Last week, Otto Wegner stopped by my office and gave me a piece of his mind. It was good. Otto is a legendary missional church planter. He’s personally planted 12 churches and helped start numerous others. And he’s planted in very challenging contexts…mostly urban, often economically depressed. He’s the real deal. He plants churches that approach ministry holistically…cultivating health for the whole person- body, soul and spirit.

Yet he’s relatively unknown. One reason for his anonymity could be that he is not a self promoter. He’s definitely not interested in selling a bunch of books or DVD’s or creating a fan club. He’s just not about that stuff. But I think the biggest reason he is unknown is that he doesn’t have enough people showing up to hear him preach on Sunday’s. And so, we don’t care to hear how he’s “done it” because what he’s done is not what we dream about doing. Thus he’s unknown…

This reality reveals a root problem with how we think about ministry effectiveness. Let’s be honest. We do measure how effective a ministry leader is by how many people sit in a pew and listen to him/her preach on Sunday. Think about it… what conference/council/meeting have you been to in the last 10 years where the featured speaker led a church with fewer than a thousand sitting in the pews/comfortable padded seats on Sunday morning?

I have a friend who was seated next to Ted Haggard (pre-moral failure) at a meeting where Ted had been the featured speaker and had made a statement that if your church is reaching 1% of your community then it is a mega-church. My friend asked Ted a really good question… what do you call your church if it is reaching 12% of its community? Ted was immediately interested. “Is there such a church?” he asked. My friend responded, “I’m pastoring in a community of 1000 and 120 people attend our services each Sunday!” Ted laughed…”Oh, that’s different!” he replied.

Different? Really? I don’t think so. I would contend that raw numbers are not as relevant for measuring missional impact as personal and community transformation. “How is the Kingdom of God impacting the actual quality of spiritual and temporal life in a given community?” is a far more relevant question than how many people are showing up to hear me preach on Sunday!

Too often, our fascination with big large crowds, numbers and really good fog and light shows causes us to overlook the most important evidences of the Kingdom of God showing up in power. We rush off to conferences that promise to help us put more bodies in the pews and run right past the thousands of unsung heroes like Otto Wegner slugging away in tough places that are being transformed by the power of God.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not advocating the idea that the only effective churches are small. I’m simply saying that effective churches are transformational and that their communities would know it if they closed their doors. Transformation can be catalyzed by churches big and small. I’ve been to churches with thousands of attendees whose only visible impact on the community was creating traffic jams on Sundays. I’ve also been to churches with a handful of attendees who were making God’s power known in tangible and significant ways. In a way, size doesn’t matter as much as impact!

We’ve got to figure out how to measure and celebrate transformation. It’s not as simple as counting noses. But I think it will help us aspire to do the right things for the right reasons.

Jay Covert is a US Missionary multiplier in East St. Louis, Illinois. Three years ago, Jay arrived in East St. Louis with a lot of faith and little else. East St. Louis is a challenging place and most observers didn’t have much hope that Jay could be successful. This morning I received the following note from Jay.

“Hey UO Pastoral Friends,

We planted the UO Church in East Saint Louis on July 9, 2006 in a small one room store front building. For 2 years we averaged upper 30’s to mid 40’s in attendance then we were given the task and challenge to renovate and revitalize the Washington Park Church and replant a new work there all the while renovate an abandon building in ESL for our 3rd sanctuary expansion.

I had no reservation on launching the second work, I have been looking forward to this for a long time expecting for a great harvest but if today is an indication of what happens when a small church installs, releases and mothers a daughter church plant then wow!!! In just two shorts weeks we have grown triple in numbers then meeting on Sunday mornings 116 weeks in one place!

Pastor Tommy Smith @ Washington Park had 48 folks in service today, today we moved into our new sanctuary in East Saint Louis and it was pretty much a normal service BUT we had 69 folks in attendance. Praise God! We grew almost triple with 117 folks in attendance in two locations verses holding on to folks in just one location.

God is awesome and we believe the increase and harvest in these two cities is being released. Church Planting is vital if we are going to reach and change our communities all across Illinois. If a small inner city church in a very poverished city can do it then just think what your church can do with the resources God has given you………….”

Thanks for sharing this great news Jay! It proves once again that God is bigger than any challenge we face. I heard a great illustration the other day. A scarecrow indicates the presence of much fruit. Jay ignored the “scarecrow” and is finding a lot of fruit. America has thousands of harvest fields guarded by “scarecrows” of crime, poverty and economic challenge. It’s time for us to run past the “scarecrows” to the harvest. That’s where we’ll find Jesus.

Conventional wisdom says that the best way to do ministry is to do it in the most “efficient” way possible.

Ministry leaders who make decisions with “efficiency” as their guiding value often choose to add another service over starting a new church because they view it as good stewardship. Their reasoning goes something like this: why would we invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to start a new church when we can make room for hundreds of more people simply by adding another service? The cost of a second service is minimal and the outcome is that more people are being ministered to.

It’s truly difficult to argue with logic like that IF “efficiency” is a Kingdom value.

But I have a hard time finding evidence that “efficiency” is a Kingdom value. On the contrary, I find reams of evidence to support the idea that “obedience” is the Kingdom value that should guide our decision making processes about what to do next. It’s not the “efficient” thing that God is calling us toward…it’s the path of “obedience” that must be our guide.

So much of what God does on our behalf is anything but “efficient.” God’s acts toward us, when viewed through the filter of “efficiency” could be described as “extravagant” and even “wasteful.”  Choosing powerless Israel as the ethnic group through which He would make known the Messiah was not the most efficient path. Efficiency might have chosen the Emperors court as the most expedient way to make God’s glory known. Starting His Church with a band of common men of mostly lower social status was not a decision guided by the value of “efficiency.” An “efficiency” consultant would have predicted nothing but failure if Jesus had submitted his strategic plan for His Church to the scrutiny of an efficiency audit. 

It is important to identify the source of our values and give them the appropriate priority. “Efficiency” is clearly an American value, but I’m not sure it’s a Kingdom value. It’s not evil or wrong and certainly should be part of our consideration when we formulate our actions steps. But the dominant Kingdom value is “obedience.” To paraphrase Jesus, “If you love me, you’ll do what I say.”  Sometimes, and maybe even most times, what He tells us to do, does not appear to be the most “efficient” way forward.

The application to multiplying the church is that perhaps as we consider our options for reaching lost people, we should start with the value of obedience as our guide and the let efficiency be a consideration instead of a guiding value. God’s call to reach lost people might mean starting another location instead of another service in the same space. It might mean leaving a lucrative position that is financially secure to serve in a servant role to the poor and overlooked. It might mean giving time or finances to a ministry just because God is directing you to do so, not because it will give you the most bang for your buck.

I wonder if part of the reason for the current crisis of the American church is that we have let the American value of “efficiency” guide our decisions about how to be the church. Instead of looking for the most efficient way to get people in the seats, maybe it’s time for us to lead from the simplicity of “trust and obey.”