Category: Church health

How an honor culture can crushes your soul

Last fall we while staying with some friends in England we discovered an important principle about wiring. After taking a shower one morning Sherry plugged her hairdryer into the outlet. The hairdryer sounded like a 747 taking off as the motor hit about 50,000 rpm. I think she could have dried her hair in 37 seconds if smoke hadn’t started pouring out of every crack in the hairdryer. She quickly unplugged the appliance and we prayed the smoke detectors wouldn’t go off. Later at breakfast we hoped our hosts wouldn’t notice the pungent odor of burning rubber. We learned that just because you can plug something in to 220 volts doesn’t mean its wired for it.

My fear is I see this same principle at work in some church cultures where honor is one directional and focused on leaders in a hierarchical  structure like the model below:

The expectation in this type of environment is that everyone show honor to the leaders above them. It is often stated that honor flows both ways, but most of the honor seems to be directed at leaders higher on the org chart, especially the leader at the top, in the form of deference, agreement and perks. The problem is that as leaders we are not wired for that type of focused attention and devotion. Like my wife’s hairdryer, its great for a little while but eventually something will burn up.

When we are surrounded by people who cater to our every need, remove all obstacles from our path and hang on our every word, it begins to do weird things to our mind. We begin to believe that we are, in fact, worthy of the kind of honor being showered on us. We begin to shield ourselves from the unpleasant fact that, while we have different gifts, we are all the same. The perks that go along with rising in an organization can cause us to lose touch with that reality, and losing touch with that reality will destroy our souls in the end.

That is why Paul gives very clear instructions about honor in Romans 12:

‘Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. ‘ Romans 12:10

Paul’s model of honor looks more like this:

In Paul’s model everyone honors everyone else so no one person is overloaded with attention, devotion or perks. He draws a clear distinction between authority (“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities…” Romans 13:1) and honor. Authority says recognizes the value of leadership and order while honor keeps everything in balance. It is like authority is the gas that gives the engine power while honor is the oil that keeps the engine running.

Honor that flows equally in every direction is essential to a healthy culture. Honor that only flows in one direction destroys the soul and creates a sick culture.

What does honor look like in your world?

Elephant Pee and Five Things to Do After Easter

One Easter I was working for a church that did an “illustrated sermon” each year on Easter complete with sets, costumes and live animals on stage. This particular Easter the decision was made to include a small elephant in the pageant. I’m not sure how an elephant fits in the passion story, but it seemed like a good idea to someone. When the time came for the elephant to enter the auditorium it chose no. It chose instead to relieve itself on the carpet in front of the main door to the church, and it wasn’t going to move until it was done. So Easter came to stinky halt while we waited for an elephant to empty its bladder. In case you are wondering an elephant’s bladder can hold a lot of liquid.

I share that story to encourage pastors; no matter how rough your Easter services were at least cleaning up elephant pee isn’t on your To Do List.

Regardless how your Easter services went the key now is to turn your attention to what happens next for your church. Hopefully you have some new families to follow up and some stories of life change to share. So let’s roll up our sleeves and get back to work. Here are six things I think you should do to follow up on Easter:

1. Thank your staff and volunteers

Your team may not have had to clean up elephant pee, but I’m sure their past few weeks have been challenging. It is important to slow your roll and take some time to thank everyone for the hard work they put in during this season. Don’t just send a general email, name people by name. Better yet, write a personal note or go to each person and thank them for their contribution.

2. Celebrate the wins

Find anything that was a win over Easter and celebrate like crazy. I learned this while working for Rick Warren. After one Easter a campus pastor was disappointed because his campus missed their goal for attendance. Rick said, “Don’t worry about the people who didn’t come, celebrate the people who did! You set a big goal and stretched further than you would have without the goal. That’s a win!”

3. Tell the stories

Hopefully you had photographers and story gatherers at your Easter services, but even if you didn’t find a way to tell the stories. Share stories as a team and share stories with the congregation. Nothing helps people get the “why” behind the “what” like a good story.

4. Follow up with the new guests

As soon as possible follow up with new guests. The key to effective follow up is to move beyond just advertising what the church has to offer and asking them to come back. Find a way to discover the guest’s needs and feedback. Invest in ways you can truly serve the new people God has brought to your front step. Feed the 5000.

5. Take a breath

Everyone needs a rest, especially the leaders. Give staff an extra day off this week. Take some time to completely disconnect from the church for 24 hours. Have some fun, blow off some steam and recharge your batteries. You’re going to need all the energy you can build.

