What Does Success Look Like?
One of the major adjustments that church leaders needed to make over the last two years is designing a way to measure what success looks like in the areas we lead.
We would all have to admit that, in the past, we were probably overly attached to the metrics of church attendance and giving. These two metrics tend to be the easiest to count and the most gratifying to measure, if they are headed in the right direction. However, if they are dropping, for whatever reason, the feelings of insecurity and failure can settle in like a dark, gloomy cloud.
The endemic and its effect on church attendance has caused many pastors to re-evaluate and begin searching for different ways to measure success while waiting for things to go back to “normal.” (Cue laugh track. If we are honest with ourselves, we all know there is no “normal” anymore).
If you pastor in an urban or suburban area in the northeast or northwest part of the United States, you may have not bounced back to your March 2020 church attendance numbers. Areas where there were the strongest Covid lockdown measures have been generally slower to return to pre-Covid church attendance numbers, though there are exceptions to this rule. The more rural or churched the town or city, the more likely that your church attendance numbers have bounced back. In fact, some churches in these areas have even grown in size.
While church attendance issues have varied across the country, one of the amazing realities that emerged during the endemic is that, no matter the area of the country, people continued to give!!! Every church leader I have talked to indicated that giving went up, even during complete lockdown. That's a crazy, wonderful credit to believers who committed themselves to the principle of “Lordship”, which is giving all “first things” to God.
At Allison Park Church, while our giving remains strong, our church attendance has still not returned to pre-Covid numbers. So, we made some strategic decisions to expand our definition of success. Here are our new metrics.
#1 - ARE WE LIVING ACCORDING TO OUR VALUES?
During the early parts of the pandemic, our leadership had Zoom strategy meetings where we sought to define more clearly “who we wanted to be”. Many times in strategy sessions, people focus on “what we want to do.” But, as Peter Drucker says, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.
We discussed our Purpose Statement and the Values that we wanted to insist upon and live by. This led to great discussions about how our people and our staff were exemplifying these things. It also helped us learn how to commend and celebrate those who serving and volunteering. We looked for people who were modeling our values and we celebrated their efforts.
#2 - ARE WE HELPING PEOPLE MAKE CONNECTIONS?
Our current focus in ministry is helping people make meaningful connections into a Life Group, a Serve Team, a Support Group, or into our Next Steps Class. We are starting to track the conversations that led to a connection, though admittedly, this is a work in progress.
This helps us focus less on the question, “How big was the crowd?” and focus more on the question, “Who was the one person we helped to take a next step in their spiritual walk with God?”
#3 - HOW MANY NEW LEADERS ARE BEING TRAINED AND RELEASED?
Before the pandemic, we measured three key metrics:
Church attendance
Giving
Volunteers...the number of people on our Serve Team (what many call the Dream Team).
We still highly value the measurement of volunteers because when someone starts to serve is when they really begin to stick but we also realized, through all of the tensions and transitions of the last two years, how valuable it is to have LEADERS who help others to adopt the right mindset, attitude, habits, and approach to life. Our commitment to raising up leaders has increased. Our value for those who lead is something we prize more than ever.
If we raise up a leader and they end up going somewhere else in life, we know it’s still a win. Maybe they move? Maybe they feel called to serve in a ministry beyond our local church? Wherever they go, we know we have played a part in building, training, mentoring and releasing a force into the world.
#4 - WHAT TOOLS ARE WE OFFERING TO OUR LEADERS?
Training leaders means that we have provided a greater degree of excellence in their development. We are looking at ways to teach:
Theology
How to handle the Bible effectively
Christian social values that address racism, abortion, Christian sexuality, love for the poor
Leadership skills
How to be used in the Spiritual Gifts
Breakthrough Ministry
APC Values & Strategy
This training process is still in the development phase. We are looking for ways to deliver the teaching in a schedule friendly way like podcasts, On-Demand video content as well as the more traditional “in person” training events. But we are committed to giving our leaders the best tools and training possible.
#5 - WHAT EXPERIENCES WITH GOD ARE WE HAVING TOGETHER?
Experience with God is difficult to measure in any type of numeric fashion. One of the things that has given me great hope for the future are the powerful moments with God that we have enjoyed in our in-person services. There have been several moments in the last six months, where the presence of God has been poured out in a significant and tangible fashion.
We saw our young people worshiping at the front of the church until 10pm at night during our Revival Week. Our leadership gathering, Ignite 2022, was electric! The presence of God was so powerful during our worship hour.
There may not be tangible and numeric ways of measuring this but it is still incredibly valuable.
While I may not have hit on the metrics you will add to your system of evaluating success, my prayer for you is that God will take you beyond measuring church attendance and income, and that He will lead us all into true health.