Leadership Journal

An excellent article that brings to a wider audience a number of people wrestling with the issue of what the secular world calls metrics, but as the article says is a using of 21st century tools to assist leaders and congregations know a bit more of the leading of the Holy Spirit, and to support Biblical thinking in the areas of accountability, transparency and stewardship. Sometimes we dont think numbers matter at church, until the Treasurer's annual report! Then we see what numbers can tell us about where we placed our money and vision

"Quality" will always be difficult to quantify... Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" devotes nearly the entire book to this subject. Does it mean that people are "comfortable" within the unit or group? Are they actively self-analyzing their lives and their role in their communities. (I use the plural as we all live in more than one: Family, Coworker, Hobbyist, Recreational, Educational, Religious, and others.)

I don't know if my first comment came through, so sorry if this is a repeat. Currently, the United Methodist Church in their quadrennial General Conference is voting on moving to a system where churches will be rated on metrics like giving, new members, attendance, etc. Pastors of churches that decline or do not grow will be rated ineffective and not appointed to a charge. I'm not sure that using quantitative analysis tells the whole story of what's happening in a group of people.

The meaningful metrics list only measures activities. These sorts of church metrics have been around for sometime. What is new is figuring out how to assess the impact of those activities. This requires more difficult qualitative measurements that go beyond focus groups or anecdotal evidence.

In response to Paul---how do we know that Professor Nyazi is a Muslim? and if he is, does that invalidate his point that the question of measuring spiritual robustness is important to many including religious leaders and faith practitioners? I appreciate Professor Nyazi's suggestion that we can learn from social science disciplines and can incorporate both qualitative and quantitative methods; and I would add that we can do this without losing what Jesus called the fruit test.