6. Sprint to Mother’s Day

You have six weeks until Mother’s Day. Two weeks after Mother’s Day is Memorial Day and then no one will think about church until the fall. As a church you’ve just had one of the biggest days of the years, now your in the back stretch. Sprint through the finish line giving every weekend everything you have. Now is the time to schedule a guest speaker for the two weekends after Mother’s Day so you can put all your energy into the series that starts next weekend. Encourage your team that the next six weeks are a sprint, but everyone will get some rest after Mother’s Day. And follow through on your promise.

And skip the elephant next Easter.

(Email me at geoff@ministrytogether.com if you’d like to chat about how we can help you with strategy and leadership)

Five Things Pastors Need To Do Before Easter

One spring a church staff member informed me he was taking Easter weekend off. (It felt like Tom Brady telling Bill Belichik he was skipping the Super Bowl to take Gisele skiing.) He said he didn’t think missing Easter Sunday was a big deal, at his last church Easter was just another Sunday. Why did we make such a big deal about Easter?

Obviously Easter is a big deal because it is the day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the single biggest event in the history of the world. Easter is also a big deal because it is the one day of the year that a majority of Americans still consider going to church. Getting someone to attend one day a year isn’t the point, of course, but it is a great place for people to take a first or next step toward God.

I’ve seen pastors work hard on a creative message to share the Gospel, worship leaders pull out all the stops for a moving service and children’s directors put everything they have into making Easter a day kids will remember; only to miss incredible opportunities to help people to connect to God through their church on the one day they show up. With that in mind here is my list of things not to miss this Easter.

Five things to do before Easter:

  1. Anticipate the challenges of a first time attender

    Grab a small team and walk through a weekend experience at your church from the parking lot to the lobby to the children’s spaces to the worship center to the kids pickup back to the parking lot and out to the street. Be sure to think through every entrance to your parking lot and building. Where do you need to post hosts? Where do you need to add signs? How can you help ease the anxiety of the introvert who walks in for the very first time?

  2. Prepare to capture stories

    After Easter you will want to share the story of what happens with staff, volunteers and attenders, so you need to prepare in advance. Enlist volunteer photographers to capture everything that happens on the weekend. Reach out to your congregation and I guarantee you will find volunteers photographers. Provide a Dropbox or Google folder for them to upload their photos, give them a few common sense directions, and then ask them to fire away.

    Also designate one or two staff members or volunteers to be on the lookout for stories to capture. They can interview families before and after church to collect quotes and pictures to share later. Give them common sense instructions and see what they collect. Nothing encourages leaders and volunteers like stories of life change.

  3. Make a plan to gather contact information

    How will you invite people to share at least their email address so you con follow up? For many years Rick Warren has had everyone who attends Saddleback at Easter fill out a simple three question survey on their faith. It is a great way to get a look at the faith journey of the congregation and to collect contact information.

  4. Have strategy to invite people back to what is next

    If I visit your church on Easter why would I ever come back? I listened to the music and heard your sermon. My kids got their Easter eggs. We’ll see you Christmas Eve, or maybe next Easter.

    I attended a church a couple of weeks ago where the pastor did a great job of intriguing me to come back by giving a preview of the next week’s sermon. He didn’t just announce the topic and show a graphic, he actually set up the problem he’d be unpacking next Sunday. If the church wasn’t two hours from my house I’d show up just to hear the next sermon. How can you do more than simply announce your catchy series title to encourage guests to return?

  5. Build a team for follow up

    Make sure you have a team of staff and/or volunteers ready to follow up on everyone who identifies themselves as a first time guest, and be sure they are ready to respond within 24 hours. Make sure your follow-up isn’t just a mail-merged impersonal email. Follow up in a way that isn’t creepy, but seems like a real person read my information and really wants to make a connection.

Easter is a really big deal. Easter is a day when people who normally pay no attention to the Gospel come willingly to our churches to consider the invitation of God. Don’t miss it!

(Be sure to check back next week for Five Things Every Pastor Needs to Do After Easter)

Email me at geoff@ministrytogether.com if you are interested in more help with church strategy.

