Ridgell's Originals

 Numbers are tricky things for churches.  I know that numbers (attendance, baptisms, membership, budget, giving, etc) do give a snapshot of how things are going, especially if comparisons are made over time.  You can see trends -- good or bad -- developing.  

Numbers are used in the Bible (and not just the Old Testament book).  3000 baptisms on Pentecost.  The Jerusalem church had 5000 even only counting the men.  Jesus fed 5000.  Maybe with those kind of results I would report numbers also.

And I don't know the numbers, but I do know when Jesus taught the "hard" truths, people starting leaving.  I know that there was a "budget" discussion about how to feed the multitudes.  These seem to indicate that numbers can be misleading.

Preachers are hired and fired based on numbers.  Attendance going up or down.  How many baptisms.  Numbers may reflect growth.  Or they may reflect swell.  Your congregation grew by 300.  Wow.  New converts?  No -- just people who left the three congregations close to us.  So one church grew and three shrunk.  And the Kingdom numbers did not change at all.  So are the three that lost members doing something wrong?  Is the church that gained members doing something right?

The whole idea of membership numbers seems a little problematic.  That is not a concept in Scripture.  And membership rolls probably do not really line up with God's membership rolls.  I have many occassions when someone said they were members where I was an elder and I had never heard of them.  Are they really members when they don't attend, give, or participate?

I do think baptism numbers have some validity, but I even wonder about those.  Baptized 20 last year.  Great.  Except that 18 of them where children of members.  Still exciting and important but probably not indicative of evangelism efforts.  

And I am not sure baptism should be the number that matters.  After all, we cannot control the results.  That is God's business to give the increase.  Maybe number of people studied with, witnessed to, or invited to worship would be a better thing to know.  

But I do think a lack of "end result" baptisms does say something about the importance a church places on reaching lost people.  

So these were a few of my random thoughts about numbers.  

Just be careful that counting does not become the most important thing your church does.   

# posted by Steve @ 5:00 AM