Is the Church's Scoreboard Right?

I recently stepped onto the golf course for the first time in 2 years. Very quickly, I realized just how long it had been. Any hope of shooting par was gone after the first hole, so I knew I had to change my scorecard for this particular game of golf or else I was going to get very frustrated. So I decided to keep up with things like: how many fairways I hit off the tee, how many balls I lost/found, and how many times I used 2 putts or less on the green. I adjusted my scorecard to make my experience more enjoyable because the typical golf scorecard wasn't working for me.

With all of this being said, I want to challenge you to think about the scorecard of the church. Think about the tweets or Facebook posts you see regarding church. These statements give an indicator as to what the church keeps score on or deems as success. For example, I generally see post such as these all the time...

"The service was great today. I enjoyed all the songs."

"We had ____ (insert number of people) at our service today. God is good!"

Here's the overarching problem when we keep score/determine success based off these things... We're using a scorecard for the church that doesn't reflect the same scorecard of the Bible. Our typical church scorecard is primarily based on viewing the church as an event or a service, which again doesn't reflect a biblical definition of church. Over the years, I think we've adopted this scorecard because it's very easy to find success using these metrics. As a result, we feel more successful and justified in the perspective of American church culture.

The truth is, God doesn't celebrate how many people attend a service on Sunday or how well the music was performed. I've heard people say, "We count people because people count" and "If numbers don't matter, then why is there a book in the Bible called Numbers." I'm not saying numbers don't matter at all, I'm just saying attendance numbers aren't an accurate measuring point for the health of a church. Having 1,000s or just dozens at your worship service on Sunday doesn't mean a particular church is or isn't advancing the Kingdom.

Church leaders, The only way to know whether or not the Kingdom of God is advancing because of the church you lead is to get to know the people in your church and discover what's happening in and through their lives 7 days a week.

I've also heard people say, "We only want excellence at our worship services." Yes, do whatever you do as best you can, but just realize that if your commitment to excellence takes a priority over intentionally discipling the people you're pushing to be "excellent" in the service, then you're completely missing the core essence of following Jesus and being the church. 

My suggestion... We must return to a scorecard that reflects Kingdom advancement much more than the typical, American church growth models we're all used to seeing. We must fall back in love with Jesus and discover what He cares about most. We must care more about THE church than we do OUR church. Here are some ideas on how you can start keeping score within your church and your own personal life...

How much of my time is spent with people outside the church?

Who am I specifically pouring my life into so they'll learn how to invest their life into others?

Is my workplace environment better because of how I interact with others when I'm there?

Is our community being impacted because of our church's presence and involvement in the community's life and rhythms?

How many people is our church equipping and sending to lead movements of mission in specific contexts that will advance the Kingdom outside of Sunday services?

Do Disciples Exist?

For Overflow Collective, we believe discipleship begins with spiritual conversations, so I love hearing from people about how they're being used by God throughout their rhythms of life. I was recently helping someone unpack a spiritual conversation they had with a co-worker, and I was blown away by what this person shared. Here's a recap of their spiritual conversation...

Co-Worker: I was on the Overflow Collective website reading about disciples, and I have a question. "Are there disciples in every church?"

Person within Overflow Collective: There should be... I mean the church is the people who are disciples of Jesus. Why are you asking?

Co-Worker: Well I'm asking this because I've tried a lot of churches, but I don't ever recall meeting a disciple, so I'm struggling to believe that most people who profess to be Christians actually are disciples of Jesus.

WOW! Here's a little context behind this conversation... This co-worker is asking a lot of questions and wanting to know what it means to really follow Jesus. This questioning is coming from a real place of trying to find God and know Him personally and is just one of many spiritual conversations between these two people.

From my perspective, I was floored by the honesty in this co-worker's response yet deeply concerned because of it as well. Do we (self-professing Christians) know what disciples are? Are our churches made up of disciples or just people who like to attend services and participate in programs? Jesus told us to "make disciples," so we can't afford to misunderstand the essence of being a disciple!

What about you? Do you understand what it means to say that you're a Christian, hence a disciple of Jesus? It's become so cliche to say that you're a Christian in our culture, but have you processed through what this really means?

Check out the 2-minute video clip below from Pastor David Platt, author of "Radical" and "Follow Me," as he quickly explains the tragic cost of not understanding discipleship.

We've discovered that having a clear understanding of a "disciple" and the "church" is paramount to making disciples and being the church. Unfortunately, in our church culture, these two words are often improperly defined. I urge you to wrestle with this and process through what it means to be a disciple. Then, lead others around you to wrestle with the same things. If I can help in any way, please don't hesitate to let me know: joshoverflowcollective@gmail.com

Let's Stop Saying We Want to Reach the World

Churches traditionally have adopted a general vision along the lines of "making disciples of all nations" or "let's reach the world for Christ." While this broad vision of "reaching the world" may sound nice, it ultimately brings no accountability to our churches; it basically leads people to believe that unless they are called to leave their home context as a missionary then they're of very little service to Kingdom. I want to challenge these common vision statements and suggest that we quit saying we want reach the world.... and simply start trying to reach the people in our rhythms of life! 

Let me be clear. I'm not against taking the gospel to other countries (the world). I think we're biblically commanded to do so as I'll mention below. However, I believe what I've just suggested above is one of the  reasons Christianity in America is declining. The truth is we aren't making disciples in our own neighborhoods! Churches will often send money to support a missionary in Africa or they may even send a team of people from the church to do a short-term mission trip, but I want to ask, "What's happening across the street?" Why are we neglecting the responsibility to be the church in our own rhythms of life? Here are 2 possible reasons...

1) We've greatly misunderstood the original meaning of the word "nations" in the great commission. A better translation of the original word would be something like "people groups." Jesus' command wasn't referring to organized, governmental territories as we typically think of nations today. He was basically saying that in every "group of people" we should be making disciples. Therefore, every church needs to be actively making disciples in it's context.

2) We aren't "progressing" toward people groups outside of our context. Take a minute to review Acts 1:8. Do you notice the geographical and cultural progression of this command? Jesus begins with Jerusalem which was the "home" context of the people listening to Him speak. He then progresses from there to Judea and Samaria which reflect stepping through relational and cultural barriers. Then, He moves to the ends of the earth. The reality is that unless we properly understand how to make disciples at home, we'll only take a distorted view of the gospel and disciple-making with us when we go to other places. 

Here's my suggestion... let's get serious about reaching the people in our "nations." This would be the people in our rhythms of life (where we live, work, and play). Let's quit teaching people to think of "making disciples" as a short-term project we get to occasionally experience and start holding them accountable to view everyday as a mission project. As we do that, we'll then be equipped to start stepping into different contexts and partnering with others to effectively make disciples in different "nations."