I was in a conversation recently about what it means to be a healthy church. The conversation quickly changed when it became clear the metrics the person was using to determine a healthy church were all based on numbers (“how many people are coming to your church?” “how much money is given?”, etc). As the conversation headed down this road I became terribly disinterested. Sensing that I was checking out of the conversation the person I was talking with told me that, “Numbers are important because numbers represent people”.
Their statement didn’t lengthen the conversation any (I wasn’t interested in a justification for cold numerical statistics). But the statement did get me thinking.
“Do numbers represent people?” “Is that a reason to gauge the success of a ministry by the numbers?” Hmmm….
On one hand it can seem that numbers are important (think about a situation in which there is some sort of tragedy; the number of those rescued matters greatly). However I don’t sense that one’s participation at a Sunday church service is a matter of life and death (people can attend church without a commitment to kingdom living). Further if numbers matter, then often churches will do all sorts of things to simply get more numbers to their events. In doing so, churches set aside their prophetic call in this world and end up feeding the same things this world offers (autonomous individualism and consumerism).
So, do “Numbers represent people?” I don’t think so. Numbers are nothing but cold statistics meant to categorize people on the slide-rule of easy management.
But people…people cannot be confined to the statistics of numbers. People are living breathing organisms, made in the image of the Creator. They have joys, hurts, hopes, fears, talents, flaws, gifts, skeletons, hang-ups, and character traits that are as unique as the colors of life. Numbers cannot tell these stories.
What do you think of the phrase: “Numbers represent people?”
How have you seen church communities operate in unhealthy ways because they were “number driven?”
Their statement didn’t lengthen the conversation any (I wasn’t interested in a justification for cold numerical statistics). But the statement did get me thinking.
“Do numbers represent people?” “Is that a reason to gauge the success of a ministry by the numbers?” Hmmm….
On one hand it can seem that numbers are important (think about a situation in which there is some sort of tragedy; the number of those rescued matters greatly). However I don’t sense that one’s participation at a Sunday church service is a matter of life and death (people can attend church without a commitment to kingdom living). Further if numbers matter, then often churches will do all sorts of things to simply get more numbers to their events. In doing so, churches set aside their prophetic call in this world and end up feeding the same things this world offers (autonomous individualism and consumerism).
So, do “Numbers represent people?” I don’t think so. Numbers are nothing but cold statistics meant to categorize people on the slide-rule of easy management.
But people…people cannot be confined to the statistics of numbers. People are living breathing organisms, made in the image of the Creator. They have joys, hurts, hopes, fears, talents, flaws, gifts, skeletons, hang-ups, and character traits that are as unique as the colors of life. Numbers cannot tell these stories.
What do you think of the phrase: “Numbers represent people?”
How have you seen church communities operate in unhealthy ways because they were “number driven?”
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