Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not against numbers–In fact, I’m very much for them. They’re very helpful.
* They tell you if you’re growing.
* They tell you if people are coming back.
* They tell you if people are exiting the back door.
* They allow you to set goals.
* They tell you how many have come to faith in Christ.
* They tell you how many have professed Him through baptism.
As a church planter, I know that the numbers provide us with tons of valuable information.
I know they can be used for fluff as well. And that’s putting it waaaaaaaay too nicely.
For example:
Politicians can use the “numbers” to make a case for ‘growing the economy.’
“We added 200,000 new jobs in the last 6 months!”
Never mind that the economy was losing a million jobs at the same time. That’s a net loss of 800,000 jobs–pretty dismal really.
But not if you focus on the 200,000 new jobs! Wuuhoo! In that case, it’s time to celebrate!
PARTY!
Maybe spend more money in the same areas to ‘stimulate’ even more growth! After all, we ‘stimulated’ 200,000 new jobs already.
And on and on we go. But, if we ignore the ‘bottom-line’ we can expect disaster down the road.
The same applies to churches. A lot of church leaders are riveted to one set of numbers and completely ignore the others. It’s very tempting to focus on big days and tons of salvations to the exclusion of discipleship and the numbers of people who are actually developing a deeper, richer relationship with Jesus.
If people complain, oops, I mean, ‘bring it to their attention’–they just point out to them the gazillion people who bent the knee to Jesus a few weeks ago.
“But where are they now?”
Details.
At Southbrook we are focused on the numbers–but not selectively.
We count all people because ALL people count.