Five words your church should ban

I recently read an article in the Harvard Business Review titled Ban These 5 Words From Your Corporate Values Statement which reminded of a mistake I often see in a church’s list of core values; many of the items aren’t core values. It’s not that the items are evil or bad, the problem is their list of core values tells you almost nothing about who they are as a church. Take a look at your church’s list of core values and answer this question; Could your core values describe almost any evangelical church in America? If yes, then you don’t have core values, you have general principles. Core values drive your church toward your very unique mission in the word while general principles describe the basic beliefs and practices of almost all churches.

To help you in this exercise let’s look at five words churches should ban from their list of core values. WARNING: When you finish this list you may have to start over articulating your core values.

Five words your church should ban

  1. Authentic
    Quoting the HBR article: “You can’t claim to be authentic or that you want to be — you must simply be authentic. And your organization will be authentic if its leaders actually act and communicate in authentic ways.” When I see a church with Authentic as one of their core values my first thought is, “Hmm, I wonder what they are trying to hide?” Authenticity isn’t something to strive for, it’s something to be.
  2. Transparent
    Transparent is the cousin of Authentic. It shows up in lists of core values more often than James Harden at the free throw line (obscure NBA reference). The challenge isn’t that transparency isn’t a positive attribute, the challenge is that it doesn’t change who you’re striving to be as a church. No church has opacity as a core value. Like authenticity, transparency is something that will flow naturally out of who you identify, develop and deploy as leaders.
  3. Relevant
    Of course a church should hope to be relevant to their culture, but relevance isn’t the VALUE you are pursuing. Core values push to the front of the line when there is a conflict of interest, which means that a church based on eternal biblical truths will at times seem completely irrelevant to the current culture. What is the value BEHIND the desire to be as relevant as ethically possible in an ever-shifting culture? That is your core value.
  4. Fun
    A core value should be true of your church in every situation. That is why it is a “core” value; everything you do flows out of that value. I’m all about fun and humor. I love leaders that don’t take themselves too seriously and churches that know how to create fun experiences.
    There are, however, many times when fun is inappropriate. There is nothing fun about a child’s funeral, a failing marriage or a school shooting. In those moments no one is looking for a pastor who can tell a joke or a church that knows how to throw a party. It’s okay, even good, to be fun; it’s just not the core of who you want to be as a church.
  5. Gospel-centered
    Often this means, “Our theology is WAY better than the theology of the other churches in town. We are the heavyweights in the GFC (Gospel Fighting Championship).” Your particular theological bent may be a core value but focusing on the Gospel isn’t your unique or exclusive purview.

Your core values drive the mission of your church. Are you focused on people who’ve never heard the Gospel? Are you obsessed with justice for widows and orphans? Is your central purpose to see people become better disciples? Do you spend a huge amount of time and money investing in reaching unreached people groups in other countries? Are you passionate about building strong families? All of these are positive, but not every church is focused on the same areas. Every church has unique call and a unique bent; that’s what your core values should reflect. The authors of the HBR article say it like this:

“There isn’t one right set of values for every organization. Your core values should describe the collective attitudes and beliefs that you desire all employees to hold, translate those into specific actions and decisions that they should make, and then in turn show how those behaviors produce customer experiences that define and differentiate your brand. Your core values need to be unique.”

Take some time with other leaders in your church and ask these two questions:

  1. Are our core values unique to our church, or do they fit with any similar church in the country?
  2. Do our core values accurately reflect our unique call, passion and style of ministry?

While you’re looking at your core values you might want to pull out your mission statement and take a look at that as well. Here are some ideas to help write a more effective mission statement.

If you are redefining your vision, mission and values we’d love to help. We are certified in the Paterson Center’s StratOp process, which is an incredible system for discovering and executing your church’s God-given plan. You can contact us here for more information.

Does Your Mission Statement Suck?

Why do you do what you do?

Recently Sherry and I were in a pre-service meeting at a church where we were speaking that morning. The young lady leading the pre-service meeting of core volunteers asked, “Who knows the mission of our church?” There was some nervous laughter and feet shuffling, but no one had a clue. She turned to another staff member to see if he knew, but he was equally clueless. Finally she read a well-crafted phrase that had been pasted onto the church website and promptly forgotten. There was nothing wrong with the stated mission, it was simply irrelevant to the people charged with executing the mission. In the end none of us who assembled to conduct church that day had the faintest idea of why we were there.

