It is not so much that counting is evil, wrong, or pointless. It is that what we are counting should be the appropriate thing to count, if not, we are making statements about the importance of something that is not actually important.

Should we count Sunday Morning attendance? Or rather weekly home group attendance?

Should we define a Church member by way of completing the class? Or rather by weekly involvement in a ministry?

Should we count the square footage of our building? Or rather the number of Church plants we have sent out that have themselves planted Churches?

Should we count our weekly income? Or should we count the number of hours Church members volunteer somewhere in the community?

How about...

Minutes a day the average member spends in prayer?

Chapters a day read in the Bible?

Number of un-churched friends prayed for daily?

Number of un-churched friends we dine with monthly?

The list is potentially endless. The point being that counting in and of itself is not bad (although we should certainly be wary of putting to high an emphasis on the numbers provided; quality over quantity), and that what we count will be perceived as important (it actually is what is important to us if we count it).

I'm thinking that in order to create healthy intangibles you need to drop in size and cash (if you currently exist in a non-healthy way). Much like the organizations in good to great actually lost money for a while before producing sustained results. As a church planter in Vancouver, BC i have come to the realization that if you are healthy you still will grow, and as people are more committed and mature, they will give. But it's the "creating" healthy churches that is more of the issue. Oh and buildings have no use in canada as objects of success (I grew up making fun of church buildings).

its very hard to see the early church ever placing a high value on bucks, buildings or bodies!

maybe we are looking at this thru a 21st C form of church lens...

Nothing helps a person grapple with this question more than church planting. When you start (at least when I did) there are NO bodies, bricks or bucks. You've got a small team, you're renting a space and you're working bi-vocationally--hard to feel "success-full" during that phase. Another measuring stick is needed, another set of questions: Are we experiencing God's presence in our times together? Is authentic Christian community happening? Are people growing in holiness? Are we living the gospel and seeing it transform the lives of the people we are in contact with? These are the kinds of questions that need to drive our system of evaluation. While tangible/practical things are important (looking back, I wish I paid more attention to them), we need to be careful that they don't eclipse the things God is measuring.

"How should church leaders define success?" It seems to me the answer to this question actually lies within another question: How should church leaders define faithfulness? (or possibly even "worship" [and by worship I mean the "glorifying God and enjoying Him forever" kind of all encompassing living]). I think we need to stear away from the word success completely due to all the cultural bagage it carries. The end must be Jesus (in fact the beginning and the end one might say)...He must be our vision, our ultimate purpose, our All in All, etc. Of course programs, and building and the like will play into the conversation because there are practical things we have to do and use to go into the world as disciples. However, as soon as these ways of accomplishing ministry or enacting our faithfulness become the vision or purpose of our ministry we are doomed. For example, let's say a church begins a prayer ministry and this becomes a defining marker of the church's identity. In a subtle and dangerous way Christ is slowly pushed to the side so that this prayer ministry might flourish and become the defining "all in all" of the church. In its worst senerio, the actual ministry becomes an avenue to idolotry and all in the name of ministry.

Look at Christ, was he sucessful? As we often use the word you could argue on either side depending on how you define it. But, if we ask, was He faithful there is a resounding YES. If there is a model to build our churches on it must be witin a Christocentric philosophy of ministry. And not one that simply comes up with a flashy "mission statement" and then never uses that to evaluate the goals and methods and outcomes of the ministry. We are too often putting the cart before the horse. The example we have is one of dying and sacrifice -- What if our Churches began to look like a gathering of Christians?

We have recently started to us a "dashboard" to give us a quick measure of how we are doing in our ministry. Beyond income and attendance wre measure how many small groups currently have going, how many people have come to Christ, and are there any new visitors coming. Granted these are all numeric, but they are something measureable. But they are also not the complete gauge that our leadership uses.

I do not know how to measure faithfulness, prayer, and Biblical understanding. I do not know how to gauge the kindnesses that given or how one person keep track of another. People are reluctant to report when they visit another person to pray with them or just spend time together.

I pray for the day when the measure of our worth is not simply based on how many people and dollars are flowing through our churches. it may not be soon, but I pray that it will come.

I do not think that counting is an evil, or even unnecessary, thing; yet, as members of Christ, partakers of the divine nature, we should be wary of emphasizing the number of people in a building on a Sunday over the holiness of those people (for example). We must be wary of the emphasis on those things that we count (for whatever we count is what we are declaring to be valuable), however, there is a place for administration in the Kingdom of God.

I would ask, however, what exactly it is that we should be counting...

