Our friend Ed Stetzer and the good folks at Lifeway Research have just release the results of a study that gives objective support to the concepts we’ve been discussing in the “measuring missional movement” posts. Their bottom line conclusion is that evangelism must move outside the sanctuary and be focused on the intentional building of relationships. Exactly…

So we’re thinking about the challenge of measuring “missional” movement without using unreliable metrics like noses and nickels (see the previous posts on measuring missional movement if you don’t understand what I just wrote). In the last post, I suggested at least 4 tangible activities that might be valid indicators of missional progress. They were:

1. The number of Relational Connections
2. The number of Conversations
3. The number Prayer pauses
4. The number healthy Community Connections

My friend, Daniel Serdahl from New Life in the Seattle Metro area sent the list out to his friends for reaction and feedback. One of his friends, Jon Needham (pastor at Corem Deo Church, also in Washington) who I’ve never met but I like how he thinks, suggested at least one more really good tangible measure of missional movement.

Here’s what he wrote… “right off the top my head, I would say reproduction of organic/indigenous leaders. By that I mean people who were not believers who are now leading others within the body on the mission. That is the sign in my opinion because its the fruit of transformation.”

I agree with Jon, so let’s add another metric to the list…

5. the number of organic/indigenous leaders who have journeyed from being far from God to intentionally helping others know Him.

So we might be making forward missional movement if we are connecting relationally, having conversations, pausing to pray, connecting in the greater community and reproducing leaders. But how much of all this is necessary to be vigorously engaged in mission with Jesus. What sorts of goals should be set? Should we even set goals at all, or just do stuff and hope for the best?

It might be helpful to frame this discussion by thinking about funnels. As I’m sure you are aware, funnels are used to help direct a large volume of some substance into a small opening…typically to pour liquid into a bottle.

The concept of a funnel is also used to help sales people think about the kind of activity they need to engage in to result in increased sales. A large volume of sales calls are necessary to result in a good pace of sales. So, for example, a salesperson might make a thousand relational contacts in order to make 10 sales. If a salesperson only makes 10 relational contacts hoping to make 10 sales, he or she will most likely be very disappointed. So, knowing that a large volume of relational contacts is the foundation of the opportunity to make a sale, a good salesperson will divvy up their time accordingly. The best salespersons are ALWAYS relationally connecting, so it is possible that they are spending 60% or more of their time just relationally connecting to people. So if the width of the funnel represents time spent in an activity, then the large open end of the funnel represents the large number of relational connections and the small opening represents the number of sales.

Let’s apply this thinking to the process of starting and being a local church. The church most of us grew up in looked like the picture of the funnel on the left. The point of entry to the life of the church was relatively narrow. We expected those who joined the church to enter through a singular path…first, we needed to get them to come to a meeting at the building. Then, they needed to listen to the preaching of the Word. Then, they needed to respond to an invitation to walk to the front of the church in front of everyone, confess their sins to God and ask Jesus to come into their heart. Finally, they needed to pray a “sinners prayer” and be baptized in water. Then, they could be considered part of the church family. Once they had passed through that narrow opening, many discipleship options were open to them. A variety of classes and courses on Christian maturity. At least three large group meetings a week were available to help them grow in their relationship with Jesus. So if we represent all this activity with the metaphor of the funnel, the typical church had very little intentional activity directed toward people who were far from God and quite a bit of activity directed toward those who were in the family. As a result, the energy and efforts of the church turned in on itself. Church members were all so busy taking care of the ministries directed toward church members that they had little or no time left over for connecting with lost people.

So the typical existing church is missionally challenged because their way of being the church has the small end of the funnel facing toward the harvest. Modern church planting strategies have attempted to fix this problem with mass marketing techniques. They attempt to open up the small end of the funnel by artificially connecting with a lot of people to attract them to the small end of the funnel so they can ultimately end up living life in the wide end of busy church life. Many new church plants have quickly added a lot of “discipleship” programs for people to be involved in. And in the end, the people who are are helped to move from death to life end up spending the majority of their time involved in a hectic weekly schedule of church meetings that isolate them from the harvest.

