How Do You Know When Your Church is Winning?

by: Will Mancini

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How do you measure your effectiveness in ministry? Is it possible to monitor both faithfulness and fruitfulness?

I have committed my life to helping church leaders find clear, concise and compelling responses to these questions. Until leaders codify their answers to these questions through tools and equipping environments, the church will fall miserably short of its potential. Dallas Willard asserted, “Instead of counting Christians, we need to weigh them.”

For well over a decade we have seen increased conversation about “changing the scorecard.” For example, leaders who have taken the true disciple-making mission of the church to heart are trying to redo their definition of success. Churches aspiring toward multiplication and movement have insisted that new metrics of effectiveness are essential.

Within this context, the question of success has been top of mind by being a predesigned deliverable in every consulting context for over 16 years. In other words, I don’t show up onsite unless a church is really serious about answering this question for themselves. I have traditionally called this a ministry’s “mission measures” which answers the question “When are we successful?”  It is the top part of the master tool called the Vision Frame which is represented by a bullseye icon.

Now, the scorecard question is again addressed in a new tool released this week: My latest book is a 25,000-word digital workbook, made available FREE through Exponential. The Dream Big Workbook is another tool in an ecosystem of break-thru clarity and includes 24 team discussion tools on the journey toward creating a multiplying culture. Essentially it is a riff off of God Dreams which contains a template for “LEADERSHIP MULTIPLICATION” as one of 12 possible futures for your church. The Dream Big Workbook is therefore an extended toolbox for churches that have “opted into” the leadership multiplication template.

Dream Big Scorecard Resources

In order to celebrate the release of the Big Dream Workbook I am offering two previous published chapters for free. Why? I simply want you to have the best tools at your disposal to work through these critical questions.  In Dream Big, I refer to the scorecard as one side of the Vision Frame. I don’t do much teaching on it, so the workbook assumes some familiarity with scorecard leadership.

In general, the church in North America uses a defining scorecard that is NOT the true measure of the mission – worship attendance and giving. That is to say, coming to a worship service and putting money in the plate does not necessarily mean that people are becoming disciples.

To orient you to my perspective, teaching and tools around a disciple-making scorecard, I am providing two free chapters from two different books.

In Church Unique, I wrote an entire chapter on “mission measures” to create a disciple-making scorecard. I also refer to mission measures as “missional life-marks” or your church’s “portrait of a disciple.” A church’s mission measure is defined as the attributes or characteristics in the life of the individual that reflect accomplishment of the mission. The chapter on mission measures is attached here.

In Innovating Discipleship, I use the idea of “results” to define three kinds of outcomes that church leaders should be thinking about: Input, Output and Impact. I have seen this chapter play a transformative role on hundreds of church teams. In addition, I share the eight reasons that pastors tend to focus on input results only: that is, attendance and giving again. The chapter is attached here.

May God give you great clarity as you think through and articulate your own scorecard!

If you have not grabbed it yet,  get a free copy of the Dream Big Workbook.

Tags: Dream Big, Exponential, New Scorecard, Scorecard Leadership, Will Mancini

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Is Your Church Concerned About and Measuring the Right Things?

by: Ed Stetzer

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Last year, Caroline Inglis was on the verge of an historic feat. No high school golfer, male or female, had ever captured the Oregon state title four consecutive years. Inglis won the class 5A state tournament her freshman, sophomore, and junior years. There seemed very little doubt that she would win the title again as a senior.

On the course, Caroline dominated the rest of the field­—finishing with a 3-under 69, nine shots better than any other golfer. On the last hole, with victory assured, she scored her first bogey of the day. That would not have been an issue, except for the fact that her playing partner wrote down she had made a par. Caroline signed her scorecard and turned it in, believing she had just accomplished an Oregon first. In reality, she had just disqualified herself.

In golf, turning in an incorrect scorecard results in a disqualification. Because she had signed and submitted the wrong score, Caroline forfeited the win even though her actual score was still much better than anyone else. Having the wrong scorecard can make all the difference in the world.

Not too long ago, Bill Hybels and Willow Creek were honest enough to admit it—they had been using the wrong scorecard. An assessment demonstrated their members were not moving into maturity. “Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back, it wasn’t helping people that much,” Hybels said. “Other things that we didn’t put that much money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.”

While they were roundly criticized for their mistakes and everyone latched on to their remarks as a moment to say, “I told you so,” they are not the only church making similar mistakes. The things that Willow Creek found were problems in their congregation are problems in all kinds of churches. I believe most churches have been operating off the wrong scorecard for years.

