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Church size may matter, but many next generation pastors are beginning to shift their measuring sticks and focus their members on matters more weighty than budgets and buildings.
"In our church, we've had to change what we measure," says Ken Fong, pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church (Los Angeles, CA). "We no longer use size as our primary metric. Instead, we spend time and effort analyzing the compelling intangibles of the Spirit's work: devotion, love, and obedience."
This commitment to a shift in metrics is echoed by other church leaders in their 30s who are growing in influence. Next generation pastors across many regions and neighborhood types report that people in their churches wrestle with the same tension: measuring tangibles or intangibles.
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"I'm afraid we've been measuring the wrong things," says Dave Gibbons, pastor of NewSong Church (Irvine, CA). "Numbers mean everything. Pastors compare the size of buildings, the number of people who attend, the size of budgets, and the number of multi-site locations."
Dave says while numbers are one indication of success in a church, they may be keeping leaders from emphasizing the most important measures.
"We've made [numbers] singular and central," Dave says. "This emphasis has blinded us to the intangibles of obedience, love, and sacrifice--things Jesus talked about far more than numbers, if he ever talked about numbers at all."
| The call to genuine devotion might reduce the number of attendees, but those who remain can have a dynamic impact on their communities. |
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Shifting the metric of success to the intangible of devotion requires considerable thought and careful application. Pastors shouldn't hold up an ideal and expect all people, regardless of their situations, to meet it.
"Our congregation contains college students, young parents, and older people," notes David Lee, pastor of Harvest Community Church (Schaumburg, IL). "Radical discipleship looks a bit different for each of these, and even for individuals within each group. My task is to give each one a vision in each person's context of what it means to be sold out to Christ and actively serve him."
The shift in the metrics of success also shapes the methodology of leadership development. Standardized discipleship models have been effective in the past, but in the postmodern, highly relational culture in which many people distrust authority, pastors recognize the need to consider changing strategies.
Dave Gibbons reflects on his own journey in crafting models for leadership development. In the past, he took leaders through a three-year training course of 15 separate modules. Dave says: "Only the strong survived!" Dave realized that
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packing people's heads with knowledge was only marginally profitable, and strong relationships often were the difference in the ones who excelled. This insight changed his direction.
Young pastors are also discovering they can't impart something they don't possess, and that the beginning point of a revolution of devotion in churches is the pastor's willingness to wrestle with God about the meaning of true devotion.
As John Lo, pastor of Epicentre Church (Pasadena, CA) concluded: "If I was going to make Jesus first in my life, I had to put him first in my day. Several years ago, I decided to carve out time every day, not to study for sermons, but to worship God, ask him for direction, and really listen for his voice to speak to me."
The church has watched John and his wife--a physician--answer God's call, even at a personal cost. And they have seen their leaders miss that direction.
John recalls that when the war in Iraq began, his wife felt called by God to go there and care for injured civilians, but she delayed and missed the only available plane. After seeing John's wife weep over the missed opportunity, people in the church stood with her a few years later as she answered God's summons to Sri Lanka after the tsunami.
"It's important for people in our churches to see their pastors and their families hear God and say ‘yes' to him," John says. "It's an important model--and we can't expect our people to go beyond us in devotion to Christ and responsiveness to his call to count the cost." |
| Highly relational discipleship is a high priority in our postmodern culture. |
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Certainly, the issues about selecting metrics to measure effectiveness in our churches aren't black and white, right and wrong. Good planning and management should always be valued in kingdom pursuits. But Gibbons, Fong, and other next generation pastors assert that some church leaders may have become too enamored with management techniques at the expense of spiritual power.
| "Today, people in our churches--and especially young people--want to devote their lives to a cause that's bigger than themselves," Fong says. |
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Author bio: Patrick Springle is the president of Baxter Press in Friendswood, TX. He served on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ for 18 years, 11 as the Texas state director. He was Senior Vice President of Rapha for three years before starting his publishing business. |
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