Wait, So How Do You Know It's Working?

A new measure of success for a non-traditional, grassroots, we promise we aren't a cult, church plant

We have had 0 baptisms.

0 “converts.”

Our financial giving is inconsistent.

Our typical gathering size ranges from 10-20 folks and those numbers have remained about the same for well over a year.

By most standard metrics of success, our church is a total and utter failure.

But to me, the true failure of any church would be to believe that such metrics are a good or even worthwhile measurement of a community’s faithfulness, Christlikeness, or overall spiritual health and development.

Much like most of our systems, protocols, and rhythms used in traditional church models, our metrics of success are often out-of-step with and inconsiderate of the way genuine spiritual formation takes place. They are inconsistent with how, even biblically speaking, we are told true fruit and Christlikeness is reflected. They uphold the fallacy that character, spiritual health, personal growth, and change are all things that can be quantitatively measured.

But one’s character cannot be appropriately assessed from a stage. One’s spiritual health cannot be confirmed by a public dunk into water. One’s ability to heal, grow, and change, should not be primarily measured by their weekly ability to show up to a worship gathering nor their willingness to tithe to a religious organization.

The truth is that such realities can only really be measured by proximity, by closeness, by the messy and nitty gritty realities of everyday life. They are measured Monday-Saturday, during park play-dates and coffee shop coworking. They are measured in the midst of conflict that can’t be avoided until several Sundays from now or by simply switching to a different volunteer team. They are measured by conversations that will last longer than a worship set and by moments of honesty and clarity that need longer than a clergy-led homily to ponder.

And whether by choice or by the force of church structures we have deemed as normative, many church leaders are simply unable to experience the genuine consistency, closeness, and nearness that this true measure of health requires. So instead, leaders are often taught to depend on detached numerical values that can project some semblance of momentum or growth. “Toward what?” is a question rarely asked by such leaders.

So as a church leader hell bent on separating herself and her community from these assumed and often unhelpful patterns of church, how have I come to measure “success?”

I measure it in moments.

I measured it in the moment Taylor told us she started praying.

I measured it in the moment Genevieve explained why our community helped her to tangibly understand the importance of diversity in how we think about God.

I measured it in the moment Jenai said it was the first time she took communion in years.

I measured it in the moment Linnea said her body felt safe in our midst.

I measured it in the moment I saw Maggie beam about the Holy Spirit again.

I measure it everytime one of our members takes ownership and responsibility over this community we are forming together.

I measure it everytime one of our members leads us in a practice in a way that is so uniquely “them.”

I measure it everytime we do something silly, inappropriate, and still altogether holy knowing it would be frowned upon by most religious institutions.

I measure it in moments like these:

a holy moment made holier by her seeing this moment as such

These two had always believed involvement in politics didn’t really matter. “It was all bad, what’s the point?” It’s still all bad but these faithful folks finally found a point.

Coming from one of our first time voters. She voted AND THEN SOME.

A talk on decolonizing our faith led by one of our most “witchy” women, being admired by a woman who came out of as white and as conservative church spaces as I did.

no caption necessary.

All of us are in our late 20s-mid 30s and this was the first time most of us ever had a church “sex talk” that included both men and women discussing the topic together.

Just a very holy and affirming, late night stream of consciousness

These are the moments that let me know whatever we are doing, it’s working. We are consistently forming, changing, and growing in the way we think about God, the church, and how such thinking should impact the world around us. And best of all, we are getting to do that together, close enough that we can see the fruit of such labor embedded into the daily moments, texts, and screenshots of our lives.

If that isn’t a successful church, then call me a secular theist. Cause this is the only version of Christ I ever want to know.