A couple of decades ago when I was a fledgling church-planter, I didn't have a clue what I was doing, but I didn't let that stop me. In those days church growth was all the rage. I read church growth books and took a pilgrimage to Korea in an attempt to learn how to grow a church. I think my primary motive was love for the lost, probably mixed with a bit of self-absorbed insecurity and youthful ignorance.
Early on I had this idea that as long as there was one lost person in my city, then my church was not big enough. I still think that way, and I hope I never get over my obsessive compassion for the lost.
While church growth books and seminars seem to now be out of style in most Western circles, I remain convinced that un-churched, de-churched and anti-church people still matter to God, and they should matter to us. I am convinced that we are supposed to do our best to engage our communities with the gospel. If we do a decent job of engaging, our churches will grow. And, that is a good thing, whether our growth is organic, organized or orchestrated.
Anyone concerned with growth will eventually have to deal with numbers. The trick is to figure out which numbers really matter and which numbers don't.
Many church leaders make the mistake of thinking that the two numbers that matter the most are the offering amount and Sunday attendance. Those two numbers often deceive us and never tell the whole story.
Yesterday I received a year end report from my Manila office that contained a lot of numbers about our church (Victory). Some of those numbers were vital, others were simply interesting. Here are 3 of the most important numbers on that report and why they matter to us: 91, 5009, 4183.
91 WORSHIP SERVICES in 16 Metro Manila venues with 58 preaching pastors. Victory is a multi-site multi-service multi-generational church that meets all over Metro Manila. Because leadership development is important to us, we do not use digital sermons, only live preachers. So, for us to grow from 80 services in 14 locations to 91 services in 16 locations, we had to identify, instruct and empower new preachers, kids pastors, worship leaders, head ushers and other leaders. Because we increased the number of venues and worship services, our attendance increased 31.4% from 2010 to 2011. We have averaged about 30% annual growth for 10 consecutive years. But, the most important number is not how many show up, but how many we raise up to places of leadership. That's why discipleship numbers are so important...
5009 DISCIPLESHIP GROUPS (called "Victory Groups") meeting weekly in Metro Manila. That number is probably the most important number we track. It is the foundation of every other number that matters. 5009 represents a 41.8% increase in 12 months. That's a good number and that's good news! We also saw a 29.2% increase (from 1,827 to 2,360) in Training for Victory participation, which is a foundational part of our discipleship training track.
4183 BAPTISMS in 2011. Another important number. Most of our baptisms are conducted at Victory Weekend which had a 71.3% 2010 to 2011 increase from 3149 to 5393 participants.
Are you playing the numbers game? I hope you are, as long as you are tracking the right numbers.
Depending on what kind of church you want to be, some numbers will be more important than others. For us, numbers reflecting evangelism, discipleship and leadership development are the most important numbers we track. The unavoidable and eventual result of evangelism, discipleship and leadership numbers increasing will be more people showing up at our worship services and more money in the offerings.
SUMMARY: Stop obsessing over nickles and noses and start making disciples.
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