Measuring Church Health

Is Bigger Really Better?

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Big Fish Small Pond, Small Fish Big Pond

No matter how much I have grown to despise the discussion, it seems I cannot avoid it entirely.  Almost any conversation about church, it seems, inevitably gravitates in some form toward the Bigger is Better or Great Things Come in Small Packages debate.

It is not always an actual debate. In fact it is probably more often than not simply an expression of personal preference. But I have come to loathe the whole subject, having come to believe that the comparisons are largely irrelevant. There are some great large churches, and there are some great small churches; There are some horrendous large churches, and there are some pathetic small churches. And there are good and bad churches of all sizes in between.  The issue is not which size is best, but rather: Is your particular church – and my particular church – healthy, God-honoring, and fruitful?

That said, and with no desire to encourage debate, I found an observation by Neil Cole to be interesting:

There are millions of people in smaller congregations across the country who live with a feeling that they are failures because their church isn’t as big as the megaplex congregation down the street. This is sad and should not be the case.

A global survey conducted by Christian Schwartz found that smaller churches consistently scored higher than large churches in seven out of eight qualitative characteristics of a healthy church. A more recent study of churches in America, conducted by Ed Stetzer and Life Way Research, revealed that churches of two hundred or less are four times more likely to plant a daughter church than churches of one thousand or more. The research seems to even indicate that the pattern continues—the smaller the size of the church the more fertile they are in planting churches.

It pains me that so many churches and leaders suffer from an inferiority complex when in fact they could very well be more healthy and fruitful than the big-box church down the street.

I am not suggesting that the mega church is something we need to end, I am simply saying that we need other kinds of churches to truly transform our world. I also do not want people in huge churches to think that just because they have more people and more money that they are more blessed by God. The stats tell us that ten smaller churches of 100 people will accomplish much more than one church of 1000.

Read the rest of  Cole’s article: Is Bigger Really Better?

And again, while not wanting to prompt debate, I do welcome any comments about Cole’s observations.

Numbering Those on the Ranch

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

With the following illustration, Alan Hirsch offers a different way of gauging a church’s effectiveness:

In some farming communities, the farmers might build fences around their properties to keep their livestock in and the livestock of neighbor farms out.  This is a bounded set. But in rural communities where farms or ranches cover an enormous geographic area, fencing a property is out of the question. In our home of Australia, ranches (called Stations) are so vast that fences are superfluous. Under these conditions a farmer has to sink a bore and create a well, a precious water supply in the Outback.  It is assumed that livestock, though they will stray, will never roam too far from the well, lest they die.  That is centered set.  As long as there is a clean supply of water the livestock will remain close by.

The essential difference is between measuring Influence instead of simply membership and/or attendance.  The bounded-set, as Hirsch calls it, draws a clear line between those on the inside (i.e. members and regular attenders) and those outside.  The centered-set, on the other hand, measures how many people are in some relation to the ministry of the church and gauges the various relative distances from the center values.

Though I do not see these grids as being mutually exclusive, as if one must choose one or the other, I do find Hirsch to have provided a helpful distinction.

In our church, for instance, we have some precious members who do not regularly participate in any of the Life of the Church. They come occasionally to any number of things, including infrequently to the Sunday morning worship service. To assume we are having an active influence in their spiritual growth would be, at best, presumptuous. On the other hand, there are people who are not members of our church, nor even attenders, but who are being actively influenced through ministries of counseling, discipleship, mercy, etc.  While these folks are not part of the quantifiable membership, they are nevertheless beneficiaries of the mission of the church.   In many ways some of these folks are closer to our center-set than are some of the irregular members.

So again, as I think about it, I see both of these grids as being beneficial.  In fact, I would hope to see growth on both gauges.  We long to see our influence expand, and realize that many whom we influence will never become part of our congregation. Some are members of other churches, and therefore should stay there and bless the people in those churches.  But we also should be laboring, and praying, for those who are not part of a particular congregation to become connected to some expression of of the visible church – hopefully many with ours.

So, I don’t see that we need to make a choice between these two ways of measuring our congregations. I think we ought to use both. But, I guess, since relatively few are aware of Hirsch’s Ranch, we would be wise to spend our energies to cultivate and cast the importance of the centered-set.