Measuring success: quantity vs quality
How to measure the success of a church planting endeavor?
Is it in the number of church members, or in the quality of their discipleship?
On the one hand, it seems to do little good for people to sit in chairs if they are not applying what they are hearing. “Sunday saints, Monday sinners” are not the goal.
On the other hand, churches that measure success only by the “spiritual maturity” of their members with no reference to the number of people added to the church, will have problems of their own.
Note that in the book of Acts, the numbers of believers and the fact that “The Lord added to their number daily” were both recorded as important.
Obviously, we want people to become spiritually mature. This is a need pointed out by Paul many times.
But we also want to reach all the people in a given area. It does no good to bring 100 to spiritual maturity and leave 100,000 to an eternal hell.
The answer is: both must be measured.
Roundup
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