like a fire

Leadership Blog: Out of Ur: Beyond Bodies, Bucks, and Bricks: Jim Collins on how churches should measure success

This article belabors the point that so many in our culture operate under. Should the success of a church be measured through the counting of
bodies, bricks and bucks? I am constantly amazed at the pedancy of the Urs. Is this really a question to most church leaders? I hope not, but some part of me thinks it just is.

So pursuing the question, if progress in the kingdom is measured by these three criteria, then Jesus ministry on earth was a complete failure. He had no building, he lost all of his disciples’ commitment for the short term and the majority as well for the short term and he lived completely of the benevolence of others instead of a banked stable salary. Paul’s ministry would have to be looked at in a similar fashion. I guess the argument could be made that those weren’t typical or church ministries, but that would relegate them to either para-church or missions oriented ministries and I’m not willing to go there.

So where does that leave the church of today and the measurability of it’s success? I don’t think you can measure kingdom success by visuals alone, especially in the short term. Faith is looking beyond what we see, and spiritual growth must do likewise. Through the story of God, there are times of what we would consider moving forward and times of moving backward, but both seem to be necessary to grow. If growth is based on numbers (any kind of numbers) then when pruning happens, the temptation will be to call it something other than growth. To borrow from Richard Pratt, God’s benevolence always brings blessings and curses. We often get the two confused though. Lots of money might actually make us rely less on God and be the opposite of growth. More bodies might actually dilute to the penetration of the mission and be the opposite of Jesus ministry to his disciples. More bricks might actually become more of a burden to a community than a resource as is the case with most churches who are struggling with money.

So measuring growth isn’t all that hard or complicated although we make it that often. It can’t often be seen in a short amount of time either. And here is where I get all presbyterian. If everything works for the good of God and those who are called according to his purpose, then why are we trying to measure it? Is that distrust?

I think this sums up my whole soap box on process over outcomes.