How do we measure a church?

Attendance, membership, and giving statistics are at times inadequate, if not misleading, indicators of how well churches are fulfilling their mission. The value that members and pastors place on their churches is not easily quantifiable.

For instance, when I asked Mark Hendrickson, co-pastor of the Drexel, Missouri, Church of the Nazarene, about the importance of statistics, he replied with a question: "How do we measure the life of Sarah, a lady who was living in a drug house two years ago? Today she's clean, following Jesus, and leading a compassionate ministry in our church.

"On our statistical report this year, she shows up as one conversion, one more in Sunday School, one more in worship, one more member. But her story reflects a spiritual, theological, and communal health in our church that goes way beyond a number."

Peter Migner took a salary reduction when he became a bivocational pastor at Emmanuel Church of the Nazarene in Madison Heights, Virginia. Due to financial challenges he has also lost his family health insurance. He asked, "Who measures sacrifice? My family is larger than when I came, and I have less of a benefits package than when I moved here, yet the church, in my opinion, is healthier than ever. It's not only measured by numbers but also by changed lives and the spiritual love in the body."

Reggie McNeal, one of the most widely read church consultants of our times, disagrees with using corporate metrics, or what he calls the "scorecard" of attendance, membership, and giving to evaluate churches. He feels that not all church growth is healthy or sustainable. In his book, The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church, he advocates for a missional "scorecard." He explains, "A missionary church culture will need to begin keeping score on things different from what we measure now." He further explains that these areas of measurement may include:

• How many ministry initiatives we are establishing in the streets
• How many conversations we are having with pre-Christians
• How many volunteers we are releasing into local and global mission projects aimed at community transformation
• How many congregations use our facilities
• How many languages (ethnic and generational) we worship in
• How many church activities target people who aren't here yet
• How many hours per week members spend in ministry where they work, go to school, and get mail

Mike Meeks, pastor of a cowboy church in Oklahoma City and educator at Southern Nazarene University, says his "scorecard" would be close to McNeal's. "The scorecard would move from institutional, quantitative measurements to relational, qualitative measurements."

He adds, "The church is a being, a living organism, yet the health of a congregation is usually measured only by its doing."

In their book Simple Church: Returning to God's Process for Making Disciples, Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger claim that churches are not counting what is most important. What matters is not how many people attend worship—'vertical' counting—but how many are moving toward discipleship, which is often demonstrated by their involvement in ministries outside the church—'horizontal' counting.

Rainer and Geiger encourage congregations to track the movement of people horizontally, from visiting to discipleship. Most churches count the number of people in worship or small groups as a measure of success. To fulfill their missional purpose they advise, "Learn to view your numbers horizontally and not vertically."

Mark Fuller, pastor of Grove City, Ohio, Church of the Nazarene, agrees. He says: "If our mission is making Christlike disciples in the nations, then it seems reasonable that every index on the 'scorecard' should point directly to making disciples. Thom Rainer's 'horizontal' approach would be better than our current 'vertical' measurements."

"What Shall We Measure?" is the title of a chapter in the book Leading Without Power: Finding Hope In Serving Community, by Max De Pree, after whom the Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Seminary is named. He warns, "It is so easy to fall into the trap of measuring only what's easy to measure. What's tough," he says, "is to measure the 'qualitative issues' that give value to a church or any organization."

De Pree comes to the heart of the issue when he says, "I can certainly measure my love for my family, though I couldn't quantify it in a million years of trying.

Indeed. How would you quantify the value of a changed life, the sacrifice of pastors, or the discipleship of believers?

Knowing who attends worship, keeping track of and paying attention to members, and counting and being good stewards of the offerings are necessary functions of every congregation. Measuring these things is important. But equally important are the intangibles that make churches worthwhile. I am convinced that most churches are involved in much more ministry than that being counted, and that the most valued characteristics of vibrant congregations are not easily measured.

Tom Nees is the former director of the USA/Canada office for the Church of the Nazarene.

Holiness Today

Please note: All facts, figures, and titles were accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of original publication but may have since changed.