Contrast that with another church I am connected to, Real Life Church based in Orlando. On a recent weekend a stage host sprang a pop quiz on the congregation at the largest campus, “Hey, who knows the mission of Real Life?” Immediately almost the entire congregation responded, “Changed lives!” There was no doubt the bottom line for everything that happens at Real Life, “Will what we are do lead directly to changed lives?” The mission is clear and easily understood.

One of the things I love about Community Christian in Naperville is the clarity and consistency of their mission. “Helping people find their way back to God” isn’t just a tagline on their website, it is the driving force behind everything they do. In the 13 years I’ve known Dave and Jon Ferguson their commitment to that one line has never wavered, and everything CCC does is organized around that simple concept. The mission at Willow Creek has never changed since the church was planted in 1975, “We exist to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Christ.” My guess is that every staff member and most members could tell you some form of that sentence without hesitation. Community Christian and Willow Creek know what they do and why they do it.

Jesus was a strong believer in a simple mission. In Luke 19 church people were outraged that he would seem to endorse the lifestyle of a infamous “sinner” in the community by having lunch at Zaccheus’ house. To help them understand they why behind the what of his actions Jesus gave this simple and memorable mission statement, “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” Simple, direct and memorable. I imagine each of Jesus’ disciples knew exactly why Jesus came and what it was he was about. He came to seek and save the lost.

What about your church? Do you have a mission that is compelling, memorable and actionable? If I met five regular attenders and asked them, “What is the mission of your church?”, how many could tell me? I’ve worked with some churches with no mission statement at all. They have no idea why they do what they do. I’ve worked with many churches with a long, detailed mission statement they had spent a lot of time crafting. The challenge was their mission was unknown and meaningless to most of the attenders. Every church (and organization) needs a simple, one sentence mission statement the sums up the reason for everything they do. If you do not have one how does anyone know why you do what you do?

What is your one sentence purpose for doing what you do? Once you have that let’s take a look at your list of Core Values, I think there may be some problems there as well.

What am I supposed to do?

Teach-Girls-End-World-PovertyI recently had a fascinating conversation with a sharp young leader. They had just returned from an amazing vacation in the Caribbean. The food, the scenery, the weather, the company; everything was perfect. They were incredibly grateful for the opportunity to enjoy this vacation of a lifetime, but one they were overwhelmed by the economic gulf between them and the people who served at the resort. The shacks, the broken down roads, and the abject poverty were heart breaking. They could not shake the disconnect of experiencing opulent luxury surrounded by crippling need. They stopped in the middle of sharing their experience, looked at me with deep sincerity and asked, “What am I supposed to do?”

Their perspective is refreshing. They aren’t mired in the guilt of having more. They aren’t caught in the misguided trap of feeling better than or worse than the people they met. They see a need and know they must act. Rather than ignoring the pain or reacting to the cause they are simply asking, “What am I supposed to do?”

I saw this look on my wife’s face when she returned from her first visit to a school for AIDS orphans in a tiny village in Kenya. Everyone on her team was moved by what they saw, but my wife knew she had to act. She could not simply send money, or make return visits, she had to make a difference. She had to answer the question, “What am I supposed to do?” She formed a board for the school, revamped their sponsorship program, revitalized the fund raising and changed the future trajectory of the school.

Every day we are inundated with need. Children in Africa, refugees in Europe, immigrants in America. It is easy to become deaf to the cry of human desperation all around us; we can’t help everyone. But we can help some. Jesus didn’t heal all blindness, but he gave sight to the blind man on the road to Jericho. He didn’t restore every crippled limb, but he healed the lame man by the pool of Bethesda. He didn’t raise everyone from the dead, but he brought the widow’s son back to life. Rather than being callous or overwhelmed Jesus always cared for the one in front of him.

Imagine the impact, as we see needs both overwhelming and insignificant, if we asked that simple question, “What am I suppose to do?” You may decide to sponsor a child, or start a ministry, or volunteer at food bank. You may decide to raise money, or start a prayer chain, or tutor a middle schooler. The reality is that we can all do something in Jesus’ name, and together our force for good is overwhelming.

What AM I supposed to do?

10 Hidden Secrets of Multisite Churches

if-youre-afraid-of-multi-site-church-this-is-the-book-for-you0When we started down the multisite road at Seacoast Church 16 years ago we had no idea what we were doing. There were no books on multisite and very few models to learn from. Today there are over 8000 multisite churches across the country, dozens of multisite consultants and several books specifically written for churches considering becoming one church in multiple locations. Even with all of the available information, however, there are some hidden multisite secrets almost no on talks about. Here are my top ten:

  1. Boring in-person preaching is lethally boring on video

    I have been told video teaching won’t work in the the Northeast, the Northwest, the West Coast, in England, in Europe and in India. Although I’ve seen successful video teaching examples in each of these contexts what I’ve come to realize is that bad video teaching doesn’t work anywhere. When a church tells me video teaching won’t work in their context I often suspect the problem isn’t the video.

