Clarifying the Win

Andy Stanley writes in 7 Practices of Effective ministry, "The church should be more determined than any other kind of organization to 'clarify the win' simply because the stakes are so much higher: Eternity hangs in the balance."

Keeping score is so important today. We talk about the score of the Steelers game. We talk about how many yards Jerome Bettis rushed for, Hines Ward received, and Big Ben threw for in yesterday's game. The same is true in today's church. Pastors have a scorecard that we keep on each other. It looks something like this: How many members do you have? How many people in worship on a weekend? How many kids and youth do you have? What is the size of your budget? What is the size of your campus? We measure so many things - so many of the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

How can we possibly succeed if we are measuring the wrong things? So if the things on the typical scorecard are wrong, then what should we be measuring?

I was always taught that the things you measure are the things that get done. If I can define for someone what they have to do to succeed they can better evaluate themselves and I can better help them to achieve those results. However, we try to complicate things, we actually dilute what we are doing to the point that we don't know what we are supposed to be doing. Every time we do that in the church, we lose people.

We need to define who it is we are trying to serve. We should be unapologetic about who we are serving and why we are serving them - that's focus. Then we can get out of the way of the leaders and let them serve those specifically defined people in creative ways. Then we will see lives changed, that's the business that we are in.