Laziness in maintaining the flock
Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2017 1:39 pm
As a pastor in a large denomination (but with a small congregation), I see how the church tends to focus on numbers. I have to report each year how many baptisms, confirmations, members gained/lost, etc. all to my bishop's office. All this info is then compiled and made public on the national denominations website.
A dangerous trend I see though is that many church leaders are becoming weary with doing this...and so the numbers end up not being accurate. I see it as an issue of laziness, on top of measuring their "success" as a pastor by the numbers. I currently serve a congregation that when I interviewed, was told had 200+ members and an average worship attendance of 100. It took all of 2 weeks to realize those numbers were greatly inflated. My predecessor had kept many individuals on the role, even though they had moved to other congregations, towns, states, or even just stopped coming. This made me very confused about who was a part of the flock that i had been called to shepherd.
A year after I began, I began to clean the roles of the church. Council was supposed to do this on a yearly basis (per the constitution) but never did. For some reason, they enjoyed the reputation of being the "big, downtown church" that they were not. After a process that took several months, we finished. We found out that some of our "members" were attending other churches, and had been for close to 20 years! We found some that had passed away, moved to other states, etc. But we also had some that returned to being active members of the congregation.
Now, we are thriving. And some of those that were lost have become leaders in the congregation. We now review the roles every year, and we shun the laziness of the past. It has taken 5 years, but the congregation is now living into its identity, rejoicing when the lost is found, and celebrating when a new member is received into the body of Christ.
A dangerous trend I see though is that many church leaders are becoming weary with doing this...and so the numbers end up not being accurate. I see it as an issue of laziness, on top of measuring their "success" as a pastor by the numbers. I currently serve a congregation that when I interviewed, was told had 200+ members and an average worship attendance of 100. It took all of 2 weeks to realize those numbers were greatly inflated. My predecessor had kept many individuals on the role, even though they had moved to other congregations, towns, states, or even just stopped coming. This made me very confused about who was a part of the flock that i had been called to shepherd.
A year after I began, I began to clean the roles of the church. Council was supposed to do this on a yearly basis (per the constitution) but never did. For some reason, they enjoyed the reputation of being the "big, downtown church" that they were not. After a process that took several months, we finished. We found out that some of our "members" were attending other churches, and had been for close to 20 years! We found some that had passed away, moved to other states, etc. But we also had some that returned to being active members of the congregation.
Now, we are thriving. And some of those that were lost have become leaders in the congregation. We now review the roles every year, and we shun the laziness of the past. It has taken 5 years, but the congregation is now living into its identity, rejoicing when the lost is found, and celebrating when a new member is received into the body of Christ.