  2. Multisite won’t make a stagnant church grow

    Many years ago Larry Osborne said, “Multisite isn’t an engine for growth, it is a response to growth.” A church that isn’t experiencing numerical growth almost never  begins growing by launching a second campus. After the excitement settles down the church will be the same size it was before, but its expenses will be much higher.

  3. Great preaching and great worship grow a campus

    No matter what model you pick nothing grows a campus like great preaching and great music. Most campuses that struggle to grow are lacking in one or both of these areas. I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, its just a thing.

  4. IMAG and video teaching are two completely different things

    Sometimes church will add IMAG (Big screens in the auditorium to project video of what is going on on the stage) to “prepare the congregation for video teaching.” This is similar to buying a puppy to get ready to have a baby. Its just not the same.

  5. Convincing people to leave a comfortable building to attend at a rundown middle school is really hard

    People don’t want to go to church in a school, theater or community center. They like a permanent building they don’t have to set up and tear down. It is a mistake to underestimate how hard it will be to convince people to switch from a worship center to a cafetorium.

  6. Ministries on a large campus are different than ministries on a small campus

    It is very different to do children’s ministry for 500 kids than for 50 or 5. Not everything that a larger church does scales well to a smaller context, so many ministries have to rethink their “non-negotiables”.

  7. A campus pastor has two jobs; develop leaders and energize volunteers

    A campus pastor who can develop leaders and energize volunteers will grow a healthy campus; anything else a campus pastor focuses on is a distraction. If he can’t develop  leaders and energize volunteers morale at his campus will suffer and he’ll constantly look to the mothership to bail him out.

  8. Half of the people who help start a new campus eventually go back

    People who are fired up about starting something new, reaching a new part of a city or following a new leader get tired of setting up and tearing down. They miss their friends at the original campus. Their kids miss the shiny classrooms and great teachers. Campus pastors need to know that many of these pioneers will eventually migrate back, and that’s ok. The goal is to have enough new people from the community to more than make up the difference.

  9. Adding new campuses is hardest on children’s ministry

    The most volunteer intensive ministry is always children’s ministry, and adding a new campus always means losing some of their best leaders. The children’s minister at the new campus has to instantly replicate what took years, even decades, to develop at the original site. Children’s ministry needs lots of TLC when new campuses are launched.

  10. Multisite impacts everything

    Unlike other ministries multisite impacts everything a church does. Every budget decision and every ministry initiative is now viewed through the lens of how it impacts every campus. Multisite is always complicated.

I still am a strong believer in multisite as a means of multiplication in the Kingdom. I have seen the incredible synergy of one church in many locations, and in the right circumstances I have seen the explosive growth that follows. It is important, however, to go in with your eyes wide-open to the hidden challenges.

How can we help your church with their multisite questions? After a few years focusing on church planting through a local church in Denver we are once again coaching multisite churches. If you’d like to chat about how we might be able to help your church fill out this form and lets talk.

 

The reason you can’t find volunteers

Recently on a beautiful drive Sherry and I were comparing notes on what makes a
healthy ministry volunteer culture. (Some couples talk about vacations, some about retirement, we brainstorm ministry ideas; that’s just how we roll.) Working with ministries around the world the one question we hear more than any other is, “How do you find good volunteers?” Almost every church is desperate to find more children’s workers, parking lot attendants, ushers, small group leaders and dozens of other volunteer positions. As we drove through the beauty of the Rocky Mountains in early spring we agreed on two basics:

Most churches can’t find enough volunteers because they recruit to the wrong thing

Having an abundance of volunteers is driven by a healthy volunteer culture.

Let’s look first at recruiting. Whether they intend to or not almost every church appeals to need. The church NEEDS volunteers. We need people to watch children, to hand out bulletins, to count the offering, to lead small groups, to play in the band. We can’t do what we do without volunteers. Imagine what church would be if we didn’t have volunteers; we’d have to shut down programs and change how we do church. We appeal to people’s sense of duty, or to their guilt. We parade the needs of others in front of members hoping they will feel the need to step up to the plate. We remind the congregation that only 20% of the people do 80% of the work of the church.

