plan?
What’s your plan for making disciples? Do you have one? Due North has an innovative plan for making disciples and extensive experience in writing strategic plans. The system works. It’s worth the effort. If you’re interested in having a 30-minute conversation about discipleship and strategic plans, please contact us at DueNorthConsulting.net or Jim.duenorth8890@gmail.com.
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