Yesterday I was reading an issue of "The Running Times", and an article about getting ready for the 2007 year of running. It talked about the critical need to set clear, challenging, yet realistic goals; goals that are measurable so you can clearly know whether you met them or not.
As I read, I began to wonder about how (or if) the principles applied to our own spiritual lives. I believe they do, but I also began to think about the application and relationship to our church community. At The Canopy, we have be uncomfortable with the idea of setting quantitative goals for our church. In some ways I really understand why this is the case. Here are a few reasons that have come to mind:
1) Most (if not all) of the 'specific, measurable, attainable' goals are going to be about numerical growth. How else do you measure progress? (and goals are certainly about progress!) We want things to be 'better' than they were the year before. Is that wrong? Virtually everybody would say NO!; but how you measure 'better' is quite a subjective thing.
2) Much of what happens/doesn't happen in a church is in God's hands; it's out of our control. (to which many would say 'praise God!'
3) When so many people are involved on a 'volunteer' level, it dramatically impacts how, when or if you can reach certain goals. Reaching the goals is largely determined by 'the many', not 'the few''; it really makes things more subject to what others do and don't do.
To me it seems much easier to set personal goals for yourself than it is to set goals for a community such as The Canopy. In a business, the CEO decides for everyone what the goals will be; and if you don't like those goals, you'll be out of a job! In a community like the church you can't do that. Why? Because it's a 'volunteer' based organization.
So I am left with the same question: "Can a community of people, like a church, effectively set meaningful goals in the same way as individuals and corporations?"
I'll write another post with my thoughts on that question, but for now, I'll say this: part of the obvious answer is to look at other charitable, volunteer based organizations; however, one of the key differences between a church and other similar organizations (please forgive me if you are offended or turned off by my use of that term) is how much agreement there is about the central purpose of the organization and in particular, what the 'metrics' are in evaluating 'progress'.
Food for thought!
June 4 - Psalm 16
10 years ago
9 comments:
Goals for a church...this is a complex issue, just as you say Jim. I agree with the fact that there need to be goals in order for growth to happen. Otherwise you just keep living the way you are living without anything to push you to live differently (I would say this is true personally and corporately). I guess my big question here is: “How do we define growth?”
Is growth numbers of people coming to the church? Sure – if we are concerned with numbers. Growth can be looked at in the context of numbers – number of people in a small group, number of people on a Sunday morning, number of people volunteering, number of people that are new this year. But all this tells us about are numbers – it tells us nothing about the heart of people. What about growth in spiritual things such as prayer, having your heart and life turned towards Jesus, hearing the voice of God, caring for the sick and the poor and things like that? What about growth in personal lives of the people in the community, growth in relationships and caring for one another? I know that I would rather be in a very small group of people striving to be growing in these things with a small amount of numerical growth, than in a large group of people that is only growing in numbers.
Measuring the kind of growth I want to see in the church (and most people coming to the Canopy want to see) is complex. The kind of growth I am talking about is dependent on both God and the people involved. To say that God is 100% responsible for this kind of growth is ridiculous, just as it would be ridiculous to say that the people in the church are 100% responsible for spiritual and meaningful growth. It’s a codependency, but one that God is completely committed to. If we decide to commit ourselves to growing in these areas God is going to show up.
Leadership is a big factor in all of this. The church needs to be lead and prompted to grow – and not just from the pastors, but from every person – we all have a responsibility to lead in these areas. The church community should challenge people to live differently, pursue the things of God, hear the voice of Jesus and follow it. Church should not be a completely comfortable place – it should be somewhat heavy, a place where you know you are going to be challenged and meet with God. A place where we can learn how to and effect spiritual and social change together – change at least one corner of the world.
Also, I say don’t always look for attainable goals. Why live life for only the things you know you can accomplish? If I did that I would have never attempted a triathlon – never in a million years would have thought I could do such a thing. But I said I was going to, I worked hard, told others I was going to do it, signed up, nearly threw up before I got in the water and persevered to the end – much to my surprise some days!
Let’s dream big, go hard, ask God to show up and then we can look back proud of what we’ve all accomplished together with Jesus.
This is a really interesting topic to talk about. I've been thinking about it myself for the past year or so, wondering what brings about growth in the church and how to get people involved. I agree with Donloree that it involves commitment both from God and from people in the community, but I'm left at a loss as to what will make people willing to invest in the community to see it grow. The tendency is for a smaller percentage of people in the community to be doing all the work, and to me that's wrong and very frustrating. However, you're right Jim that you can't force people to take part or work towards a vision or goal in the church, so where does that leave us?
I also agree with Donloree in that the kind of growth I'm interested in seeing is people's relationships with God and with others improving. I think that will lend itself to growth in terms of numbers, but I don't think that's something we necessarily need to be preoccupied with.
