mission measure

How Do You Measure a Church’s Success?

Posted in Auxano, Church Unique, Will Mancini, life marks, megachurches, mission measure, missional, vision, vision frame on September 19th, 2008 by Steve Bradley – 2 Comments

In a post last week on Megachurches and Church Growth, I asked the question, “How do you measure the health or growth of a church?“

The temptation for most churches (and those writing articles on churches) is to measure only the ABCs (Attendance, Buildings, and Cash).

The problem here is that while such measures are informative, they do not adequately capture the true measure of a church’s missional effectiveness.

The reason? Because the ABCs focus primarily on organizational metrics, ignoring the more elusive and difficult to quantify relational dynamics that mark true missional success.

Put more plainly, if a church’s mission is to make disciples, they need to have some idea of what they’re trying to make.

So how does a church know this? By asking questions such as these:

  • How do we determine who and who is not a disciple?
  • What is our definition of spiritual growth or maturity?
  • What characteristics or qualities does a disciple exhibit?
  • How do we measure spiritual fruitfulness?

Such questions move beyond the mere accounting of resources, towards a more relational model that measures success in terms of character qualities or missional life marks (for more on this, see Chapter 15 of Mancini’s book, Church Unique).

How does your church measure success? Do you have a common target or bull’s-eye that you’re all aiming at?

Megachurches and Church Growth

Posted in North Point, church stuff, growth, megachurches, mission measure, numbers on September 12th, 2008 by Steve Bradley – 1 Comment

Here’s an interesting article from USA Today earlier this week on Megachurches.

Not surprisingly, the article equates “growth” with attendance numbers, suggesting that such growth “may be stalled.” Not sure how they actually arrived at that conclusion, given the numbers they cite. Apparently slight declines by “some of the biggest” warrant a trend that the numbers actually don’t seem to support. Case in point, North Point’s attendance figures have increased by over 15% since last year, with 3 of the top 5 showing increases, not decreases (if you’re interested in North Point, you might want to check out my earlier posts here and here).

The focus on attendance numbers misses the point, however, in my estimation. Which begs the question, how do you measure the health or growth of a church?

I have my opinions, but I’d like to hear yours. What measures does your church use to define success or failure? How do you measure your own spiritual growth?