Recently every congregation should have received the report from the General Assembly entitled Statistics, January 1-December 31, 2005 (for a fee of $10). In it records from every Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) church can be found concerning the number of active members, gains and losses in membership, officer information, and financial receipts and expenditures. Using these figures as a basis, the General Assembly can look for denominational trends on membership changes, pledging, giving to mission causes in and out of the Presbyterian church, and investments and endowments. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that these numbers do not tell us everything we want to know about the nature and vitality of the local church. How do you understand the statistics from your own congregation? How do you evaluate whether or not your church is alive and filled with the Holy Spirit? Which graphs tell you that you are growing or on a downward slide to the point of no return?
Recently every congregation should have received the report from the General Assembly entitled Statistics, January 1-December 31, 2005 (for a fee of $10). In it records from every Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) church can be found concerning the number of active members, gains and losses in membership, officer information, and financial receipts and expenditures. Using these figures as a basis, the General Assembly can look for denominational trends on membership changes, pledging, giving to mission causes in and out of the Presbyterian church, and investments and endowments. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that these numbers do not tell us everything we want to know about the nature and vitality of the local church. How do you understand the statistics from your own congregation? How do you evaluate whether or not your church is alive and filled with the Holy Spirit? Which graphs tell you that you are growing or on a downward slide to the point of no return? Regardless of what experts tell us, most church members and officers have four unspoken statistical bases that indicate to them whether the church is moving forward or not: how many people attend Sunday worship; how many new members join; the size of the youth group; the annual growth in pledges. But do these factors tell us how we are really doing in God's work? Perhaps we should try keeping a new set of statistics that might provide a new basis for spiritual evaluation. 1. How many people are moved each week by Scripture readings, sermons, and prayers to attempt to make their lives more Christ-like? 2. How many times a year does the church make a concrete, positive impact upon the community through its presence? 3. How many people are encouraged, lifted up, strengthened, given hope, and healed by the unrecorded visits and prayers of the pastors, elders, deacons, and caring and concerned members of your congregation? 4. How many times in the last twelve months were members of your church moved by faith to make contributions of time or money to the United Way, the hospital fund drive, collections for flood victims in the Gulf Coast or Mohawk Valley? How many cans of food, bags of rice, bottles of water, gallons of gas were given to those hurting in your city, town, or county? How many mission teams did your presbytery send to Mozambique or Mississippi? 5. How many times in 2005 did your session witness to Christ and make a difference in the world by taking a public stand on a major social, political, or ethical issue? How many times did your congregation do the right thing to promote justice or advocate peace over violence, even if was unpopular? How often did you take the side of the widow, the orphan, prisoner, or stranger, how often did you cry out "Oh, the humanity!" John Calvin did not use statistics to establish criteria for the nature of the true church. He did not find it necessary to quantify the work of God in Christ. Instead, he simply said that the church exists wherever the Word of God is purely preached and the sacraments are administered according to Christ's institution (Institute 4.1.9). What authenticates the work and ministry of your church? Earl S. Johson Jr. is pastor of First Church, Johnstown, N.Y. and adjunct professor of Religious Studies at Siena College.
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed