In your church, what is the one thing that you are doing that is the most important thing?

This
isn’t what the leaders of your church say is the most important thing; this isn’t paying lip
service or a Sunday school answer I’m looking for. Think honestly about it. Let me ask this
question a different way. What is the one thing that you would feel most guilty about not
doing in the life of your church? What would attract the most backlash? What would cause
other people to comment, “Oh, I can’t believe that they’re not doing ___”

Be honest, because there’s a business maxim that applies here. What gets measured gets
managed. Which basically means that what you’re tracking, what you’re examining, what
you’re paying the most attention to, this is what you are pouring your attention into and all
your focus on. It’s a wise saying. It means that if you can measure where you’ve been, you
can more accurately direct where you will be going in the future, you can determine what’s
most important in your business. Businesses know very clearly what they are to be
measuring. Follow the money. Work out where it’s being spent, and where and how much is
coming in, and you work out where you go from there. Businesses have a clear directive, a
clear goal, and so they can measure and manage quite effectively for that goal.

So, allow me the right for these next few paragraphs to be slightly controversial. Let’s look at
the church as a business model, which really isn’t that far from the truth. Instead of sales,
we’ll look at salvations. And instead of growing profits, we grow people. What is a business
anyways but an extension of what a collection of people can achieve that an individual can
not. Which is precisely what the church is intended to be, a collection of people with a
common goal, a common purpose, achieving that which the individual can not. So, for now,
let’s look our churches as individual franchises of “God Inc.”. Serving the human condition
for over 2000 years now.

With our business caps on, I ask again, what is measured to be most important in your
church? I think for many churches, the most important thing you could be doing is attending
a Sunday service. Oh sure, this isn’t what we give lip service to, nor is it Biblically correct,
but when you ask the question, “What would cause the most guilt, the most backlash if I
wasn’t doing it?” Sadly, the most attention is given to those who aren’t regularly coming each
week to church and how many people we believe should be in church that week. Remember,
what gets measured, gets managed. And what are we measuring? Bums in seats on Sundays.
So, therefore, what are we managing? Getting more of those bums in seats, and working out
why certain bums (pun intended) weren’t on seats last week. Don’t get me wrong, I fully
understand and support the verse in Hebrews that says “And let us not neglect our meeting
together, as some people do, but encourage one another even more”. I understand the “one
another’s” and the importance of being together as the body of Christ. But doesn’t it feel like
the pendulum has swung too far one way? Doesn’t it seem like we are living Sunday to
Sunday in fear of, heaven forbid, missing one of those Sundays?

But let’s get those business manager suits going. What’s our goal? What are we trying to
achieve as a church, as the local chapter of God Inc. in our neighbourhoods? Well, that’s
easy, have a look at our corporate memorandum to remind ourselves that we have a simple,
defined goal. Our CEO has given us the mission statement to beat all mission statements. We
call it the Great Co-Mission. Go into all the world and make disciples, baptising them in the
name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. No mincing words, no heavy business speak,
no synergizing, facilitating, spearheading. No KPI, SVP, R&D, ROI or LOL. Have a look at
our Operations Manual and you will see example after example of how we go about making
this goal a reality in our life. This is how we measure our success. This is our Profit and Loss
Statement. Are we making disciples?

So, if this is our goal, how do we measure if we are achieving that goal? What can we look
to, to ensure that we are allowing God to guide the church in the right direction? What are the
landmarks of a church achieving this goal? In the business world, it’s easy. The bigger the
business, the more obviously successful it is. But the bigger the church does not mean the
church is making the most disciples. Sadly, a big church, which is perceived to be successful,
is often made up of people from the church down the road, not new disciples. So, our
measure can no longer be the size of our congregation.

I think this is where the subject can get a bit touchy. I’m not saying anything new or
unexpected here. In fact, I think most church goers will silently agree with what our measure
should be, even if we’re dismally failing at it. The thing is, because so many of us are failing
to reach that goal, it’s almost easier to measure the size of our church rather than honestly
examine why we’re not making a difference in people’s lives. The measure of our success is
not the number of attendees on a Sunday, but rather the number of relationships that those
attendees have. How many of your friends don’t darken the door of a church? How many
people do you have over for dinner and how often? Have you made an effort to connect with
someone new outside of your church this week? These should be the questions in which we
measure our effectiveness rather than who was at our service, and how can make the service
better so more people come to our service next week. But like I said, if the questions were
easy, we would ask them more often. But they’re not. And so we don’t.

Again, though, let’s take a page from the business world, and apply it to our local franchise of
God Inc. Businesses know they will grow by investing. When a business makes an
investment, it does so in two distinct ways. A business will invest in areas in which
improvement needs to happen, like not having enough customers. The business would hire a
PR specialist or an ad company and will spend money to improve that area so that the
problem can be fixed. More customers mean more money. More money means more growth.
So, it’s up to the church to identify areas where we have a problem, and invest in solving that
problem. For instance, are people not connecting with other because they don’t have the
time? The church could invest in freeing up time for people like not having as many
unimportant church meetings and events. Is the problem that people don’t know how to
socialize well? Bring in experts in social skills, communication, rapport developing and hold
classes for people to improve, to learn and fix the problems.

A business will also choose to invest its resources, knowing that doing so is a risk, a planned
risk, but a risk none the less, and that by spending money, you can see a return on that
money. The business chooses to take something it has of value, IE money, and rather than
safely hold on to it, it invests that into something else to see a return. This too applies to the
church, but on a more personal level. Each member of the church has something to invest,
whether it’s their time, their money, their talents, their house, their knowledge, their skills…
etc. We can all invest something into somebody. And again, just like the business knows, it is
a risk to get involved with someone on an up-close and personal level. But the return on your
investment is astronomical to have somebody come to know Jesus for the first time and to
become a true disciple of His. So, each one of us has the responsibility to choose to take
something that we have of value, and rather than be safe with it, choose to invest it into
someone else, knowing that God will bring about an enormous return on that investment.