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July 31, 2008
Giving and the Church Member Experience, Law #5
Law #5 is Church members (just like the rest of us) do what is measured, incented, and celebrated.
The hard part about this one is that church leaders are not naturally wired to quantify the ministry impact they are having. Church leaders are visionaries and dreamers. We are people who are much more comfortable with our rhetoric than our calculators.
(The exception to this is the emerging role of the Church Business Administrator or Executive Pastor roles that are being filled by business professionals gifted in the areas of accounting, human resources, administration and business management. I personally think this is a good thing and should be viewed as a complement to the other ministry staff of the local church.)
Even though quanitfying ministry impact or ministry results is not natural, it doesn't absolve church leadership from producing these results for the membership. After all, it's the people in the pew who put the dollars in the plate. They have a right and should have the final say in how the money of the church is being used.
Our para-church and secular non-profit leaders are doing a much better job at proving the effectiveness of every dollar contributed to their organization than the church. We need to step it up and be prepared to defend why the church is the best place to invest in Kingdom building activites.
After the work has been done and the results are in, it's easy to celebrate the success and reflect on the failures. Measuring results, incenting performance and celebrating the successes emphasizes action rather than talk. And there if there is one thing the Church could benefit from it's more action and less talk.
Bottom line, the people in the pew are evaluated based on their performance in their own lives and they expect the same accountability to be extended to the Church.
People will give more consistently and in greater amounts when they understand how their money is being used and the see the results of the ministry their dollars fund.
Previous posts in this series:
Giving and the Church Member Experience, Introduction
Giving and the Church Member Experience, Law #1
Giving and the Church Member Experience, Law #2
Giving and the Church Member Experience, Law #3
Giving and the Church Member Experience, Law #4
Posted by bstroup at July 31, 2008 9:23 AM
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