“Can I Weigh You?”
In a gathering of leaders at the start of the year a few folk got nervous when I got out some weighing scales and declared that from thereon in we were going to start weighing people at church. Now before I’m accused of some kind of heavy shepherding (!) let me explain what I meant.
When Catherine and I came to take on the leadership of City Church in July 2019, we had a number of people across various contexts mentioning how City Church was the largest church in Wales. We appreciated what they meant about the honour of taking on a church of such heritage and with so many wonderful people but, having spent the last years pioneering a church which was comparatively very small, we were more aware than ever of something we always knew deep down: size is not what ultimately matters. Of course, healthy things grow but I believe Jesus doesn’t measure the success of churches by counting the number of Christians; He counts success by weighing those Christians.
Clearly I’m talking spiritually and not literally here (although these days I think I’d do fairly well on that latter count!). Specifically, instead of counting how many people we have, church leaders first need to be weighing how heavy the ones we do have are in their pursuit of God and in love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness and so on - how weighty are they in looking like Jesus and doing the things that Jesus did, such as pursuing justice and sharing the gospel?
Too often churches are measuring the wrong thing - I believe it’s time to change the scorecard. At the end of the day, the only thing Jesus is counting is disciples. That’s it. He doesn’t seem to care too much about converts, attendance, budgets, or buildings. Don’t get me wrong - there’s certainly a place for measuring finances and attendance (these can be signs of church health) but we’re usually on the ball with such metrics. What we need to realise is that the one thing we should be measuring is: are we making actual disciples? And not just that: are we making disciples who make disciples? This, regardless of size, is what I believe to be a chief mark of a healthy church and indeed the way that Jesus ultimately measures success. On this scorecard, you’ll find large churches who don’t make disciples and large churches that do; small churches who are great at it and small churches that aren’t.
Of course, the questions begs: what does a disciple look like? For if we don’t know what our destination is then any road will take us there. And once we’ve defined the term, how do we go about making such disciples? This will be the subject of the next couple of blogs. But for now, if you’re a pastor, determine to be a weight watcher too!
What do you think an effective church looks like?
1 of 3: Go to Part 2
Dominic De Souza, 20th June 2020