...bodies in attendance at a gathering, or people who are plugged in to a small group?

...square footage of our facility, or number of Churches planted that have themselves planted a Church?

...dollar amounts given, or hours volunteered?

How about...

...the number of hours each member spends in prayer, or in the word daily?

...the number of leaders in the Church who have raised and released other leaders?

...the number of small groups that have multiplied?

...the number of volunteer organizations Church members are involved with?

...the average percentage Church members tip the wait staff for Sunday lunch?

This list could go on!

The simple point is that we can help people to understand what is important, if we are wise in what we do. If we will decide that which is truly valuable, and then find ways to emphasize those things by counting them, we will be less woried about whether counting the ABC's is devaluing that which is truly important.

The Successful Church ~

> Do we do all things in an excellent way that brings Him the honor and pleasure He deserves?

> Are we loving each other well?

> Do we wear "masks" or are we growing to be transparent men and women of character and integrity?

> Do we speak the truth in love?

> Is Christ being honored in hallway and parking lot conversations after business meetings?

> Do we really care about those outside the 4 walls?

> Do we open our wallets in a manner that reflects our love for Christ and His kingdom work?

It's not that bodies, bucks, and bricks can't be a measure of success. Healthy churches often grow in numbers, dollars, and real estate.

But churches can grow in numbers (for a time) without being healthy. Churches can grow in numbers simply because they worship numbers rather than Jesus.

I believe that as leaders the word that we need to focus on is Obedience instead of sucess. Are we being obedient to the Lord and His Word in all that we are doing within the Church should be a question that is asked by every leader and member.

When our focus is to please man instead of God we will continue to have a consumer mentality when it comes to how we view the church.

By the way-- I have been encouraged by several of the comments that have been made about this topic.

Since when did corporate leadership theory take the place of theology?

Should we not be listening to the theologians and missiologists first?

Or better put, should we not attempt a hermeneutic of the manifold ways leadership is expressed in the Scriptures? My hunch is that the Gospel and therefore the church gathering is to be critiquer of the culture it finds itself. Therefore we should not appeal first to corporate mediums to guide the bride. Rather we appeal to Scripture and tradition and most of all to what the Spirit of Christ is doing today!

Bummer is, what if Jesus is not impressed with our leadership theory?

What if Jesus does not even like our big gatherings?

What if our mega gatherings acutally make God despise us and cause him to want to vomit?

Should a church ever liquidate all of its assets, sacrificing place and tradition in order to advance the work of God?

Has anyone ever known an established church to do this?

I have to second Mark with the question: How does one measure obediance? Obviously Luke counted a few times in Acts, so counting alone is not bad; however, like Mark mentions in his comment, the focus should be obediance. Counting is a latent function. I'd even argue that businesses would be far more successful if they adopted the same approach. Rather than focus on quarterly numbers, focus exclusively on continuous improvement of core processes. The numbers, I argue, will take care of themselves. Edwards Deming helped rebuild Japan's industries on this premise.

I recently saw a compiled list of Jesus' commands that numbered 335. Let's assume the number is arguable based on definition. So cut it in half, 167. What if instead of figuring out how to increase the "ABCs," we focused on obeying 167 commands? Or cut that in half, 83. Or again, 41. You get my point.

If we think for one second we have any control over any results relating to the Lord Jesus, we totally fool ourselves.

We judge our success according to a rule or the criteria we've set. For example, buildings. How many churches are in debt due to their building? And this debt puts pressure on them to succeed in getting more people into the church to help pay it off. The church, then, is not free to be what God has called it to be: the community of Jesus to the world. Free to serve in all kinds of ways, in the name of Christ.

Not to say good things don't go on inside our buildings. I'm not saying buildings are bad, nor that paid staff is bad. Both can be good. But I'm just questioning our view of success, wondering if it's not built on a faulty criteria.

Once during a sermon I suggested individual report cards for the people in the congregation to record their personal growth and then take those scores, put them together and report them in the bulletin under attendance and offering.

That got a laugh.

I can see some biblical warrant for 'bodies' but is there any biblica case at all for seeing bucks and buildings as a sign of success?

This is modern western worldview at work and we are captive to it!

As the Chinese how important bucks and buildings are to the ever exploding church over there.

Fajita,

I know of one church that recognized the changing community and the fact they were not successfully reaching the community. They had a great facility. They gave their entire property to an African American church plant in the area. I would say they liquidated to extend the impage of the kingdom.

