Measuring church success

For decades now the primary metrics that churches have used to measure their success have been attendance and giving. And that was fine when churches were the center of the culture. But, as we’ve seen, institutional churches have declined in both attendance and giving. And the institutional church is not the center of the culture anymore. In many cases, the church hasn’t changed, but the culture has and it has determined that it no longer needs the church anymore. Yet the church has struggled to adapt and change to this new reality.

So the church continues to measure attendance and giving as the primary metrics of success. But are these useful measurements anymore? Or are we even looking at them the right way? A decline in attendance and/or giving is useful information, but I wonder if we are stuck interpreting it in a way that is no longer valid or useful anymore.

Too often the church is measuring these things in order to see how we are doing against a past that was out of the ordinary — large attendance numbers and lots of money in the coffers. Taken against the historical trends of centuries, the church of the 20th century was an anomaly. Maybe we should re-examine these metrics and what they are measured against. Instead of determining if a church is successful because there are lots of butts in the seats for worship, maybe we should be measuring how many people’s lives are transformed, or how much service is happening in the community, how many meals were served, or how many people are opening Scripture or praying — or at least…