Is Your Scorecard Advancing Your Kingdom or God’s?

Bill Easum shares five questions to help you evaluate and transform your church's value system

October 17, 2016

Part of becoming a Level 5 multiplying church is changing your scorecard of success and developing new values that advance God’s Kingdom, not your own. In this post, author and leadership coach Bill Easum shares a new scorecard for churches that want to follow in the ways of the Antioch church.

Scorecards are valuable in any game because they tell you whether or not you’re winning. If it’s important to know if you’re winning in a game, how much more important is it to know if you are “winning” as a church? It eternally matters!

I’m one of those people who believe that if you don’t measure it, you don’t value it. So what we measure has eternal consequences.

If attendance and giving are the only values on your scorecard, then you’re measuring and advancing your kingdom, not God’s Kingdom.

Now I can hear some of my colleagues say, “I’m not going to play the numbers game. All that matters is that I’m faithful. I’m not responsible for the results.” The problem with this response is that it isn’t a faithful one. We can’t just live a good life, lead worship services, and count that as faithfulness. But a lot of people do.

The Old Scorecard

Truth be told, most of us have a scorecard whether or not we like to admit it. When I’m consulting with churches or coaching leaders, the scorecard I run into most often is:

  • How many people do we have in worship?
  • Did we meet our budget?

Both of these measurements are important. However if attendance and giving are the only values on your scorecard, then you’re measuring and advancing your kingdom, not God’s Kingdom.

So let me suggest a new scorecard, keeping in mind that you should be measuring attendance and giving. But these should be secondary measurements.

The New Scorecard

The ultimate measurement is: Are we fulfilling the last will and testament of Jesus– “Go therefore and make disciples” (Matt. 28:19).

So what would your church’s scorecard based on Jesus’ command look like?

  • How many new disciples do we have this year? Discipleship always begins here. You must have a clearly defined definition of what a disciple is. You might want to check out discipleship.org to help you in that process.
  • How many people are we apprenticing? In most cases mentoring is a one-on-one experience.
  • How many of our people are we sending out to connect with lost people? What you’re sending them out to do should result in four things: (1) blessing those being served; (2) blessing those serving; (3) more people learn about the opportunity to be part of the church; and (4) the Kingdom of God advances.
  • How many churches are we producing each year? The Book of Acts shows us a pattern of church planting. Is your church like Jerusalem whose scorecard was number of Jewish people? The Jerusalem church stayed in their holy huddles, merely taking care of themselves to the point that Paul had to raise money to keep the church afloat. Or do you want to be like Antioch that sent church-planter missionaries out to the far corners of the world, spreading the gospel and making disciples, advancing the Kingdom? (See my blog post on Jerusalem vs Antioch.)
  • Have we planted a church? If so, how many of our plants have reproduced within three years? The multiplication of churches is the best way to fulfill the part of Jesus’s last will and testament that says, “Go make disciples of all nations.

We are living in the midst of the third largest church-planting movement in history. Only in recent years has the annual number of new churches in the United States outpaced the annual number of churches closing their doors. The problem is that too few churches are actively sponsoring a new church plant. Less than one percent of U.S. churches are Level 5 multiplying churches. How can we change the scorecard and identify new values for our churches that grow and advance God’s Kingdom?

Question: How has your church made use of scorecards like these? How might you change them to fit a new, multiplying vision?

Bill Easum has a 30-year track record of growing congregations in two denominations. His last church, which he re-started and pastored for 24 years, grew to be one of the largest United Methodist Churches in South Texas. Since 1987 Bill has devoted his time to consulting, coaching, and speaking. Bill is the founder and president of The Effective Church Group and is the author of multiple books. 

Bill Easum

Bill Easum

Bill Easum has a 30-year track record of growing congregations in two denominations. His last church, which he pastored for 24 years, grew to become the largest United Methodist Church in South Texas. Bill is the recipient of the prestigious Donald McGavran award for outstanding church leadership. Over the past 20 years, Bill has served as a consultant to congregations and denominations. He is the author of numerous best-selling books such as Church Growth HandbookHow to Reach Baby BoomersDancing With DinosaursSacred Cows Make Gourmet BurgersBeyond the Box and many more. His latest book is Effective Staffing for Vital Churches: The Essential Guide to Finding and Keeping the Right People.
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