In the Great Giveaway by David Fitch he talks about this subject in the first section of the book. Fitch suggests that even if we use those 3 areas to evaluate success we should turn them on their heads. I agree so if we want to use money to measure your success, look at the money being given away by your church to support other kindgom efforts or redeem their community. Instead of your own buildings, how many churches has your church help start? Instead of attenders, how many baptisms, missionaries sent, and people called into ministry can you demonstrate? I think we can use a multitude of tools, that are tangible, as long as they reflect the heart of God and not the ideals of this world.

I can't tell you how true this article is. I do thing there is some relevance to the ABC's, but D(iscipleship) has to be an over riding factor as the great commission calls us to make disciples.

We have put some thought in recent months into our church systems from Evangelism, to assimilation, and finally the handoff to discipleship. We know that our best leaders and our best chance to disciple people today is through our SERVE teams, but that only reaches 20-30% of our church, our small groups can use additional shoring up, to potentially engage another 25-50% of the folks in a discipling setting, but what about the other 25%-50%.. It's gonna take some prayer, and work, but we are in for the process.

How should we define success?

1. Are your people "calling on the name of the Lord?"

2. Are your people "seking and saving the lost?"

3. Are your people "reaching out to the least of these?"

4. Are your people getting the barriers out of the way for God to be at work in the church?

www.wayofthepastor.blogspot.com
Way of the Pastor,
Joe

1) I don't see why declining bodies, bucks and bricks can't be a sign of spiritual health. There is a challenge and a cost to Christian living, and Churches that begin to face the Challenge will inevitably lose numbers. The Parable of the Sower illustrates this to some extent.
2) The Lord's preaching drove people away - John chapter 6.
3) On our fixation with measurements - until recently I was inclined to measure my Spiritual growth by how long I spent in prayer. So if I prayed 5 or 10 minutes more each day, I was growing as a Christian. Good Christians, therefore, could measure their prayers in hours. Then it occured to me, Paul and Peter could not have had such concerns - as they didn't own wrist watches.
4) By the way, I think Success is a modern idol.

Maybe I should add that Luke did not aim for laser accuracy in his head counts - that wasn't an option for ancient historians. In any case he had historical motives - he was explaining tha origin of the Church. He was not measuring Church growth. Acts 2 reads -"about three thousand were added to their number that day." - not -"this contituted 10% of those attending the outreach event, and after a 12 month period, 75% of respondents were still professing faith."

It has never made any sense to me that one of the first things a church does is shoulder itself with so much debt via building projects that it emasculates its ability to effectively carry out its missional purpose. Such "Field of Dreams" mentality (if we build it, they'll come) somehow misses the mark altogether.

1200 people an hour come to Christ in China where they can't even have buildings. It seems that if we were really meeting the needs of the poor and oppressed and effectively breaking down the strongholds of social and economic injustice in the world, that such a witness would draw many more people to Christ than a 50 million dollar building project could ever hope to.

Indeed, in talking with the unchurched, their biggest complaint about organized religion is the extravagant spending that goes on to construct walls that isolate the congregations from the community.

I'm not saying that bodies, bricks and bucks aren't important.

1. Many bodies bring not only more money to do God's work, they bring the many skills and spiritual gifts necessary to carry out that work.

2. Bricks will eventually be needed,as well. But, doesn't it make more sense to be as efficient and cost-effective as possible when building? Building projects have become arrogant and wasteful beyond reason. This "Super Wal-Mart" mentality has got to cease.

3. If we lay a dollar on the table for missions in Ukraine, for example, it becomes $5.10 over there. If we send it to Belarus it becomes $24 over there! When we can make such an incredible difference how can we justify spending our tithes on ourselves? Bucks are very important, yet we use most of them to build our collective towers of Babel over here and rely on hoagie and bake sales to confront the task of global missions. This is selfish, foolish and flat-out wrong. It's a great embarrassment.

Yes, bodies, bricks and bucks are imminently needed in building God's Kingdom. Especially since most of these commodities are being expended on our own endeavors rather than God's.

I liked what Jim Collins said about the success of our churches; "what impact are we having in our communities?". If we shut the doors to our church, would the community even notice?

I believe that we are the light to our community. It should get real dark if we aren't there. If we are there, we should be seeing the community 'lightening up'.

Our communities should be provoked, or woken up to the issues that the Church is praying and working into. Issues like: reducing crime rates, reducing social ills, developing people's gifts and talents, caring for the less fortunate, considering and investigating spirituality (specifically Christianity).

We need to consider why God has brought us to a specific community and what it is He has mandated for us to do. It always comes back to this challenge: What is God saying to me and am I doing it? (The challenge of real intimacy with God, as opposed to working for Him.)

