Cloud By Day: Living With Ambiguity and Measuring Ministry

Last updated on: July 12, 2020 at 5:34 am by Erin Wathen

Cloud By Day: Living With Ambiguity and Measuring Ministry 2020-07-12T05:34:59-07:00 Erin Wathen

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In every generation, people of faith journey across the hazy plains of “What does this mean,” and “why are we here?” Right about the time one band of believers establishes a clear sense of purpose and identity for their time and place…well, they die. It is time for them to step aside and let the kids figure out what’s next, with nothing but “a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night” to guide them. And is that ever a painful hand-off, every single time.

We can wax poetic and nostalgic about why our numbers are dropping and WHERE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THE THINGS, ARE THE MILLENIALS??? But the truth is, the Church has always fought to maintain its relevance; and struggled, even more, to measure its success. We don’t get a daily or weekly list of tasks to check off of a spreadsheet (though we sure try to build our lives around those things anyway). Instead, we have a lifetime of vocational and existential hope, wrapped in a great cloud of ambiguity. And it is this strain of never really knowing that sends people out to the wilderness. It’s the #1 cause of clergy burn-out, and the most powerful force in driving people away from the church.

As the culture at large places more and more value on consumer-based systems and results-driven business models, the Church and its people lose the ability to sit with uncertainty; to trust that transformation is happening in the spaces between written reports and statistics; and to deeply value the relationships that form in the meantime.

Back in January, the new leaders at my church did an exercise to choose a focus word for the year: and the one we came up with was “engagement.” We committed that everything we do this year will move us towards equipping people to serve, providing opportunities to connect, and immersing ourselves in the community. But…now what?

More and more churches are committing to place less value on numbers (both in the pews and in the bank account) and focus, instead, on lives that are changed, needs that are met, and life-giving relationships nurtured in community. Simply taking that step to begin living by a different set of values can significantly transform a congregation and its ministry.

Still, it would be helpful to have some practical tools for accountability and effectiveness.

If you lead a church, and/or love a church, drop your weekly spreadsheet/task list and read this article: What to Measure If You’re Mission Driven. Here’s a brief passage:

For churches today, the common answer is that growth is the goal, and membership is the measure…Churches fixate on membership on the theory that members are donors. But that theory is at best half true. More important, it mostly ignores the question of what results the church is aiming to achieve…

The Episcopal Church officially reports that All Saints [large church in Pasadena] has about 8,000 members. Is that good? Would 9,000 be much better? All Saints Rector Ed Bacon…doesn’t believe those are the right questions. “Sure, we love to see big numbers,” Bacon told me. “But what really makes our hearts beat fast is transformed people transforming the world. Membership isn’t our business. Turning the human race into the human family is.

If that sounds like the “business” your church wants to get into, but you don’t know how to gauge your progress… this article could be a game-changer. It certainly doesn’t have all the answers. But it (along with the referenced resources) could start some conversations that will change the way your church does ministry. And that’s worth more than some numbers on the books, any day.

In the meantime, the principles outlined here apply to so much more than just ministry. What if businesses, communities—and even families– began weighing their effectiveness in terms of clearly stated mission, purpose and values? The world might change in ways we could scarcely quantify…

And you know, that pillar of cloud might know where it’s going, after all.

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