How do you measure growth in your church? I’ve wrestled with that for a couple of decades now and I’m still aren’t sure what the answer is. I thought I knew, but now I’m pretty sure I don’t. Hence I’m blogging my dilemma in hopes that out there someone does have the answer.

I learned early in my ministry that the increased size of the membership roles didn’t really measure growth. It measured names, but not attendance, involvement, or spiritual development. In fact when I did believe “new members” was the best way to measure growth and focused on that, I found that I not only got new members, but also a very impressive absent membership list a few years later.

I was then told that the real measuring stick was how many people were involved in Bible study. That sounded good until I came to see that that excluded a lot of people who couldn’t make Bible study on Wednesday, but were doing an awful lot of work for the church and community.

The last sentence ended by thought about “church” involvement as a measuring stick. Who says God’s work is only done through the church.

I finally settled upon – church attendance and I’ve stuck to that for the last decade, but this too is now waning. With a small church, give me three Sunday’s in January, two in February and two in March of twenty below wind chills, or snow on Saturday night, or a layer of ice on the ground and the attendance at our churches – which are situated out in the bon-dox far from the snow plows and salt trucks – falls by two-thirds. Those three months alone can bury my end of the year average before we even get through the first quarter of the year. When that would happen it made me feel like a golfer who triple bogies the first three holes and feels that the rest of the round doesn’t really matter.

Recently someone suggested adult baptisms was the real measuring stick – but I’m not so sure about that measurement because it gives the Baptist too big of an edge over us Lutherans. lol!

So I’m stuck again. As I look over the church (I’m a pastor, I’m supposed to do that), what do I point to, to measure growth?

I know I’m asking you a difficult question because trying to measure “spiritual” growth is like trying to catch the wind, but there has to be some way of saying, “Hey we’re on the right track,” or “Hey, we’re missing the boat.”

So I ask you, how do you measure growth at your church?

God bless, Dan