What Is Success As A Church?
It can be easy to point out what is wrong in the church, but what are we even supposed to be aiming for? What does success look like? Church bloat is not the aim. Increasing the number of people who come to sit in a church building once a week is not the goal.
What is the Mission of the Church? by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert is a helpful book. They say, “The mission of the church—as seen in the Great Commissions, the early church in Acts, and the life of the apostle Paul—is to win people to Christ and build them up in Christ. Making disciples—that’s our task.”[1]
Success looks like more people loving Jesus and loving and living like Jesus. So, as apprentices of Jesus, we want to be…
Going into our world with the good news of Jesus to make disciples.
How is this measured? Mature disciples will be regularly spending time with their neighbors, peers, and coworkers. Mature disciples don’t mainly spend their time in a church building, but being the church in the world. The goal is for Christians to obey the missional mandate. Faithful disciples don’t practice invitation; they practice evangelization.[2]
Instead of one person sharing the good news of Jesus from a stage once or twice a week, we’re working towards all people, all the time; everyone, everywhere. The goal of the church is to make disciples who, in turn, make disciples. Not fans. The goal is not getting more people into a building. The goal is sending more people out into the world.
Growing in maturity in word and deed.
How is this measured? Mature disciples will be regularly practicing the grace of the spiritual disciplines. It’s not just about sitting in a service but doing the things the Lord has called us to do. We can know a lot of things about Jesus and even say, “Jesus is Lord,” and yet contradict what we know and say by our lives.[3] If Jesus is Lord, we must listen and obey (Luke 6:46).
Maturity is not knowledge-based; it’s obedience-based. Knowing must lead to doing. Experientially loving God and tangibly loving our neighbors is vital. We don’t count consumers. We count disciples.
Giving of our time, talents, and treasure.
Mature disciples will regularly serve their local community and practice hospitality.[4] Notice, this is not church building centric. Mature disciples serve Christians and non-Christians (Gal. 6:10) where they work, live, and play.
Maturity is when you serve God in the way He has gifted and called you, not in the way that society expects you to. Taking ownership of your mission is a mark of maturity. The goal is not hoarders. The goal is giving away.
I believe we should encourage more service in the surrounding community and less in the church building. We should see that as more needed. May we be salt and light in our community and neighborhoods, and less about the industrial complex of the “church.” “Serving” does not equal serving in the church. I am over hearing pastors guilt people into serving in the church building. Pastors are sometimes guilty of telling people to essentially hide there light in a bushel. But, if you know the song, it says, “Hide it under a bushel? No!”
Serve and love the people where you are. We want people staying in their bowling league with their coworkers, neighbors, and friends even if it means not going to the second Bible study or being on the tech team. We would much rather people practice hospitality than be on a hospitality team.
Gathering together to encourage and be encouraged.
Mature disciples will be regularly gathering in community to practice the “one another passages.” Mature disciples—male and female, theologically trained or not—will be regularly using their spiritual gifts to build up the body of Christ.
Maturity is gathering and building up other believers and purposely scattering to bless the broken world that needs Jesus’ love. Maturity isn’t about attendance. It’s about intentionally spurring those in your life on towards love and good works (Heb. 10:24). The goal is incarnation, not isolation.[5]
Our Metrics Must Match Our Goals.
If the four practices above are our growth goals, there are various implications. We must create different structures to best reach those goals.
We all have things we value. If you walk into my house, you will see certain things that my family values. You will see that my wife and I value books. If you walk into my son’s room, you will see that he values Legos and books. We all have things where we live that show what we value.
What do we “see” at the gathering of the church? What does what we see communicate about what we value? Do we value real, lived-out, day-in, day-out, discipleship? Or do we value budgets, buildings, branding, platforms, programming, and pizzazz?
I believe we are perfectly designed to obtain our current results. But, sadly, I don’t think the things we do result in disciples who make disciples. I don’t think our metrics do a good job of measuring discipleship, let alone the 2 Timothy 2:2 commission.[6]
What success looks like must change if we are to resemble our Savior. Our aim must shift if we want the church to reflect Jesus’ intent. Jesus’ clear emphasis was on making disciples who make disciples. “Jesus poured His life into a few disciples and taught them to make other disciples. Seventeen times we find Jesus with the masses, but forty-six times we see Him with His disciples.”[7]
Notes
[1] Kevin DeYoung & Greg Gilbert, What is the Mission of the Church?, 63.
[2] Christians are called to share the good news of Jesus with people. The Bible never tells us to invite people to church (e.g., Matt. 5:16; 10:32-33; 28:18-20; Mark 8:38; 16:15; Romans 1:16; 10:14-17; 15:18; 1 Cor. 9:19-23; 1 Cor. 4:1-2; 10:33; 2 Cor. 5:20; 1 Peter 2:12).
