I have spent a few hours the last couple of days checking out some pastor’s and church planter’s blogs just to see what’s going on and it makes me sad to see that the numbers thing is a reoccuring theme:
- “We just hit 7,893 people and had to turn people away.”
- “I just met with an incredible dude who grew his church from 0 to 1500 in one year; he is amazing!”
- “This church in the middle of timbuktu is running 1800. It’s incredible!”
- “We are striving for and focused on hitting the 3000 mark”
(I did paraphrase and change the stats somewhat as I don’t want to point out any particular dude or appear to be bashing just a few churches. BTW – Thanks Cory Miller for your post on why you don’t bash others.)
Are numbers so important that pastors must incessantly drone on about it? Is the only way some of us value our existence on the earth by the number of church attendance one has, how many are following us, the number of best-sellers we have sold, or how popular we rank on Google or Technorati?
Many of the blogs I have been scoping say nothing about changed lives, baptisms (unless there’s a big number involved), or how the community is being impacted by the servants in their churches. I also keep seeing a bunch of church planting and pastor groupies following a few of the”big guys” and kissing the ground these stars walk on because these guys have huge numbers in their church and are getting all kinds of press. Should we not boast in the Lord instead?
We are a worldly people…and yes, I include myself in this camp! We must turn away from our focus of pride, arrogance, and fruitless fancies and turn towards the qualities of Jesus Christ or I fear that many churches in the future will not represent Christ, but the world and its values.
I have been gaining many insights from people in my community that are not believers and the consensus is that Christians hurt Christianity more than anything. If they see (or read) pastors as only trying to hit a magical number they might think that they are only a number. Brothers, please be careful. Growing a healthy church is important – but growing a church for the numbers is not.
Related posts:
Thank you for this post. I think that the issue of growth in discipleship is more important than numbers involved. I think that part of what may be the issue here is that it is much more difficult to quantify growth in discipleship than it is to count numbers.
[...] by Andrew C on February 16th, 2007 I recently read Hey Brother, what’s your numbers? on New Church Marketing. This post got me thinking about the difference between growing worship [...]
The most important numbers we measure in our ministry is active participation numbers. We stress this concept over and over with our team for every decision we make.
If a decision we are going to make looks like it will end up creating an audience vs creating participants we throw it out. We have discovered that we can create huge numbers very quickly if we want to. Others have.
I like numbers. I like audiences. But I don’t measure the audience or strive to create them, tempting as that might be.
Decisions can take place in an audience, but transformation happens in the mess. That’s why our focus and time is mainly spent there.
Steven,
simplechurch.tv
thechurch.wordpress.com
Andrew,
Thanks for the comment and the input. Your point is well taken!
James
Steven,
This brings up another post that I want to write about – attractional ministry vs. missional ministry. If all we are doing is drawing in consumers and not contributors, then that will make a very dysfunctional church and will eat up many resources. If we are not making disciples (and as Andrew stated is difficult to quantify) then what’s the point? People can be entertained at a concert or movie.
My deal is that I would rather have 12 committed disciples than 1200 people who are just coming for a show, free Starbucks, and a love connection.
Numbers are healthy when there is NOT having a focus on big crowds for building one’s ego or by transfer growth because your band uses flamethrowers in the service. If thousands of people are flocking to a church because there is solid Bible preaching, lives are being transformed, believers are being discipled, and they are going into the world on mission, then that would be a healthy church and be impressive.