Few churches use any system of accountability today. Many often judge their success based on anecdotes of temporary successes, with those frequently having long since lost any relevance to the current ministry taking place. Anecdotes can be great illustrations of statistical truths. They can also be misleading and hide the reality of the situation.

For those who actually use some means to analyze their ministry, most churches use the same three measuring sticks: bodies, budgets, and buildings. The old numbers-driven scorecard focuses exclusively on the number of people attending, the number of dollars being spent, and the number of square feet being used for church purposes. This is based on a brick-and-mortar mentality that reinforces an emphasis on the campus instead of encouraging people to be moved out into the field.

These three have served as the metrics for how the church is progressing. I’m not against those. I just don’t think they are enough. They don’t go far enough and don’t always capture the truth of the situation. Willow Creek was successful based on those standards, but an assessment showed they had missed the mark on discipleship.

Part of creating an assessment culture is being concerned about the right things. Builders don’t measure the nails to see if the lumber will fit them. They measure the lumber. No one measures a light switch and plans the construction around it. You have to measure the right things. In the church, when we spend our time only measuring the outlying issues we will miss the core mission of God.

I believe that measurements matter for the church. I don’t think we should eliminate them, but I do think we need a new scorecard. We need to key on factors that facilitate more people becoming Christ followers, more believers growing in their faith, and more churches making an impact on their communities. Our scorecards must include an emphasis on things like accountability, discipleship, and spiritual maturity.

That’s what Thom Rainer and I outlined in Transformational Church and what is at the center of the Transformational Church Assessment Tool. We need to find the right scorecard and begin evaluating and valuing the right things. Bodies and budgets may (and even should) be included, but they cannot be the only factors discussed. Find a tool, whether it is ours or not, that is valuing the right things and begin to implement a culture of assessment in your church.

In the final post of this series, I want to highlight two of the central issues that should be considered when a church sets about creating an assessment culture.

Part Three of a four-part series; read Part Four here.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Assessment, Ed Stetzer, New Scorecard

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Beyond the One Dimensional Scorecard: Count Vertically AND Measure Horizontally

by: Anthony Coppedge

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Disclaimer: I’m not a certified church growth expert. I’ve not written a book on growing churches, nor do I pastor a large church that’s had a ton of numerical growth. But in talking with a very good friend of mine I’ve thought through some ideas and wanted to share my thoughts on measuring growth. – end of disclaimer

Previously, I’ve blogged about the Fellowbackgrangepoint Church model as a way of trying to describe what I’ve seen happening with churches. You might have your own church model that might look more like the Willoharvesttemple Church or the Friendshipcommunityofbible Church or any other mash-up of churches that your leadership has tried to emulate.

At the end of the day there’s a lot of ‘me too’ churches that are honest and sincere in their application of proven lessons. But the results are an overlay of formats that are missing the key ingredient: who God called your church to uniquely be.

There seem to be a couple of prevalent schools of thought floating around:

1. Measure attendance, because each number is a life in need of Christ
2. Measure discipleship growth, because life change matters most

Why is it either/or instead of both/and? If a church has 10 people that go very deep in studying Scripture and are a tight-knit fellowship of believers, but never reach people in need of Jesus, they’re ignoring the Great Commission (go and make disciples). Conversely, if a church has a huge front door with thousands coming in and nearly as large back door with thousands going out, why aren’t they discipling those people who are in and out?

So here’s the question I want to posit:

If we count involvement vertically (attendance) and measure growth horizontally (how many serving/changing lives), our metric system is holistically valid.

Obviously, measuring attendance is a lot easier than measuring changed lives. But isn’t that worth the effort? I think it is.

We have to be careful in implementing this process, as it would be very easy for a leader to stop counting and begin judging those who are growing and serving with personal life-change. Yet, with a solid leadership infrastructure and a commitment of group leaders, capturing both anecdotal as well as tangible data is very do-able. In the end, I don’t think we should look for a hard and fast number for the horizontal growth, but maybe more of a barometer that gives an honest and accurate sampling of the result.

Given the plethora of church management systems software packages available, I know first-hand that the right reporting tools exist. The question is, are we being trained to use them to capture both the vertical and the horizontal?

How about your church? Is this honestly what’s happening? Or do you find yourself in an either/or situation?

It’s time for a new scorecard – one that counts vertically AND measures horizontally.

How can you move from where you are to the genius of the and?

Read more from Anthony here.

Tags: Anthony Coppedge, Leadership Engine, Measurement, New Scorecard

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How’s Your Church’s New Scorecard Working Out?

by: Lois Swaggerty

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Tags: Leadership Network, Lois Swagerty, Metrics, New Scorecard, Reggie McNeal

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