My personal study for the last few weeks has intensified in the area of the "missional" church! Something that has intrigued me is the development of a new scorecard for the church. We generally "score" church by the following criteria - how many came, how much was given, and how many participated! The greatest shortcoming of that scorecard is that even if all the "numbers" are good, it is still mostly a measurement of what happened "at the meeting!"
A missional scorecard attempts to measure real life transformation in the Spirit and impact on the community! Some churches are actually making a deliberate attempt to change the scorecard by eliminating the customary attendance etc. figures from their bulletins and publications. They are replacing them with other measurements. They are tracking how many people served in the community - how many prayer ministries are being conducted in the community - how many people in the community are being served by the church etc.. It is rather mind-boggling - but is an honest, if imperfect, attempt to measure how the church is doing at BEING the church TO the world!
I am going to experiment with this new metric on the next two Sundays! It should prove interesting!
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