Benchmarking the synergy of growth
Tuesday, October 9th, 2007Friends,
The “penny dropped” for many pastors and lay leaders during my workshop this weekend as we talked about the synergy of church growth. This is the flow of thriving church life from life-shaping worship, to adult spiritual disciplines, to mission team action, and back again to life-shaping worship.
For some, the “aha” came from benchmarking this flow. 80% of the members attend worship regularly; 60% of the worshippers are found in mid-week small groups, mentoring relationships, or accountable spiritual disciplines; 40% of the people in mid-week spiritual disciplines are also doing hands-on mission that is built in and around their lifestyles. 30% of the newcomers in worship are there as a direct result of experiencing the mission-service of the members.
For example … in a congregation with 250 adult resident members, 200 would regularly show up in worship; 120 would be involved in serious adult spiritual growth. Of the 120 in spiritual growth disciplines like small groups, 48 would be intentionally involved in hands-on mission outreach in which they simultaneously did good stuff and shared their faith. Average total worship attendance would be about 260 (i.e. 200 members plus 60 seekers who were invited or inspired to come out of the mission field).
Now we all know that these are ambitious benchmarks, and it may take some years before an established declining or plateaued church could do it. And we also know that there are many contextual issues that might lower or raise these benchmarks. But these benchmarks provide a standard for evaluating your current congregational situation.
For example, many churches claim 500 adult resident members, but only expect 150 to worship at any given time (only 30%). Of these, perhaps only 10 are involved in an accountable spiritual discipline (.07%); and of these only 2 or 3 are actually involved in mission embedded in their lifestyles. Not surprisingly, nobody at all shows up in worship as a direct result of mission.
The very idea of benchmarking this synergy of growth seems startling to many church leaders. They have been so busy developing and protecting program silos that they have not paid attention to the “connectivity” of church growth. Every piece leads to something else in overall personal and missional growth. Worship is useless unless it leads to spiritual discipline … which is useless unless it leads to mission action … which is useless unless it leads to worship.
What we are really measuring in the synergy of growth is not the numbers within any given worship service or program, but rather the percentages of people who move on to the next step. Inevitably, this causes church leaders to ponder how they foster this “connectivity”. And inevitably, they suddenly realize that you have to deploy staff explicitly to do this, and train volunteer leaders specifically to do this. Leaders now become interventionists and mentors, who “move people along”, rather than administrators and managers who (“keep people doing tasks”).
Tom Bandy
