Outreach Magazine has produced another list for the American Church to read, learn from, envy, emulate, criticize, and more. I know Ed Stetzer (someone I'm coming to admire and appreciate more and more everyday as I follow his Twitter feed) was involved. Kent Shaffer says lists like this help others learn about church systems. And I'm sure many other devoted Christ-followers were involved in the creation of this list or benefit from this collection. But I have to confess I had a bit of a reaction when I first heard about this new Top 100 list.
In America, bigger is often hailed as better. And each year, I hear various pastors and church leaders from around the country offer counter-statements to say that it should be different in Christendom - and yet more "top 100" lists come out. A few of the people who pastor these churches have had a profound influence on me, so I'm not "anti-big church" (plus, I'm on staff at the second largest church in my city). But I wonder if we are too enraptured with the wrong metrics - giving too much attention to things that don't matter nearly as much as those numbers more inline with the movement of God.At the Sticky Conference this past year, I heard Larry Osborne say that the church he serves doesn't count "salvations" - instead, they count how many people are still with the church 6 months after making a declaration of becoming a follower of Jesus. And then they measure this number again after 1 year. And then again after 3 years. Larry reminded us that the Great Commission does not say, "Go, and make converts." It says, "Go, and make disciples." This concept really got me thinking.Recently, I read about a couple of churches that saw hundreds of people "cross the line of faith" on one Sunday, and they baptized several hundreds on that same Sunday. I truly celebrated when I read that! But how many of the new believers will still be connected to a church body 6 months from now? Knowing the churches that I heard about, I truly believe they will do everything they can to help these people become fully devoted followers of Jesus. But how many other pastors heard the numbers and envied?
On the Top 100 list (I didn't purchase the list, I saw a summary of it on Kent Shaffer's site, Church Relevance) they gave the attendance numbers over the last four years. I wonder if some saw the "declines" as bad. But image if a church of 10,000 planted 10 churches and sent 100 people with each church plant in one calendar year? And just for fun, let's say this church saw 300 people become genuine followers of Christ, but they also sent 200 people on the mission field long term. Assuming no "sheep stealing" (church growth through transfers) this church would decline in weekly attendance! While I think God would be celebrating that a church allowed Him to do such an amazing work in one year's time, I wonder if a some people would look at the raw data and wonder what's wrong.
There is probably a good argument for the existence of this Top 100 list. But perhaps it's also time for a new church metric. Rather than just counting how many seats are taken on a Sunday, maybe we need some lists sharing how many people were sent abroad. We need a list sharing how many people in their church began giving more sacrificially to the Kingdom and the community. We need a list exposing the exciting news of how many church plants were made in a year or decade out of a particular church. We need some list showing the most generous churches. I think THOSE numbers are more inline with the heart of God than just how many showed up on a Sunday.
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One more thought (this is much longer than I had intended): There may indeed be some things to learn from these churches and their teams, but maybe it would be best to teach those lessons through stories and interviews, rather than just raw data. (And because I haven't bought the list - those things may very well be in the full document.)
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As I finished up this post, I took a look at Ed Stetzer's website and saw that he blogged about this list. Reading this almost led me to NOT publish this post because I don't want to just be another one to hammer on a team that probably has good intentions, but as you can tell by the fact you are reading this, I've thrown my small (and probably insignificant) voice into the discussion.
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