[3] The Lord desires that Christians (who are followers of Christ, after all) be agents of peace (Matt. 5:9), partiers with the poor (Lk. 14:13-14) and helpers of the poor (Gal. 2:9-10), ministers of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18-19), protectors of orphans and widows (Is. 1:17; James 1:27), fighters of injustice (Is. 58:6), and people of mercy (Matt. 5:7).
[4] Hospitality is important because it’s been a Christian value throughout Christian history, and it’s a strategic way to be the church on mission. This value is demonstrated by regularly sharing meals with others (including those who are different and needy), intentionality in connecting with our neighbors, and prayerful pursuit of loving friendships where God has planted us.
[5] I believe a few pivots are needed. Here are a few examples: The criteria of faithfulness and maturity should not be going to a building on Sunday and sitting in a hour/hour-and-a-half service. And for the “super Christian” serving the church by watching the kids, being a greeter, or giving some money to the church. Instead, being the salt and light church of God on Monday and throughout the week is the criteria. No bifurcation in life. We are the church. We don’t go to church. Church is not on Sundays.
[6] 2 Tim. 2:2 says, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”
[7] Dann Spader, Four Chair Discipling, 36. “These few disciples, within two years after the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, went out and “filled Jerusalem” with Jesus’ teaching (Acts 5:28). Within four and a half years they had planted multiplying churches and equipped multiplying disciples (Acts 9:31). Within eighteen years it was said of them that they “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17;6 ESV). And in twenty-eight years it was said that the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world” (Col. 1:6). For four years Jesus lived out the values He championed in His Everyday Commission. He made disciples who could make disciples!” (Dann Spader, Four Chair Discipling, 36). Also, “Jesus gives more than 400 commands in the Gospels and more than half of them are disciple-making commands.” (Ibid., 37).
*Photo by Helena Lopes
Rethinking Church: From Invitation to Evangelism
What if church were different? What if we evangelize instead of invite?
Admittedly, this is an old study, but in 1988 George Barna found that
Despite the fact that churches and para-church organizations have spent billions of dollars on evangelism. More than 10,000 hours of evangelistic television programming have been broadcast, in excess of 5,000 new Christian books have been published, and more than 1,000 radio stations carry Christian programming. Yet despite such widespread opportunities for exposure to the Gospel, there has been no discernible growth in the size of the Christian body.[1]
Could it be because invitation has replaced evangelism, and inviting people to the Christmas program has replaced dinner in our homes? The church was always supposed to incarnate the good news of Jesus and show the lived reality of His reign through Christian love. Francis Schaeffer went as far as to say that the love of Christians must be visible, for it is “the final apologetic.”[2]
Perhaps we must take a different approach than the church growth experts have promoted for decades. Instead of watching the neighbor’s kids, who is a single mother and in need of a lot of help, we are exhausting ourselves in the nursery supporting the church service. What if we did the opposite?! What if we didn’t serve in nursery, and instead knew and helped our neighbors? The church was never meant to be for itself. It exists to love Jesus and love others like Jesus.
The Bible tells us to “go and tell.” It doesn’t instruct us to “invite people to a building.” We are to be the church, not invite people to a building we’ve falsely labeled “church.”
“Letting our light shine” was never meant to become: “gather all the lights in the same building and keep them from the dark.” Too often, Christian life circles around propping up and keeping the institution of the church afloat. It becomes a vicious cycle. The church needs people at the “church” to keep the “church” going, all the while taking the church out of the world.
People often ask me, “Why is the world such a dark place?” Could it be, in part, because the church—the light of the world—has left the world and gone into a building? Sadly, churches are notorious for taking people out of actual outreach to put them on an outreach committee.
Further, we’ve hamstrung ourselves by encouraging and facilitating invitation over evangelism. Instead of the whole body being deployed in specific contexts where different people are specifically equipped to contextually share the good news of Jesus, we’ve allowed the onus to fall on professional clergy. Inviting someone to church is now the faithful thing to do. We’ve essentially taken an army off the frontlines where they are desperately needed and given a weapon to one person to wield from the stage.
UPS delivers packages to us, typically Amazon packages. What if UPS went around town and told us we could go to the distribution center one day a week between 9 and 11 AM and pick up packages? First, that’d be bizarre. Second, it would be very unhelpful and UPS wouldn’t be in business very long. Third, it would be a lot like our “evangelism” in America. Yet, as Bill Hull has said, “There are no commands in Scripture for non-Christians to go to church, but there are plenty about Christians going to the world.”
