Foolish But Effective

Measuring Success

I once heard a pastor of a large church make the accusation that pastoring a small church was a selfish endeavor.  His view is that some pastors settle into a small church with a solid giving base and essentially just exist.  At the time, I saw his point.  There are thousands of dying churches made up of just enough people to pay their pastor and do little or nothing else but remain comfortable.  Their pastors preach sermons designed to please Christians and keep up traditions.  Pastors and churches like that have lost their focus on Jesus and on His great commission to make disciples.  They are tragedies of evangelistic neglect.  

However, there seems to be an often unspoken assumption on the part of many Christians that ministry success is measured by attendance and giving.  Thus, big churches automatically get the label: "successful."  Most of us know better than to speak this assumption out loud, but we live by it.  It drives ministry efforts and controls budgets.  Sermons and programing that retains givers and attenders are invested in heavily while ministry initiatives directed at orphans, widows, and anyone described in Matthew 25:31ff is given little or no support.  Proactive, relational engagement with people other than Christians is neglected, often unintentionally.  When giving and/or attendance is up, we speak of how thankful we are that "God is blessing" our ministry.  When giving or attendance is down, we rake our staff over the coals that they aren't making enough of an effort.  

The truth is that we have employed earthly metrics to measure human success and neglected the mission Jesus gave us: Make Disciples (Matthew 28:19-20).  

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
— Matthew 28:19-20

Discouragement

I ministered in a large church for nearly a decade.  I put in a lot of hours, planned a lot of events, and preached a lot of sermons.  I was well resourced (comparatively), reasonably well paid, and had a team of incredibly talented people working with me.  While I can point to many people that we invested in, loved, and helped grow in Christ, I saw very few non-Christians become disciples.  

Understand that there were many Christians who grew in Christ.  I watched many novice Christians become more serious about their faith and many serious Christians grow deeper in their walks, but I saw very few people move from death into life as we see Paul describe in Ephesians 2:1-5

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world...But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.
— Ephesians 2:1-5

I became very discouraged.  We spent millions of dollars and had thousands of people hearing our teaching, but we were shamefully lacking in new believers.  I loved discipling Christians to grow and was glad to see people recommitting to Jesus, but I knew that without regenerations we were not really fulfilling the Great Commission.  

It wasn't that there weren't any new beleivers; it was that there wasn't many and few of them could be seen growing in Christ.  

The discouragement grew deeper when I counted "hands" during a response after a sermon.  We would have everyone bow their heads and close their eyes and raise their hands if they were committing to Christ.  We would count hands, and those numbers would be added up to a yearly count.  Sometimes we would count decision cards, but we almost never had relational contact.  

Perhaps they were making genuine decisions to follow Jesus; maybe they just weren't paying attention and heard something about raising hands at the end of the sermon.  We don't know, because they didn't trust Jesus in the context of relationship.  And, without a meaningful disciple-making relationship there was no one there to lead them in their first steps to following Jesus.  We had roughly 3,000 regular attendees on the roster, but we would be doing good if our salvation count was in the double digits over the course of a year.  Given that even those numbers reflected our dubious "hands raised" method, we couldn't do much celebrating. 

We were not making disciples effectively.  

It would be easy to blame the pulpit, to accuse the teaching pastor of not encouraging evangelism enough.  However, that wasn't the case.  Plenty of energy went into sermons about evangelism.  Classes about evangelism.  We even did campaigns designed to build relationships and invite people to church.  It wasn't completely ineffective, but it wasn't exactly effective either.  

Attendance might increase, but salvations didn't (at least not by much).  

Church Planting

Flash forward several years.  Now, I am pastoring a tiny church that we planted with 8 adults and a few kids.  We started in June of 2014 and at the time of my writing, 16 months have gone by since our first meeting.  In that time nine people have trusted Jesus.  We didn't count raised hands in a dark room while emotive music played.  We didn't guess at how many of them were genuine.  We didn't wonder whether or not any of them "got it."  We connected with them, prayed for them, witnessed to them, and discipled them into relationships with Jesus.  We watched them be regenerated by the Holy Spirit.  We saw them change.  We saw them tell their friends about what Jesus did. We held baptisms in an above ground pool. And, we didn't have to guess about anything, because we knew all of them.  We watched them follow Jesus.  

