Perhaps you have heard the story of the person who found a lamp that released an all powerful genie granting three wishes. Despite the warning to choose carefully, the greedy person's first wish is for personal power. "I wish to be the ruler of the universe!" With a nod from the genie and a flash, our budding Napoleon is transformed into an oversized tape measure, receiving what was asked for, but probably not what was desired. Put another way, the things we give our attention to are what we become. That which we measure is what we produce.
For many churches over the last several decades our primary measure of success was the number of people attending church, the number of professions of faith, the number of baptisms conducted, and the numbers on our budget spreadsheets. None of these are bad metrics and one hopes that a healthy church has them, but numbers are not the goal of Christianity.
This past weekend our church hosted the CBF of Georgia Annual Gathering. I am so proud of the hospitality we showed, whether it was our incredible staff going above and beyond, the kind, smiling faces of our volunteers helping people find their way, or the beautiful worship services planned, executed, and streamed by Rich, Gerald, Marc, and so many others. During the weekend, John Pierce led conversations on the Jesus Worldview Initiative. Over several sessions and sermons, we saw how churches have made numbers, theology, or even scripture their primary focus of being a Christian. Somewhere along the way this Jesus-centered movement moved Jesus to the sidelines. What if our Christianity has produced churches with buildings to hold lots of people, and theologically-informed congregants who know how to argue, and Bible drill savants who can find Obadiah in under 10 seconds, but our lives don't look any more like Jesus than when we started? As I have heard another church put it, perhaps we need to make our measure of success a measure of discipleship, of how well we are Being with Jesus, Being like Jesus, and Doing what Jesus did? I'm not sure what metrics one uses to measure discipleship, but I am all in on a Christianity that is Christo-centric, that is Jesus centered. I hope you are too.