How To Measure Success In A Church

 

What we tend to measure

When it comes to reporting the state of the church at your annual meeting (if you have such a thing) what do you measure?

The traditional “measures” in church life are often identified as:

• Attendance
• Buildings and
• Cash

Others talk about “noses and nickels” i.e. numbers attending and financial health.

To those we might add some common contemporary measures of success:

• Busyness – how full is your programme?
• Staff – even quite small churches now might have several paid (possibly part-time) staff. The number of staff is seen as an indicator of success.

The problem is that those measures get scant, if any, attention in the Bible!

Attendance, perhaps, gets a little although in the book of Acts, for example, the emphasis is on how many are converted and “added to their number” rather than the total number meeting.

Many churches will, of course, also record the number of baptisms. That is one indicator that seems to be much closer to biblical values.

What does God value?

If they receive little biblical attention, is it possible that we are measuring the wrong things? It is sometimes said that we measure what we value. In that case, what does God value, and should they be the things we measure?

Below I list some things that I suspect are more in line with biblical values. This is a “work in progress”. I have, so far, given it only cursory attention so I would value your comments and suggestions. My thought has been that we might discover what God values in a church by looking at such things as:

• characteristics taught (or condemned) by Jesus, especially in such passages as the Sermon on the Mount (and even more specifically, the Beatitudes)
• the characteristics that are commended, or challenged, in the letters to the seven church (Rev 2-3)
• the characteristics Paul commends, or challenges, in his letters to various churches. Likewise for other epistle writers.

My List

1. Conversions
2. Healthy spiritual life – closeness to God
3. Growth to spiritual maturity – Christ-like character – many characteristics including servanthood, generosity…
4. Passionate Faith
5. Hope – eager waiting, eternal perspective. Kingdom vision
6. Community – love, mercy, peace-making, encouragement, etc.
7. Compassion for the marginalised and vulnerable.
8. Ministering the power of God – use of spiritual gifts, signs and wonders
9. Fruitfulness – impact, reproduction/multiplication. Ministry
10. Holding to the truth (right beliefs)
11. Righteousness (right living). Obedience. Good works
12. Perseverance (esp. under persecution). Faithfulness

Those things are harder to measure because they are more about quality than quantity but it is still not impossible.

Some questions:

1. What scriptures indicate the biblical importance of each item?
2. To what extent do you think that list looks like Jesus Himself?
3. How does this list compare with Jesus’ requirements of disciples?
4. Would you be happy in a church characterised by the list above?
5. What would happen if we measured these things and these were what we reported?
6. How can we measure these things?

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Measuring Success In A Church