Measuring Ministry

Skye Jethani writes, in Immeasurable, about good versus bad complexity in ministry. He illustrates it this way:

Bad complexity is like a Rube Goldberg machine. Those are the massive, jerry-rigged contraptions that fill an entire room with moving ropes, ramps, bowling balls, and buckets. One small motion, like a marble rolling or a domino tipping, begins a long and complicated chain reaction. A Rube Goldberg machine is a huge, inflexible apparatus that accomplishes one simple task. It’s not very useful, but it can be immensely entertaining.

Good complexity, in contrast, is like a Swiss Army knife—an elegant, nimble instrument that can accomplish an impressive number of tasks. No one would say Swiss Army knives are simple. They are intricate, with many precisely engineered parts, but this complexity of design paradoxically makes them adaptable and easy to use.

Many churches are marked by bad complexity. They are like Rube Goldberg machines—not very effective, but very entertaining to watch. They construct massive systems of control that are far larger than what is required for the task, and they are dangerously fragile. If one element of the system or environment changes, the weakness of the whole church or organization is exposed.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This could be used as illustration of the difference between strong and weak, healthy and unhealthy, complex yet meaningful church organizations and ministries.

One afternoon while walking through the Norfolk General Hospital, Dr. Hugh Litchfield heard his name being called from across the lobby. As a man approached, he asked; “Hi, Dr. Litchfield, remember me?”

About 10 years earlier the young man had visited the church where Dr. Litchfield was serving. He was facing possible jail time over tax violations. This had led to alcohol dependency, which had in turn jeopardized his marriage and his relationship with is children. His life was in a desperate shape.

Dr. Litchfield explains the interaction in his book Visualizing the Sermon:

He then said to me in that lobby, "I want to thank you." "For what?" "One Sunday you preached a sermon about taking responsibility for our lives, not to blame what we become on somebody else. God used that sermon to speak to me. That afternoon I got down on my knees and prayed to God and promised to take responsibility for my life. With God's help, I did. Since that time, life has been great. I got out of trouble with the IRS, I became the master over the bottle, my marriage is better than ever. I want to thank you."

As he left me standing there, I was overwhelmed by what he had told me. . . When I went back to the office, I dug down into my sermon files to get out that sermon that had meant so much to him. Early in my ministry, on Monday morning I would jot down a phrase or two at the top of my sermon manuscript as to how I felt the sermon had gone on Sunday. For that sermon, I glanced at what I had written. "Dead in the water! No one listened! A waste of time!"

Dr. Litchfield concludes, “I have learned something along the way. If we offer faithfully to God what we have, somehow it will be used in magnificent ways. We must never underestimate what God will do with what we give.”

Author and Pastor Max Lucado reflected on his experience of losing the joy of the Lord to a spirit of gadgets and gauges. Lucado said:

For years I was an avid cyclist. I loved it. I was one of those guys with the tight shorts and helmet. I eventually got to the point where I competed in events. A guy in my church offered to teach me a lot more about cycling.

So I bought a bike and some clip-in shoes, and spandex, and went out and loved it. But then he started saying that I needed to get some gadgets. You know … everything from a speedometer, to a monitor for my pulse rate, to a device to read the incline of a hill. I had gauges on gauges. Then there was the music. My cycling expert friend told me, "You'll bike better if you listen to some hard rock." So I did—and all of a sudden I was a serious biker.

One day, lo and behold, I wrecked the bike. And I had to borrow a friend's bike—one with no gadgets on it at all. And for whatever reason, I didn't take any music with me on my ride. And I was surprised how much I enjoyed that ride. It was delightful, just delightful. I was riding for the pure joy of riding.

I've found in church work, that I can do that too. I can become so budget conscious, so numbers conscious, so growth conscious … I think I'm enjoying ministry more because I'm focusing on the "gauges" less. I'm more at peace.

Possible Preaching Angles: Performance; Grace—Of course this doesn't just apply to ministry. Sometimes in life we focus so much on the gauges of success (money, achievement, promotions, the approval of others, social media presence, etc.) that we lose sight of the joy of the Lord.

A New York Times article observes that Americans measure everything. It says, "In the last few years, there has been a revolution so profound that it's sometimes hard to miss its significance. We are awash in numbers. Data is everywhere. Old-fashioned things like words are in retreat; numbers are on the rise. … We've become the United States of Metrics." We are so overwhelmed with data that in some ways we have become our own worst enemies.

"Big Brother isn't our big enemy anymore. It's Big Self. That hovering eye in the sky watching every move you make: It's you." Anne Lamott warns that this personal obsession with data takes away " … everything great and exciting that someone like me would dare to call grace. … What this stuff steals is our aliveness."

Possible Preaching Angle:

What do you measure? Your sleep, your steps, your good works, your spirituality? What would happen if you stopped keeping track and lived a life unencumbered by numbers (a life under the Law), and instead lived under the radical grace of Jesus?

The idea that success is measuring up to someone else's standard is a lie. ... God needs a diversity of people.