Instead of being missionaries, we expect those who would be part of the church to become missionaries. The responsibility is on them to cross boundaries and learn a new vocabulary. Instead of crossing the thresholds into people’s homes and inviting them into ours, we’re inviting them to a sterile church building. We’re inviting them to a strange and foreign institution. Jesus and Paul sought out people where they were, they didn’t invite them to a church service.
Jesus who is the good news, brought good news. He did not merely call us up to heaven. He came down from heaven—to walk, dine, and die for us—to bring us up. And Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (Jn. 20:21; 17:18). He has sent us not to merely invite people to a church building, but to compel people into the Kingdom.
Notes
[1] George Barna, Marketing the Church (Navpress, Colorado Springs, CO, 1990), 22.
[2] Bryan A. Follis, Truth with love: the apologetics of Francis Schaeffer, 58.
[3] Luke 14:23 says, “Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled” but the context (note v. 15) informs us that the parable is about the Kingdom, and not any one church. It’s certainly not about a church building.
10 Hospitality Quotes
1. “Engaging in radically ordinary hospitality means we provide the time necessary to build strong relationships with people who think differently than we do as well as build strong relationships from within the family of God” (Rosaria Butterfield, The Gospel Comes with a House Key, 13).
2. “The truly hospitable aren’t embarrassed to keep friendships with people who are different… They know that there is a difference between acceptance and approval, and they courageously accept and respect people who think differently from them. They don’t worry that others will misinterpret their friendship. Jesus dined with sinners, but he didn’t sin with sinners. Jesus lived in the world, but he didn’t live like the world” (Rosaria Butterfield, The Gospel Comes with a House Key, 13).
3. “A cold, unwelcoming church contradicts the gospel message” (Alexander Strauch, Leading with Love, 100).
4. “If you are looking for ways to evangelize, opening your home is one of the best methods of reaching unbelievers” (Alexander Strauch, Leading with Love, 102).
5. “Some theologians go so far as to state that the growth in the earliest churches was wholly dependent on the meals and hospitality of the believers” (Verlon Fosner, Dinner Church, 24).
6. “Jesus does not have us here to straighten out our dinner guests’ thoughts and realign their lives, and it’s good thing, because their challenges are quite impossible at times. What Jesus needs most from us is for us to be their friends” (Verlon Fosner, Dinner Church: Building Bridges by Breaking Bread, 73).
7. “A lot of our language presents and reinforces the idea that church is an event… we talk about ‘going to church’ more often then we talk about ‘being’ the church” (Krish Kandiah, “Church As Family,” 68).
8. “Look at any church website and what is advertised worship services for us to enjoy, sermons for us to listen to, use provision for our children, and perhaps a small group that can provide for other needs. We post pictures of our smart buildings, of our edgy youth work, and of well designed sermon series; we invest time and money and brilliant branding and hip visual identity. This all serves to reinforce the idea that our churches exist primarily as events for consumer Christians to attend” (Krish Kandiah, “Church As Family,” 68).
9. “God’s guest list includes a disconcerting number of poor and broken people, those who appear to bring little to any gathering except their need” (Christine D. Pohl, Making Room, 16).
10. “Although we often think of hospitality as a tame and pleasant practice, Christian hospitality has always had a subversive countercultural dimension” (Christine D. Pohl, Making Room, 61).
And…
“We welcome others into our home, but generally those who don’t even need it. Our hospitality is only lateral and transactional. We host peers in a system that expects reciprocity, not one that displays free grace” (Elliot Clark, Evangelism as Exiles).
The Hospitality of God and our Hospitality
First, what even is hospitality? What does it mean? It means “love for the stranger” or “to befriend a stranger.”[1] One definition says hospitality is having “regard for one who comes from outside one’s group.” That is exactly what God has done for us. God is perfectly holy and exalted and yet He has regard for us.
The Lord God has regarded us—loved us—even welcomed us into the Triune fellowship (see e.g. Jn. 20:17), we who were sinners and strangers. And He did so with great cost to Himself.[2] And we see from the Gospels that Jesus was a friend (philos) of those we would expect to remain strangers and outsiders, people like tax collectors and other sinners (see Matt. 11:19), sinners like you and me.[3] And so Paul says, “welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Rom. 15:7).
When we understand the amazing hospitality of God we will find it easier to love and welcome people in. Understanding the hospitality of God is essential as we think about the hospitality that we are called to practice. Because, in one sense, hospitality is supernatural. It is certainly not natural to us. We need to meditate on the hospitality of God if we hope to be hospitable as we are called to.
It is true, however, that even “secular people” who don’t know God’s love show surprising generous hospitality (cf. Acts 28:2,7[4]). So, how much more should Christians, who have been welcomed in by God with great expense, welcome in and love others?
The LORD has shown undeserved love to us in Christ may we show love to others (Ex. 23:9; Lev. 19:18, 34; Deut. 10:17-20).
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