Toolbox For Faith

Have you ever stopped to think about what statistics your congregation tracks and what that says about your priorities? In a previous time, congregations primarily tracked membership and worship attendance. In today’s world, membership numbers may tell you little or nothing about the health and life of a congregation. To me a more helpful measure of the ministry of a congregation is called Persons Served in Mission. Persons served in Mission equals the total number of people directly touched by the mission and ministry of a congregation during the course of a year. This includes people in worship, educational ministries, youth ministries, senior adult ministries, community helping ministries and any people directly helped or involved in the various ministries of the congregation. When combined with worship attendance, Persons served in Mission begins to capture the impact a congregation is making in the world.

For example, last year at St. Michael our average worship attendance was 136 people per Sunday and our Persons served in Mission totaled 4025, while at the same time our membership dropped from 408 to 320 because we realized that 90 people who had died or moved had never been removed from the roles. If you only look at membership, you might think St. Michael was in trouble, but when you look at the number of Persons served in Mission, you get a much clearer picture of the vibrant outreach ministry of the congregation. It takes a little time to get into the habit of collecting Persons served in Mission data, but it my experience it is a helpful way to measure the health and life of the congregation.

Dr. Callahan suggests that we advance our congregation with these steps.

1. We claim our strengths.
- not in analytical ways, but in rejoicing ways . . .
- Oh - we do this well.

2. We expand one or two current strengths.
- pick one or two, don’t worry about all of them
- save three and four for the coming years

3. Add one or two new strengths

4. Sustain your current strengths
- the foolishness would be . . .
- we have a current strength in worship and plan to add a program strength
- we divert resources from worship to program and have zero sum gain

5. Act swiftly on our present and future
- time horizons for swiftly depending on the congregation and the ministry

I was doing some work for a presentation and came across some helpful resources for small congregations. I haven’t read all the books listed on this page, but they looked interesting, so I thought I’d share.

http://www.congregationalresources.org/ShowCat.asp?TC=108

If you can find a copy, another interesting book is, “24 Effective Ideas for the Small Membership Church” by Steven M. Murray. The book is a little dated, since it was written in 1996, but it still has some good suggestions. Here’s an article by the same author: http://www.gbod.org/evangelism/programs/offeringchrist/small_church.html

The best book on the topic I have read is “Small, Strong Congregations” by Kennon Callahan. If you are serving a small congregation, it is immensely helpful.