by Mike Chong Perkinson
There are so many assessment tools for us to consider as leaders. The majority of these tools are good and helpful and we applaud any leader that desires to purify and enhance their ministry effectiveness.
Like any tool that is created for our use there are underlying presuppositions that frame the creation of the tool. The tool measures what it believes is important or vital for growth. For example, if you are interested in simple numerical growth, then seeing growth in one’s attendance and tithe quantifies the success of our ministry.
Another way of saying this is the value of our ministry objectives is most clearly observed by what we measure. What we measure reveals what we value. And what we measure determines whether we view our ministry as a product that we package for consumers or a process where we develop people into fully functioning disciples of Christ.
Now having said that let me also clarify that I do believe where an organism is alive and healthy, growth and multiplication is a natural by-product. Living organisms grow and multiply. However, living organisms do not necessarily continue to grow in size. Life always brings life.
Oddly enough one of the areas we do not assess is the spiritual development of our people – seeing Christ formed in them (Galatians 4:19) “that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28). Legalism assesses behaviors and verifies spirituality by completing a checklist of behaviors. Organic spirituality assesses the heart and motivation behind the behavior by looking at the fruit of one’s life as expressed in Galatians 5:22-23. North American Christianity has many believers that have mastered the behaviors of religion without the heart (Fruit of the Spirit) of our Father.
With that in mind, let me offer a simple criterion I use to determine if my ministry is growing.
Are people’s relationships with God growing? Before we can change the world, we need to see God change the world of individuals. More simply, are people loving God with their whole heart, basing their lives around the values of the Kingdom and seeking to honor God with every facet of their lives (Matthew 6:33).
Are people’s relationships with each other growing? Of course this means at home first. Our churches are only as strong as our families. Jesus tells us that we are most like God when we are peacemakers (Matthew 5:9). The children of God make peace and where there is peace, relationships flourish. We serve a reconciling God and have been given the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-20) and so, the greatest evidence of His transforming love in us is that we love one another (John 13:34-35; I John 4:7-8). “We are most like beasts when we kill. We are most like men when we judge. We are most like God when we forgive” (Anonymous). Scripture says “God is love.” Love is active and can best be described as giving and forgiving.
Is concern for the lost and broken increasing in our spiritual community? Are they beginning to reach out? Is their heart breaking over pain, sin, death, disease, etc.? Love is active and cannot refrain itself from acting out. For example, when a person falls in love their heart is quickly moved to find ways to be with the one they love. When a person is full of God’s heart they find themselves loving what and who He loves. His heart in us moves us to care for the broken, the lost, the blind, the sick, the hungry, etc. One of the phrases we use at our church is that we are called to “love the hell out of people.”
Are we beginning to reproduce ourselves? This will involve discipleship of Christians and non-Christians. Where the presence of the Lord is, life will happen. What this means is that if people are captured by God’s love they will find themselves wanting to pass on that love. Our role as pastors and leaders is then to “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12), helping our people pass on what has been given to them (2 Timothy 2:2).
May God help us return to the values of His Kingdom as we press on to see His Kingdom extended in our land as we simplify our lives around the “Irreducible Core” of loving God, loving others and making disciples. May you find a tremendous harvest as you make disciples.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
This reminds me of Reggie McNeal's "Present Future," which seeks to also shift the paradigm by helping us to ask different questions of ourselves. What Mike is suggesting here is difficult to measure quantitatively, but I definitely agree that this is the direction we need to be headed, and that we ought to judge ourselves by these kinds of questions, because that is how we shall be judged.
love the article and you put into words a lot of random thoughts i've had for a while. thanks and see you in nh soon.
The joy of now discovering how we measure quantitatvely organic growth in the lives of people and the living organism called the Church
It will be great to form an organic process that measures life quantitatively. Love to hear your thoughts on what that would look like
Quantifying behavior is always difficult because it only shows the external frequency of what is being measured, rather than the internal (motives).
I think that it is possible to conduct such an assessment, given the measurement of 'growth' as a higher number of outcomes, but then again this fails to measure internal change. If the church is growing in attendance and tithing more does not necessarily provide causation of 'spiritual growth' in terms of community (unless operationally defined as such) - correlation does not mean causation. Can it be done? I think so, but I do not think the statistical outcome would be of any benefit in the actual changing of peoples lives.
I think it is always difficult to diagnostically approach and critique the spiritual life because it fluctuates due to our fallible nature - all the 'church' in the world cannot stop one from sinning and all the church in the world cannot make us grow in Christ - it is only by the Holy Spirit. If we were able to quantify and measure predictability - I think we lost the forest while looking at the trees.
Post a Comment