Article

6 Questions Around Your Church Plant’s Numbers

Dan Steel

Planter, know that numbers can be problematic—not so much the numbers themselves but more our hearts’ relationships with those numbers.

Appropriate church planting metrics are a thorny topic that many of us struggle with. How do you know if it’s going well? How can you tell? Is it simply a matter of counting? And if so, what do we count? Attendees, baptisms, staff members, compliments, giving, more churches planted, or something else?

Clearly, numbers do matter because every baptism is a reminder of new life, and every person counted is a precious soul loved by the Lord. But planter, know that numbers can be problematic—not so much the numbers themselves but more our hearts’ relationships with those numbers. On this side of the New Heavens and the New Earth, we will continue to have a fleshly tendency toward external validation. We struggle with seeking justification in things other than Christ. For many, that may be the size of a house, a salary, or the kind of holiday we can afford to take our family on. For those in ministry, we are not immune—we can easily drift into a functional justification based on performance. And so, far too easily, numbers start to matter too much to us.

Here are six evidences that numbers might matter too much to you. Be honest as you read and reflect on the pictures painted below:

1. Do you have a rollercoaster identity?
   You almost ran out of chairs on a very busy Sunday with loads of new faces—and you’re buzzing for the next few days. But six months later, it’s a holiday weekend, the room is half-full with a smattering of folk still in town, and you realize the usual spring in your step seems to have disappeared. How we feel about ourselves can be too closely tied to the numbers that matter to us. We can be fragile because our sense of self is built upon something unstable—whether that be attendance or the number of people who say nice things after our sermon.
2. Do you have a propensity to overwork?
   Church planting is busy, and in certain seasons, we will need to serve significant hours. It’s a profitable thing to ask why we work so much. Constant activity and an inability to find a rhythm of rest and retreat while always seeking to do more may indicate we’re working too hard because of that rollercoaster identity. When our worth—how we feel about ourselves—is tied to the success of the plant (and the numbers we count), we will struggle to switch off and slow down.
3. Do you have a tendency to compare?
   You’ve found your church-planting cohort to be a huge encouragement. You enjoy meeting with guys in the same boat who completely understand your struggles and your joys. Except for Bob. If you’re honest, Bob is not encouraging because “Christ Church Somewhere” has grown a lot. And, of course, you rejoice in their consistent news of baptisms, the size of their staff team, and the number of plants they seem to be churning out. But “your” plant feels overshadowed and unimpressive. And if you’re really being honest, you feel the same.
4. Are you playing to the crowd?
   When numbers matter too much, the fear of man—the craving to be liked or the fear of being disliked—manifests. When this happens, you know that if you do or say certain things, people will be more likely to stay (or less likely to leave), and so you play to the crowd. Because crowds are full of people, and people are numbers, and that’s where you find your identity. And this may lead you to avoid necessary conversations you need to have because you know that if you do, that family may head elsewhere. The love of numbers may lead you to soften your sermons and edit the truth of God’s Word, all because you love a crowd.
5. Do you have a healthy devotional life?
   Here’s a surprising reality: Even if we are driven by numbers, why doesn’t it drive us to our knees in greater dependence upon the Lord? If we long for a bigger church, even with our impure motives, why don’t we pray for it? The reality is that when external things (like numbers) drive our hearts, we drift toward external things as the answer. And so our devotional life with the Lord suffers. Perhaps prayer is limited or perfunctory. Perhaps worship feels like going through the motions. The obsession with numbers can cloud communion with the Lord.
6. Are you reluctant to train others?
   We might assume that those who care too much about numbers would also be committed to equipping and training others to achieve the desired growth or targets. Sometimes that’s the case, but we often don’t want to raise others up because we don’t trust them to do the work as well, and so we end up overworked and isolated. When a planter is playing the numbers game, he doesn’t want anyone else to “win.”

And so what?

Foundationally, it seems to me to be a matter of where we find our functional justification. If we know—in Christ—that we are totally, robustly loved and accepted, and that knowledge of that love is not simply theoretical but functional, we will be far less likely to find ourselves drawn to and finding our worth in external factors. And so, we’ll be less likely to be up and down Sunday by Sunday, or overbusy, or conflict-avoiding. Instead, we’ll be more likely to pray, rest, train others, and genuinely enjoy the success of others.