I'm reading a great book right now, Caroline 101 by Caroline Kepcher (The Apprentice). One of her truisms is that you should try to be/bring part of the solution and not just the problem... and that's what keeps me from saying a lot (you're all thinking, "He'd say more??!!").
But, I think we all could stand up and say, "this is wrong, that is wrong, yadda, yadda..."
It's true, that without goals, you just float along with out change. Look at most of our lives. I'm sure that the only time we've acheived what we wanted was when we had a goal and some sort of plan on how to acheive it. Wishing for a pie in the sky doesn't generally get you much.
Jim, I think you have a great team of people around you at the Canopy. I know things might get shaky in the next several months, but I think it'd be wise to allow things to be shaken (Heb. 12:26-28) a bit. I think what Donloree and Jilly said about God and His people working together is more than just 'happy biblical teaching'. There may be another Voice saying the same thing.
One of the most effective ways of goal setting is backward-engineering. Start with the end in mind.
What is your goal 30 years from now? What will you have to have acheived by year 20, in order to make that goal? What will have to have been acheived in year 10? Year 5? Year 2? Year 1? In 6 months? In 3 months? In 1 month? Each week this month? Tomorrow? Today?
Have fun with the Leadership!
For the reasons you've all hit on, setting goals in the context of the church is, indeed, a tricky business. There is the incredible interdependence between us and God, as well as between us and each other, there is the very real question of how do you measure health & growth in the church, and are the metrics being used an accurate reflection of heath? And if they are accurate, are they balanced?
I have a couple of thougts...
First, a healthy church is growing numerically. When a church is healthy it is: a) attractive to christians who are already part of another community but are feeling God's call to something different (yes, Jim, I'm assuming healthy reasons for changing, which I know isn't always the case) and therefore christians are becoming a part of the community and b) it is attractive to non/pre-christians and therefore people who don't know Jesus are becoming a part of the community and some of them are becoming his followers.
Secondly, a healthy church is growing spiritually. More people are praying and people are praying more. More people are giving and people are giving more. Fewer people are sinning (actively and willfully) and people are sinning less (actively and willfully). More people are sharing Christ and people are sharing Christ more... I could go on and on. No single one of these things in the life of an individual is the measure of spiritual health. But the growth of all of these areas in an entire community is an indicator of health.
I've seen lots of tools and metrics discussed: Conversion growth rate (number of baptisms divided by average attendance over 12 months); Raw growth rate (difference between this year's average attendance and last year's average attendance divided by last year's average attendance - not as complicated to do as it is to describe!) and then either or both of these growth rates compared to an arbitrary number (i.e. a 10% Conversion Growth Rate is considered "Healthy" because it means that every small group of 10 people is leading one person to Christ every year) or whether or not it keeps up to the city's growth rate (if Edmonton's population is growing at a rate of 15% annually - that's an arbitrary number, for example purposes only! - we should experience a raw growth rate of at least 15% to keep pace, and higher if we are seeing people coming to Christ).
Both of these could be considered reasonably accurate statements, but are either of them balanced? No - because neither of them takes into consideration much in the way of personal spiritual growth, or God's part of the equation.
Another metric (that's actually pretty good) is NCD - Natural Church Development. It uses congregational and leadership surveys to measure community satisfaction/experience in 8 areas: Empowering leadership, Gift-based ministry, Passionate spirituality, Effective structures, Inspiring worship service, Holistic small groups, Need-oriented evangelism, and Loving relationships. The contention of NCD is that a church's over-all health is limited by whichever characteristic is at the lowest, and that a church can and will experience growth (numerical and spiritual) as it addresses and attends to the least factor.
What I really like about NCD is that it is the most holistic approach I've seen. Where, in my opinion, NCD falls short, is in two things: first, it depends on the community's self-perception of these areas, and we have the capacity to delude ourselves both positively and negatively - in other words, our self-evaluation is often not very realistic (read the first few chapters of Revelation), and secondly, it still tends to leave the God-factor out. What if Gift-based ministry is the lowest factor, but God is really dealing with passionate spirituality in this season? His agenda is not always ours, nor is ours always his.
My other concern with NCD is that the first time a congregation sees the results, it can be absolutely demoralizing - that's not an overstatement, and it's not fun to experience.
Lastly, it's not cheap. It costs money to use the survey, and a one-time use isn't really helpful; it needs to be done about three times and followed through with to see things change.
So, what do we do? Do we avoid using any metrics because none of them are perfect? Do we argue that "numbers don't matter" and continue in un-health in ignorant bliss, and then act surprised when we have to shut the doors and turn off the lights? Do we mourn and lament that our CGR is only at 9.5% and it should be at 10...