I've never before seen God bring people to Himself like He has this year.  

Foolish But Effective

There are days when I think about how foolish this must seem to mega-church pastors.  We don't have much money (We are about two low giving months away from not being able to pay me).  We don't have many people (35 on a good Sunday).  Our organization structures are lacking in the absence of administrative staff (Volunteers are stepping up, though!).  We have no building to mark our presence (And no payment!).  

However, if we are comparing stats, it makes sense to compare statistics between two of the five churches I have ministered in.  These comparisons are purely anecdotal, reflecting my ministry experience.  They are not based on national statistics, though they are not anomalies.  

  • Large Church: 3,000 people spend 3 million dollars to make 15 disciples in a year in a large church context. That is 1 disciple for every 200 people (0.5% disciple-making rate) and $200,000 per new disciple.  
  • Church Plant: 8 people (plus a whole lot of other people praying, giving, encouraging, and supporting) spend about $40k to make 9 disciples in a year in a house church context.   That is 1.125 disciples for every 1 person (112.5% disciple-making rate) and $4,444 per new disciple. 

Disciple-Making Statistics

Now, there has to be some understanding that part of discipleship is growing current followers of Jesus to maturity in Christ.  If we focus merely on evangelism, we will still find ourselves neglecting the fulfillment of the Great Commission.  However, in the church plant context, I am seeing much more effective discipleship of maturing Christians than in any other context.  It is amazing what happens to the growth of a Christian when he/she is put in a position to minister and grow.  

With all this in mind, we cannot ignore the effectiveness of church planting for disciple-making. In a culture where the American Church shrinks at a staggering rate, we have to consider the exponential effectiveness of church planting.  

I remember when I was in one of those churches and thought church planting was a fools game.  I don't think I was wrong.  This is ridiculous!  We don't have the resources or the people of a large church, but disciple-making in our context is far more successful.  What is happening?!

Here is the truth of it: We make disciples when we have no other options, and we depend on God when we have no other resources.  Church planting removes both options and resources.  In church planting, you take Jesus to a people or community who don't know Him, and you start making disciples.  There are no programs to keep running or sound systems to keep new.  There is nothing to do but make disciples (Matthew 28:19-20).  

We make disciples when we have no other options, and we depend on God when we have no other resources. Church planting eliminates both options and resources.
— Daniel Samms

Church plants provide no means of entertainment to draw anyone (especially not Christians) to Jesus, so we have to do foolish things like pray that the Father draws people to Jesus (John 6:44) and pray that the Holy Spirit empowers us to witness (Acts 1:8).  We don't have enough people to make disciples of all the people the Father is drawing, so we have to pray for Jesus to send disciple-makers (Luke 10:2).  We don't have staff to minister, so we have to equip every person to minister (Ephesians 4).  

Church planting is a successful at making disciples because it eliminates all human capabilities, and forces absolute dependance on God. God has chosen the foolish things of this world (tiny church plants) to put to shame the wise.  I've decided that I am glad to count myself a fool, desperately inadequate to accomplish any real ministry, and thus desperately dependent on Jesus to do it all.  

New Metrics

I have employed a new metric for gauging success in ministry.  I intend to use these questions in conversations with pastors.

  1. How many new disciples did your church make last year?
  2. How many of them proclaimed their faith through baptism? 
  3. What are their names?  
  4. What discipleship steps are you leading them to take next?

In the absence of significant ministry impact, I plan to engage the following questions:

  1. What are you doing to eliminate all other options but disciple-making? Where are you GOing to make disciples? (Matthew 28:19a)
  2. When are you gathering people to pray for laborers for the harvest (Luke 10:2), for Holy Spirit power to witness (Acts 1:8), and for the Father to draw people to Jesus (John 6:44)?  

Dear pastor, burn every ship in your fleet that exists to do anything but make disciples.  Then desperately depend on Jesus to complete that task.  

So, are you in?  

ChurchStarting Attendance$ BudgetDisciples MadeAttendee/Disciple Ratio$/DiscipleDiscipleship Rate
Large Church3,0003,000,00015200/1$200,000/disciple0.5%
Church Plant840,00091/1.25$4,444/disciple112.5%