Last year our denomination encouraged churches to report the "results" of their revivals. The numbers they were looking for were baptisms, rededications, etc. We had a revival with Life Action Ministries. Although we had 4 baptisms, we also had numerous marriages saved and/or strengthened, two people who confessed to stealing and offered to pay back the money, one person who tore up her credit cards, several guys who confessed to pornography which eventually led to a men's support group for sexual accountability, and so on. I could not figure out how to report those "results," without sharing confidential confessions, and I never did send in a report.

Using numbers of ANY kind is man's pride showing through. Numbers will happen, good or bad, but to measure success that way -- pride. God wants our obedience - for us to be in His will. I believe that is how God will measure our 'success' whe we stand before Him. Take the example of the missionary who labors in the fields all his life and does not lead one person to the Lord - is he a failure?
Numbers are nice, and they feel good, and God may bless and encourage us with numbers. But being in His will - that's what it's all about.
Now how to be in His will constantly - not sure I'll figure that out. Just doin' what I can with prayer and the Bible.
I agree with topten - success is an idol.

Did the Good Shepherd say "97, 98,99,... close enough."? Numbers are a good thing. The early Church obviously counted. We know the number fed.We know the baskets left over. We know how many were baptised at Pentecost. We know that daily the Lord added to their number.
If we try and avoid failure by removing any imperical measure we fly in the face of scripture.
Jesus was tallying up numbers when the widow put in her mite. He assessed the numbers through Kingdom Values.
It is not our measuring that is faulty it is out evaluation of numbers. We need to ensure that a Kingdom World View is our tool for number interpretation. IMHO

Sam Andress - I have not heard anyone suggest that corporate leadership theory should take the place of theology. I don't know where you got that from. Are you saying we should never read and interact with any book besides the Bible? As for large gatherings: I'm pretty sure Jesus won't be upset with our large gatherings since he seemed so fond of them. Please recall the feeding of the 5,000 and 4,000. Please recall the thousands who came to faith on Pentecost. If Jesus doesn't like large gatherings, the Spirit should not have inspired the gospel writers to record his large gatherings. And someone should really tell Billy Graham too...

John Webb - I agree with your idealism that the church shouldn't need buildings. But China is not a fair illustration because they don't already have church buildings in place. Can an American church survive and thrive for more than 20 years without a building? I'm not sure we can "unprogram" a culture that is so used to church buildings.

Mike Pippo - How can you say numbers of any kind is man's pride? Is that just hyperbole? How many people left Egypt? How many disciples did Jesus have? How many loaves and fish? How many thousand were saved on Pentecost? How many mighty men did David have? How many men did Jesus feed in Matthew 14? Matthew 15? What do you do with the numbers of people listed in Acts 2 and 4?

If the Bible is able to record these numbers, even if they are just for historical purposes, why wouldn't a church be able to record them for historical purposes as well?

Dave
Okay. How about - using numbers as a measure of success is pride. Saving the 'one' lost is important enought to leave the '99.' Man's thinking might say ' We have 99 saved - isn't that great!' But obedience to God would say 'go after the one.'
It's not the number, it's being obedient. All the numbers you pointed out are a result of obedience to God's will.
Praise God for the feeding of five thousand, but also Praise God for saving the one.

very interesting article, in my full-time job i visit ministers,over the last 5months i have spoken to over 250,one of the issue's i have noticed is this, is our Church making or having an impact on our community,the gap between community and the church continues to grow to the extent it has become a gulf,and churches that grow have made or are making a significant impact on their community,when you think about it this make sense.

Microeconomics analyzes corporations for efficiency and productivity; macroeconomics looks at monetary systems and how they are affected by a number of variables. No one in either field works in isolation from the other. Similarly, we might consider "microecclesiology" as a structured way of looking at how particular congregations function in terms of Biblical qualities of faithful communities, and in terms of contemporary organizational principles; and "macroecclesiology" as a means of evaluating the salt and light effect of the church in the world.

From the initial posts and subsequent responses, much of the discussion appears to focus in the micro level, with a particular concern for standardizing a useful glossary of relevant terms. Very little macro perspective about measuring church success. Clearer thinking about church success should result from more agreement on the micro terms, yet any measurements would be distorted apart from some sort of macro analysis.

My opinion is that both levels of analysis should pay special attention to ethical behavior (e.g., using the Ten Commandments in a manner similar to the Index of Leading Economic Indicators), and theological orthodoxy (a touchy subject, but Biblically and historically significant). Of course, only God truly knows just how successful we are as individual believers and as the church.