As it turns out recruiting to need is effective with about 20% of the people who attend your church. If you are really effective, you may get to 25%. The challenge is we are inundated with needs every day. We drive past people with cardboard signs describing their needs. We are challenged at the grocery checkout line to donate to needy children. On TV Sarah McLachlan shows us pictures of sad animals, pleads with us to meet their needs as she sings “In the Arms of the Angels” (I’m not sure who’s in the angels’ arms, but it seems very sad). There are only so many needs we can care about, much less meet, so we draw the line somewhere. For most people the needs at church are low on the list of things they care about enough to help fill, so the appeal to need falls on deaf ears.

If your church or ministry is struggling to find enough volunteers are you trying to recruit by appealing to need? In the word of the great theologian Dr. Phil, “How’s that working out for you?” The alternative to recruit to need is to build a healthy volunteer culture. Its is slower and harder, but is really the only path to accomplishing God’s mission through your ministry. Tomorrow we’ll look at the three crucial building blocks of a healthy volunteer culture.

 

Another fallen pastor

faceI hate to admit that when I see a headline like the one above I always want to click through to find out who failed. Is it someone I know? Is it someone I dislike? Is it someone I feel in competition with? Every time I click on a headline about a fallen pastor I’m the one that falls. Why do we secretly rejoice when someone else fails?

The other day our oldest granddaughter slipped and fell, busting her lip on our kitchen floor. Thankfully, though there was a little blood and a lot of tears, she wasn’t seriously hurt. By the time I got home she was snuggled up with her mom holding a bag of ice against her swollen lip. Her younger sister, three year old Mollie, was sitting on the kitchen floor blowing soap bubbles with my wife, Sherry. As Sherry told me about Maggie’s accident Mollie’s smile disappeared, she looked up, tears brimming in her eyes, and said, “Me too”. She felt so much empathy for what her sister experienced it was as though she had fallen as well.

I want to have that kind of empathy for other pastors. I hope my heart to break when I hear of a pastor failing morally. I hope I can be excited when a new church succeeds and crushed when a church plant fails. I want to pray every day for other pastor’s kids, and I want to be more interested in the health of their marriage than the size of their budget.

The next time I see a story outlining the details of a pastor who’s fallen I pray my response isn’t self-righteous smugness, I pray my response will simply be, “Me too, I’m another fallen pastor”.

Measuring  Success

SuccessAs a church planter or a pastor when will you know you have succeeded? What is the goal? Where is the finish line? In the business world you fight for market share and profit. When you are in the top three in your market and you are dropping loads of cash to the bottom line you know that you are running a successful business. There are certainly other measures, but those two ring the bell almost every time. Why don’t we have similar measures in church?

The default measure of success for a lot of us as leaders, whether we admit it or not, is butts in seats. If attendance this week is bigger than last week or last month or last year then we are winning; if the arrow points down then we are losing. So the goal is to get more butts in more seats whatever it takes. We put up billboards, we send out flyers, we hype every weekend as the BEST WEEKEND EVER!!!; anything to draw a crowd. We don’t worry too much about whose seats those butts were in last weekend, as long as we can get them back in our seats next week.

Some of us are a little less crass and a little more self-righteous in measuring success. All we care about are souls in the Kingdom, so we measure salvations. But how do we measure salvation? The most common standards are baptisms and hands raised in response to an appeal. The focus then becomes how to get hands up and hair wet no matter what it takes. Now we’re on the same train as the butts in seaters.

Which brings us to the most pious crowd of all. We are not concerned about attendance or emotional response; we count disciples. And how do we count disciples? By activity of course. How many people lead groups? How many people complete classes? How many people participate in outreach projects? Unfortunately, as the WCA Reveal study showed, activity does not always equal discipleship. We are measuring, but are we successful?

When Jesus was asked in Matthew 22 for his definition of success (“What is most important?”) he didn’t mention weekend attendance, salvations or even discipleship. He gave two very clear criteria by which all success should be measured:

  1. Do you love God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength?
  2. Do you love your neighbor as yourself?

This doesn’t preclude measuring attendance, salvation and discipleship; we measure what is important. But when we sit down at the end of the day only our love for God and our love for our neighbor should be considered. What is success as a church planter or a pastor? It is measured in how we love. So, are you successful?