I think what we do, realistically, is pick something, start using it, bathe it heavily in prayer and listening (and I really mean listening - Jesus, what is your opinion), and make our plans accordingly. And then we act on it - whether people initially complain or not. Because, unlike running, or business, or any other venture under the sun, the health and success of the church is a matter of eternal impact.
my question is, "why the question on goals" what you thinking?
Donloree, I agree with you, however you're moving in the normal direction in this discussion: a lot of what you are pointing towards is virtually completely subjective and impossible to evaluate or measure. How do you measure spiritual growth? It's personal and subjective. In order to know whether growth is happening (regardless of how you define it), you have to have some form of metrics. At the same time, how do you avoid the addictive nature of the numbers game?
The other thing that I feel is missing here is mention of growth/progress/whatever, related to 'outreach' or 'evangelism' (to use church term for lack of a better one). We do need to be growing internally, as Donloree suggests, but it also needs to include reaching out beyond ourselves and sharing our lives and faith in Christ with those around us.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting that we need concrete numerical goals of 'conversions' or anything like that. What I'm getting at is that we need to be making some kind of progress as a community in the areas of living beyond ourselves.
My thoughts on growth are probably a bit simplistic.
First of all, I like Eric's comments. "I think a healthy church is growing numerically." But I think there are reasons for that, as Eric pointed out. A healthy community is attractive to people.
But why? What makes these churches attractive? I am not sure I can explain it. But I firmly believe that a church that gets down on its knees, humbles itself, and cries out to God is a church that grows. I think that a church that has a passion for Jesus, a church that is desperate for more of Him, a church that is not satisfied with where they are at spiritually and always seeking for more, a church that remains humble and recognizes how incredibly awesome the Lord our God is, a church that is continually amazed at how the Almighty God of Heaven and Earth would come down to Earth, live in the flesh, experience temptation, hurt, rejection, die a horrible painful death so that we our relationship with Him could be restored... a church like that will grow.
Why? Because of God's annointing. Because of God's favour. If we are a church after God's own heart, He WANTS people to come to our church because he WANTS people to come to that spiritual place too.
And He WANTS to bless a church like that for its faithfulness.
As far as setting goals, I believe in setting goals. It is difficult to set numerical goals in the church. But we can set faith goals. We can set goals to grow our various ministries and believe for God's hand to be upon that.
Jim, your point about this being volunteer based is very true. How much can you ask from people?
I believe we need to ask for reasonable commitments and make goals based on them. If people aren't prepared to make those commitments, we believe God will provide the people who will.
Understandably people have varying degrees of commitments outside of church. Some people just don't have as much time as others. That's ok. God will provide. It's not about legalism, it's about God's grace.
That's why we also need to seek God on what are reasonable goals to be setting.
But we need to move forward. We need to step up to the plate and take a swing for God. If we're not moving anywhere, it doesn't matter where God steers us, we're still in the same place because we're NOT MOVING. Mind you, we can't get ahead of God of course, but we do need to take a step forward in faith (ie. set some goals).
I think, as you mentioned, Jim, we should also be a community that agrees on the purpose of our organization (The Canopy). I think that we need to keep moving in the same direction as the purpose that God has given us. The people that don't care for that purpose will move on. Not that I want anybody to leave. But I do want people to be in a church where they believe in the purpose of that church. When people are on board with the purpose or vision of their church, they are usually much more eager to contribute, simply because it is their vision too! So rather than have a whole bunch of churches that aren't moving forward because their congregations just aren't agreeing on the vision, why not have a whole bunch of churches with congregations that ARE agreeing and that ARE moving forward?
That's why I say move forward in the vision God has given the Canopy. Some people may not like it and go to churches where they can relate more to the vision. That's ok. So long as people are in churches where they believe in the vision, it doesn't matter if it's the Canopy or not. Likewise, we'll probably have other people come to the Canopy because they can relate to our vision.
And then we'll probably have even MORE people come because we are a community that is actually moving forward towards that vision rather than a community that has a vision but is to afraid to do anything with it.
If we set numerical goals, we could get caught up in numbers. But if we make a call for commitment based on our vision and believe God will honour that, we can make goals that are somewhat numerical.
But the bottom line is, if we're NOT a church with a radical passion for Jesus (didn't you do a sermon on radical holiness or extravagance a while back, Jim?), a church that is hungry and thirsty for Jesus, a church that is desperate for Him, then it really doesn't matter what our goals are, they are pointless.
Just my $0.02.
Cheers!
Blessings!
John
John, I pretty much totally agree with what you wrote!
The boats going to rock, and people are going to bail; but, eventually, Someone's going to stand up and say, "Peace, be still." He won't let us sink if He's in the boat with us.
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