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Measuring What Matters
How do you gauge if your people are getting stronger?
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Frazee: On the other hand, one danger of not assessing the maturity of our congregation is that we'll then evaluate only the ABC's: attendance, buildings, and cash. Typically we set goals only in those areas. While we have to be very careful in what we measure, we need input as to where our congregation is struggling. We surveyed our leaders on the fruit of the Spirit a couple of years ago. The number one issue in our church was self-control. Did that surprise you? Frazee: Surprise me? It scared me. It makes you not want to have a board meeting! (laughter) Frazee: But it also excited me. This information gave me something to work toward other than increasing attendance. I'm now working toward life transformation. That is intensely powerful. Last fall we took our first annual survey on the spiritual maturity of our church membership. Taking that information into our planning retreat in January, for the first time in the history of Pantego Bible Church, we were not just asking "Are we experiencing 10 percent numerical growth?" Now we're looking at "Where is our congregation spiritually? Where are they struggling?" Gallup: I think you're absolutely right to do that. I've known only a few churches where there has been a serious attempt to assess the level of spiritual maturity. It's rare? Gallup: Yes. The giant assumption is that because people are there, they are growing; that because the church is growing, the people are growing in their journey. The better question is "What's going on on the inside of the church that's growing?" It's not enough to collect a crowd. You've got to make disciples. Willard: The alternative way to measure church growth is bigger Christians. Frazee: In 2 Peter 1 are listed a number of character qualities of a follower of Christ. Verse 8 says, "For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." That suggests that there is a quantifiable component to these virtues. There is evidence. The mystery of discipleship may not be defined, but in some ways it can be measured, and should be. So we have consensus that maturity can to some extent be measured. So what do we measure? What does a mature believer look like? Frazee: I'd begin with the words of Jesus—love God, love neighbor. We're trying to develop a corporate understanding of this so that faith isn't just an individual thing. Then I would examine some of the core beliefs, practices and virtues that Christians disciples are called to, and ask people to identify how they are doing against those benchmarks. Find the revolutionaries, a few people who, like you, are not happy with the status quo. God has already called out to them.
—Ken Fong Willard: The New Testament concept of the disciple is very simple. I am someone's disciple if I am with him learning to be like him. The word I prefer most is apprentice because of the applied nature of the concept. If you look at Jesus with his disciples, you see that's exactly what he did. |             | |||||||||||||||||||
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