Measuring Transformation

In a recent interview at the Hillsong Conference (June 5,2008), in Sydney Australia, pastor Bill Hybels discussed church growth. One of the golden nuggets from this discussion w/ Pastor Brian Houston was the idea that sometimes ministers confuse church size with spiritual growth of our church members. According to Hybels, a transformational church’s success is measured by its effectiveness of the latter, not the former.

How long has it been since you stepped back and asked “What do I use to measure the effectiveness of my church / ministry?” A successful church will grow. Pursuing Christ’s command to make disciples must intrinsically include increasing numbers of members. However, increasing numbers does not mean that people are becoming disciples, being transformed and released into ministry. Yet the church’s call is to form the life of Christ within another life . . . to see individuals transformed.

So how do you measure your effectiveness of your church? Being and becoming a Christ centered, transformational, spiritual maturing church is a matter of being focused on the right goal, using the right measuring stick, asking the right questions.

Willow Creek Church and Willow Resources have recently published “Reveal:” an online study in which your church can participate. Reveal measures the spiritual temperature within your ministry. This cutting edge study was built over 4 years, on the contributions of 200 churches, and 80,000 participants. The Reveal study zeros in on spiritual continuum of a church, and identifies these 4 unique kinds of people at different stages of spiritual development.

1. Exploring Christ
2. Growing in Christ
3. Close to Christ
4. Christ-Centered.

According to the Reveal website (http://www.revealnow.com/index.asp), each of these groups have uniquely defining characteristics. Therefore measuring the success of your church, measuring the Kingdom Impact that your ministry is having is a matter of getting a hold of, and measuring these internally transcendent personal characteristics.

We will talk more about this concept, and the Reveal study in the next few posts.

For more information, click http://www.revealnow.com/index.asp



Timothy Burns, Associate Editor Ministry in Motion Blog
Author, Forged in the Fire - Shaped by the Master
http://www.timothyburns.com