A lot of churches measure fruitfulness in terms of growth. They ask how many people attend on Sunday, how many kids in the children’s groups, how many conversions, how many baptisms?
I think we can get over hooked on measurements. I’m more mindful to emphasise the importance of churches learning to love, enjoy and glorify God. We can be too focused on meeting metrics in order to fulfill missions and visions we have set ourselves
At the same time, I think that some measures are helpful in order to get a feel for the health of a church. However, if we are going to have metrics, then I’d like to encourage us to have one measure that can easily get forgotten.
That measure is about how many people we have sent into mission. That might be people sent abroad to serve cross culturally. It may be those sent to train for Gospel ministry. It could be those sent to join church plants or revitalisations. If the mission of the church is to go and make disciples then this is a good indicator of health.
