Posted on 10/06/2021 7:36:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
One census was ordered by God. The other was instigated by Satan.
God said that numbers do matter. He ordered a counting of all the people of Israel shortly after the people fled Egypt. You can see the specific mandate in Exodus 30:12-14. An entire book of the Bible is devoted to the progress and results of the census. The book is aptly named Numbers.
But another census of the people of Israel was clearly instigated by Satan. The Bible is straightforward on that matter in 1 Chronicles 21:1: “Satan rose up against Israel and caused David to take a census of the people of Israel.” Apparently, David ordered the count for his own self-aggrandizement.
The point is simple. Numbers and counting are either good or evil according to the motivation of those counting.
We are in a historical cycle in the evangelical world where the mood is to disparage counting, attendance, and other numerical metrics. Consequently, we are in danger of losing accountability that is inherent with following numbers.
How are we able to discern the growing disdain for numbers and counting? Here are ten issues that are indicative of the movement to disparage metrics.
1. An increasing number of comments that the church is the people, not the building. Of course, the church is not a building. Of course, the church is the people of God. But those people are commanded to gather somewhere. That gathering place is usually a building. This issue is often expressed as a reason not to count our worship attendance. It’s a poor excuse.
2. An increasing number of comments that the church should focus on sending not attending. This argument is fallacious. It puts missionary sending to the community and beyond in opposition to gathering for worship. It’s both/and, not either/or.
3. Numbers for bragging rights. Again, the issue is one of motive. David obviously wanted to brag about the size of his kingdom. The problem was his heart, not counting people.
4. Failure to count group attendance. If you want to gauge the health of your church, a good metric is weekly group attendance. If you are not counting weekly group attendance, you are missing the opportunity to determine the commitment of your core members.
5. The priority of ministry over numbers. Again, this argument is fallacious. It suggests that a church should do ministry instead of counting, for example, worship attendance. This argument was used by a number of mainline churches for around 50 years. They maintained the argument until there were no members left to do ministry.
6. Counting is legalistic. Anything can turn legalistic without the right motive: reading the Bible, sharing your faith, giving, and others. At the risk of redundancy, it is a question of motive and the heart.
7. COVID! While I do not want to minimize the tragedy of COVID, I fear we will begin to use it as an excuse for waning commitment to the church. Those church leaders (and other organizational leaders) who learn to pivot and adjust to a new reality will see the greatest fruit.
8. It’s about the core. Those articulating this argument communicate that fewer is better. Those who are committed will attend regularly. We should not worry about the others, the argument goes. But we need the less committed to attend church to become more committed. We need the non-Christians to attend church to hear the Gospel.
9. Waning and unreported conversions. Most North American congregations are seeing fewer conversions. Most of them have no accountability because they fail to report the number of conversions.
10. No published worship and small group attendance. That which is reported gets noticed. That which is noticed gets attention. That which gets attention gets better.
Evangelical churches are repeating the history of mainline churches. They are devising reasons to excuse declining attendance. In doing so, they are implicitly saying the gathered church is not important.
Robert Hudnut, a mainline writer from 1975, argued that it is a good sign that people are leaving churches. In his book, Church Growth Is Not the Point, he said, “the loss of growth statistics has meant increase in the growth of the Gospel.”
His argument was symptomatic of dying mainline churches 50 years ago. A half-century later, evangelical churches are dying and using the same rationale.
Numbers do matter. Especially when the motive is right, and the heart is pure.
Originally published at Church Answers.
Thom S. Rainer is the founder and CEO of Church Answers, an online community and resource for church leaders. Prior to founding Church Answers, Rainer served as president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources.
Rainer has written over 30 books, including three that reached number one bestseller: I Am a Church Member, Autopsy of a Deceased Church, and Simple Church. His new book, The Post-Quarantine Church: Six Urgent Challenges and Opportunities That Will Determine the Future of Your Congregation, is available now.
Actually, I disagree with much of this “Christian.”
Of course, if you believe metrics are in the Bible, then I’d like to see those verses. I could be wrong.
I believe that like successful salesmen they need to make an effort to go door-to-door and speak to their parishioner that are not attending. In other words, go where the parishioners are.
Also, they need to get these seminarians out on their shoe leather knocking on doors, just like the Mormons to.
Then they need, IMHO, to have their office managers on the phone making cold-calls. IMHO
First, you count the people.
Then, you count ‘the plate money’.
Then, you see which checks are not there, and by whom.
Then comes the letter(s) to the absent parishioners:
“Uh, hi! We missed(your money) you at the last ‘x’ services. Are you well? ....”
Some businesses have reached stage three. Far fewer churches have. Many aren't even in stage 1 because they are performing so poorly that they are ashamed to even report.
You need a new pope.
The current clown worships the Woke Pantheon...
Here is his latest abomination:
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/popes-swiss-guards-resign-over-mandatory-covid-19-vaccination
A church is NOT a building.
LOL! I attended the wedding of a family member once at a Methodist church (bride's choice) and made the mistake of signing in with my name and address on their guest register.
Sure enough, such a letter arrived about a month or so later. But they are woke and speak out against racism. So all is good with their regular congregation of 20 or so souls in a chapel that was built to seat 400.
Terry, lots of us give cash. But your cynicism is noted.
It has to do IMHO with the desire of those insiders to make it great again. They just don't have it and they are locked into singular dogma.
I left my once-excellent evangelical church in the SF Bay Area last year after a quarter century of regular weekly attendance. And in 2019 I even went on a trip to Israel with them; I loved my church and was sad to leave it.
Four reasons I left, and they all occurred in 2020: 1) the church refused to reopen in person, even when the county allowed it, and when it finally did, reopened masked, 2) the excellent head pastor’s sermons became less excellent when he was preaching alone to a camera instead of to a congregation, and 3) the church/head pastor took a tilt to the left, including some disparaging of police (who also promptly left) and the Jan 6th “riot” and some praise of BLM, and 4) the “substitute” pastors when the main pastor wasn’t preaching (more and more often) weren’t excellent preachers (and were even more left wing).
We found a new excellent church which has enjoyed tremendous growth over the past year: spirit-filled, reopened early, unmasked, excellent pastor, great bench, conservative.
It was hard to leave our church of 25 years but as my mother says, life doesn’t stay the same.
Hard to find truth at a church nowadays...
I agree. God cares about the condition of one’s heart first and foremost. His reason for wanting to “pack the church” is much different than mans. Butts in the pew means nothing without hearts there too.
Well said.
How man times is “40 days or 40 years” mentioned in the Bible?
The problem can also be in what you measure. Many churches focus on the easy things: attendance and giving. While those can be indicators of the strength of the church, simple growth in people and income should never be the focus. Reaching people for Christ, improving relationships, both with God and each other. Those are the goals of the church, but not easy to measure. Too many churches go from measuring attendance and giving to making it the goal. That’s how you end up with an attractional model that is afraid to offend anyone.
Exactly! That has nothing to do with constant headcounts per room and per building, per hour.
What’s wrong with churches? This article exemplifies it: They are a business these days. No real mention of God in the entire article, only justification for attending a building.
The biggest problems with converting to Catholicism are the Pope and “progressive “ leadership, the biggest problems for Apostolic Pentecosts is standing on the basic principles of the bible...a man is a man and a woman is a woman, marriage before sex, and a Holy lifestyle. Other denominations are in between generally, but all churches are fighting a society that abhors God, Jesus, and/or anything that contradicts their corrupt lifestyle. All of Christianity is being attacked and denigrated by the Left, and the democratic party is leading the way. My 2 cents worth.
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