Simon Cox Blog: Church-Planting Metrics: Measure What’s Important (Part One)

Sunday, 21 May 2017

Church-Planting Metrics: Measure What’s Important (Part One)

Measure outcomes, not activities.

A few years ago I was part of a breakout group at a church planting roundtable where we discussed the question, “What is church?” The group was comprised of international and regional directors of church planting organizations. About fifteen minutes into the discussion it became apparent that very few of the leaders had a working definition of church that was common to their entire organization. Taken together, these leaders represented hundreds of church planters.

I began to wonder how church planters could be sent to the field without a clear concept of what they are commissioned to do. Would that be acceptable in any other setting? How successful would car manufacturers be if their leaders told factory workers, “Make cars!” and did not provide them with detailed specifications of what they were to build? Absurd! Yet it seemed like that was exactly what many church planting organizations had done.

When church planters don’t have a working definition of church, they are left with important questions they can’t answer:

How do they know when they’ve finished the job?
How do they give credible progress reports to supporters when there is no clear definition of what they are progressing toward?
How do they know that what they are doing today is getting them to the goal?
How do they decide where best to use their resources?
Furthermore, from an organizational perspective, if leaders have not defined the end goal clearly, can they truly know whether the day-to-day activities of their church planters are actually fulfilling the organization’s mission?

This article presents a method for developing a measurement instrument that can guide leaders to define the end goal (i.e., “church”) ...