Interestingly, a continuous unfolding of movements focusing on strategy can be observed within U.S. churches during the past half century.  These were generated largely by the church’s efforts to respond to continuously changing contexts.  These movements, in focusing primarily on strategy, largely reflect a deep pragmatism within much of U.S. culture that tends to concentrate heavily on technique.  This focus has led generation after generation of church leaders to search for fresh approaches to help the church remain successful within a changing context.  These various strategies have typically focused on redefining the purpose/mission of the church as a way to get the church back on track in its mission and ministry.

Now, there is nothing inherently bad with identifying problems and proposing strategies to address them. That is a very essential act in any human organization.  But it does raise one important question for consciously Christian organizations (like churches):  On what foundation are we trusting to help us through our challenges? Is it possible for us, who live every day in a nation of passionate pragmatists, to rely too heavily on technique and strategy?  And, as United Methodists, who have inherited our founder’s adept organizational acumen, can our emphasis on organization mask the deep spiritual needs of the people in our communities, and our pews?  The strategies that we develop, necessary as they are, must be grounded deeply in our understanding of what it means for us to be the church in these rapidly changing contexts.  The Methodist movement in the 18^th century forced the Church of England to ask those deeper questions.  The intense and rapid changes taking place around us today demand that we do the same, and effective strategies are only part of the answer.  What do you think?

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Scripture also testifies to the importance of numbers.  After Pentecost, the early apostles celebrated when “day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47).  As Bishop Richard Wilke once said, “we count the things that are important to us.”  Numbers reveal the ways that God is working in our midst, giving us reason to celebrate.  And, they expose the difficult reality of our denomination’s “membership decline” (over forty years of it), and help us ask questions about what it means to be faithful to Christ in our present day and age.

Numbers are big in the corporate and government worlds as well.  I spent twenty years serving the federal government, the last five in positions of leadership and management, and “performance metrics” were the hot item.  Tangible numerical targets are one key way that organizations create motivation and momentum for change.

Because our Methodist history is so replete with “faithful counting,” it can be tempting for us to believe that the solution to our problems, particularly numerical membership decline (if it’s really a “problem” at all…), lies in ever more faithful record keeping and BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals) like “planting 250 faith communities in the next twenty years.”  Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for aggressive efforts in church planting, and setting audacious goals is great as long as we have an authentic commitment to meeting them.  Employing contemporary management techniques CAN be helpful, as long as we place those techniques in perspective and realize that what motivates God’s people in the end is not an increase in “numbers” (whatever those happen to be) but the sense of purpose and identity that comes from participating in God’s mission in the church and world.  And that requires a willingness of us to hear and enter the great Story that God is enacting in our midst, and a similar embrace of the power of the Spirit to bring about the change we seek (and perhaps the change we don’t seek!).  The Methodist movement began because the Spirit moved powerfully among people radically seeking God.  Numbers were put on paper only afterwards.

How to Kill a Movement

1. Require education for the leadership
2. Demand conformity of methodology
3. Refuse to provide administrative help and let it suffocate under it’s own weight
4. Get spooked by supernatural phenomena outside your paradigm
5. Make no room for younger, less experienced leadership
6. Be obsessed by theological purity
7. Put the safety of the people involved as a higher priority than sacrifice
8. Centralize the funding
9. Punish out-of-the box thinking
10. Manage it by goals and strategic plans
11. Reward faithfulness rather than entrepreneurial ability
12. Get tied to property and buildings
13. Let your critics define you
14. Be threatened by giftedness that’s not like you
15. Create an endowment
16. Treat creativity as heresy
17. Refuse to exercise discipline for the right things
18. Make sure you are related to existing institutions for credibility
19. Promote on the basis of seniority and longevity
20. Insist that decisions be based on policy instead of values
21. Make nurture and conservation of gains a focus
22. Don’t be intentional about leadership selection
23. Be risk adverse under the guise of stewarding your people
24. Justify your reluctance to raise money
25. Have a big need for approval and affirmation

Above all else, control it if, God forbid, he actually shows up!