Since before Day One of LHC, we have always known our mission was not to be a big church, but to be a healthy one. Of course, because we are located in a metropolitan area of >1.3 million people, if we are healthy, we will grow in size.
But, there are other metrics for the health of a church. The challenge is to identify the right ones and measure accordingly. Some of these objective measurables are readily apparent:
The # of people stepping into faith in Christ for the first time.
The # of people getting baptized as a statement of faith.
The # of people regularly tithing
The growth of existing ministries and/or birth of new ministries (or eliminating of ineffective ministries)
Some of the subjective measurables are equally important. They're just much tougher to evaluate accurately because they transcend quantifying:
The worship climate of a congregation
The working environment of the staff
Spiritual Development of the congreation
This last one is the one that I think is the stickiest to evaluate. How do you determine "spiritual development" when it is personal and universal, individual and communal, as well as mysterious and obvious?
What criteria would you suggest in evaluating the spiritual development of a particular church?
4.09.2008
Health-o-meter
Posted by Mac Richard-- at 4/09/2008 03:40:00 PM
Labels: Leadership, LHC, The Church at Large, Vision
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From Bill Daniel:
ReplyDeleteMac, since you asked ;-))...
Some criteria for evaluating spiritual development of LHC:
1. # of attenders becoming members (a step along the path of spiritual development for a Christ-follower).
2. # of members becoming serving members, e.g. serving in an LHC ministry.
3. # of ministries started by LHC that become "self-sustaining", e.g. the LHC staff person(s) moves on to start or lead another ministry and new leadership steps in and steps up to continue the ministry.
4. # of new leaders developed across all LHC ministries.
Yes, this is a challenging area to measure "health" in a church so most churches choose not to have metrics...and what you don't measure doesn't get anyone's attention.
Bill, it's almost as if you've given this some thought! I agree with each of the metrics you list.
ReplyDeleteThis is a tough one Mac. Not sure I have many answers but I'm committed to keep asking the tough questions like this.
ReplyDelete