Out of Ur, a blog for Christian leaders published by Christianity Today, has a post today on Beyond Bodies, Bucks and Bricks: Jom Collins on how churches should measure success.
Most of our conversations about the health of congregations has traditionally focused on those areas -- is the church growing in members and attendance? is it supporting it's budget and is the budget increasing? and how big, nice, new, etc. is the church building? What if we wanted to ask and measure whether a church was 1) engaging the community and 2) making disciples? What questions would we use to help measure and guage how well a congregation were living into our vision 2010?
Most of our conversations about the health of congregations has traditionally focused on those areas -- is the church growing in members and attendance? is it supporting it's budget and is the budget increasing? and how big, nice, new, etc. is the church building? What if we wanted to ask and measure whether a church was 1) engaging the community and 2) making disciples? What questions would we use to help measure and guage how well a congregation were living into our vision 2010?
2 comments:
The first question most people ask -- church people or non-church people -- is "How big is your church?" To say "1000" versus saying "50" gives the same facial expression differential as being asked "What do you do?" and answering "brain surgeon" versus "garbage collector."
I serve a congregation of about 160 (on the rolls) but in "real life" we are much "bigger." In volunteerism, in community impact, in outreach we are a "big church." But when/if I look to move to an on-paper "big church" -- if I ever do -- the search cte. will look at our attendance on Sunday morning and say, "pffft to her."
Nevertheless, I decreasingly care. I serve such an awesome congregation which often includes Reaganites, Turkish Muslims, and at least one man from Peru who speaks not a word of English. Very cool.
Jan,
You sound like you have a dynamic community. Membership will be for the church of tomorrow what communion tokens are for the church of today. Hang in there. It won't be with us as long as you might fear.
Are these Turkish Muslims part of the Fethullah Gulen movement? I was so honored to be a guest of these folks on an interfaith dialogue trip to Turkey a few weeks ago. If you have not gone and get invited, GO!
I had a profound experience of meeting the person of Jesus Christ and, how crazy is this?....I found him amongst a group of Turkish Muslims! The love of God and neighbor displayed in their every action was something I have never seen amongst Christians. I shared with them who Jesus Christ is to me and thanked them for showing me so much of his character in their own. We have an incredible dialogue going.
So, forget membership...make disciples and you are doing that. WE MUST engage the interfaith community in dialogue as Christians. Our world and the Kingdom of God depends on it.
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