Once again, we simply can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. I’m seeing a new kind of church emerge both in the new ones that are being planted and the existing ones that are re-evaluating how they are on mission with Jesus. The missional churches appear to have turned the funnel around and faced the large end of the funnel toward the harvest. They understand that if they want to “make a lot of sales” they need to make a lot of relational connections. The larger the volume of relational connections, the greater the number of organic/indigenous leaders. So these churches are intentionally finding a diversity of intentional ways to connect with people in their communities. After school programs, civic organizations, ESL classes, community youth centers, etc. The weekly schedules of these churches have been modified to empower people to give time to pursuing relational connections with people in their community. The equation might look something like this: 10,000 conversations fortified with 5,000 prayer pauses might lead to 1000 relational connections which might yield 10 organic/indigenous leaders. I have no idea if those numbers are the right ratio’s but the principle is that if we can identify the activities that create an environment from which organic/indigenous leaders can emerge, then we can set goals for the frequency and quality of those activities.

I’ve been getting a lot of “off-line” feedback on this series of blogs and I’d love for that to continue. This particular post represents me just thinking out loud. What am I missing? Where am I right? Where have I lost my mind? Let me know what you think, but let’s try to identify some missional metrics that matter! Knowing how to measure what matters, will help us know how to celebrate what matters. And what we celebrate gets done!

I’m at 37,000 feet (the shot on the left is the skyline of Chicago as we were taking off from O’hare) on my way back from Christian Life Fellowship in Port Edwards and Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. Pastor’s Dean Anderson(lead pastor, pictured with me on the right) and Paul Liebherr (Rapids campus pastor, pictured with me and his wife Dawn on the right) along with their excellent staff and team (Many thanks to Pastor Steve Peschke (that’s Steve and Steve on the left) for your excellent ministry of chauffeuring me around…) did a great job of hosting me as well as trying to kill me. I’m not making that up! Let me “splain” it to you. About 6 months ago they launched a new satellite campus in Wisconsin Rapids (that’s a shot of the platform at the satellite on the left), a town of about 18,000 inhabitants right across the Wisconsin River from their community of Port Edwards (population 1800 or so). Their plan was and has continued to be to record Pastor Dean’s message on Saturday night at the Port Edwards main campus (that’s a shot of the platform from the main campus on the right) and then show it to the folks at the satellite location on Sunday morning, while Dean simultaneously led 2 more live services at the main campus. It’s been working great, but they’ve been concerned that the people at the video campus lack a personal connection with Dean. So they’ve been wondering if would be possible for Dean to do all four services live once in a while. They decided to let me be the guinea pig to see how it would work…sort of like in olden days when the food taster for the king would eat the food first and if he didn’t die, then the king would go ahead and enjoy the meal! I think the real reason they chose me as the test case was because they found out that I had previously lived near Chicago during the “glory days” of the Bears (when they won the only Super Bowl that ever really mattered!) and since all these wonderful “cheeseheads” are ravenous Packers fans they decided to see if the Bears fan could do all four services and live.

Well, I’m happy to say that I not only lived, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. This is a wonderfully solid and quietly amazing church that nobody has ever heard of toiling away in a rather remote corner of the world, faithfully serving Jesus on His mission. The Rapids campus was a big step for them to take, but, feeling compelled by the need connect with those who were far from God in the Rapids, they took a big risk. As you can see from the picture, the satellite looks very different from the parent church. They understand they’ve got to connect with different people in different ways. Interesting. An effective ministry strategy in Port Edwards is not necessarily an effective approach just a few miles away in Wisconsin Rapids. And, judging from the wonderful gathering of folks who met together at the Rapids campus, something really good is going on in this part of Central Wisconsin. I hope other folks in “rural” settings can glean ideas and inspiration from these trailblazing friends.

Once again, I come away encouraged and hopeful. This church is doing an extraordinary job of bringing together a life giving community of believers who are making a difference in a part of the country that is by definition “rural.” It feels like a fresh wind of the Spirit is blowing. Come Holy Spirit…..