Dear friends who are reading this, I need some of your cranium power. Today was one of those frustrating days as a church planter, a day where the external, and might I add superficial, measurements of church health landed on me three times in an hour. I’m talking about the ABC’s used for measuring most churches:

Attendance
Buildings
Cash

The conversation usually goes like this:

“Oh so you planted a church”

……….

“Where does your church meet?”

……….

“How many people attend?”

……….

“So what’s your church’s monthly budget?” (Usually asked by pastors)

……….

Maybe you can help with some creative inserts for the blanks, let me give an example:

“Oh so you planted a church?”

Actually it wasn’t just us; we are a group of friends journeying together.

“Where does your church meet?”

Wow, that’s a hard question! Firstly, I don’t own the church – that’s Christ’s property. Secondly, We ARE the church and as such we meet in coffee shops, homes, malls, parks and all over town … once a week we gather in a community centre in Berario.

“How many people attend?”

Can I answer your question by telling you some stories of actual people with names that are in our community? We never count the people …

“So what’s your church’s monthly budget?”

Let me tell you a story of how we gave money away this month …

Anyhoo,

You catch the drift … please help me, these questions drive me crazy … most people use them to determine if we’re successful or not, why ask? There are no successful churches:

The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. Eugene Peterson