What Pastors & Laity Say We Should Measure and Why by Richard Houseal Research Center, Church of the Nazarene Global Ministry Center presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Nazarene Sociologists and Researchers April 1, 2011 Lenexa, Kansas
What Pastors & Laity Say We Should Measure and Why In the book of Revelation chapters 2 and 3, the Apostle John records God s assessment of 7 churches. The church in Ephesus gets good marks for hard work, perseverance, intolerance of wicked people, and rightly discerning those who are false apostles. They are also praised for [hating] the practices of the Nicolaitans, but they receive a poor mark for having forsaken the love [they] had at first. And so it goes Smyrna is praised for their afflictions and poverty. Pergamum is praised for remaining true to God, but criticized because some still hold to the teachings of Balaam and the Nicolaitans. Thyatira is commended for their deeds, love and faith, but criticized for tolerating Jezebel. Sardis only has a few people who have not soiled their clothes, but most are evaluated as being dead. The church in Philadelphia has kept God s command to endure patiently. Interestingly, the church in Laodicea has done a poor job in assessing itself. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm neither hot nor cold I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing. But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. (Revelation 3:15-17 NIV) If these assessments are valid and I m going to assume they are given that they generally start with a phrase something like, These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again then we might reasonably conclude a few things about assessing local churches: Assessments are beneficial to local church identity, ministry, and seeking the will of God. Assessments will often include both positive and negative aspects. God expects some level of local church self-assessment given the fact that God himself has set the example. Of course, the big difference between the above assessments by God, and our ability to assess our local churches, is that God has all the information needed for a completely accurate assessment, while our knowledge and resources are limited. But given our
limitations, what should we measure or know in order to assess our local churches as accurately as possible. Our single best source of information for all our churches comes from the Annual Pastor s Report (APR). Until last year the USA/Canada Region APR asked for a lot more information than the APR form used in other world areas. The 2010 APR was a single form used on all Nazarene regions. While this will improve the comparability of our statistics across regions, this improvement comes at the price of a lot of lost information for the USA/Canada Region. For example, we used to include the following in the Nurture section of our Nazarene Composite Index but these items are no longer collected: The number of officers and teachers The number of pastoral calls made The number of locally licensed ministers The number of college age students attending a Nazarene college Also gone are such items as: The number of staff The pastors salary, housing, and benefits The number of revival campaigns The number of Holiness Today subscribers Enrollment totals by age Whether or not children s church is provided Whether or not a visitor follow-up system is in place, and more Now I am ready to admit that the number of revival campaigns held may not be the best indicator of spiritual vitality, and that a high proportion of attendees who subscribe to Holiness Today may not be the perfect indicator of a healthy church. So what do our Nazarene pastors and laity say we should be measuring? The Fall 2010 ANSR Poll included a few questions about this topic. The pastor survey was sent to the current pastors of a random sample of 755 churches in the US and Canada. We received 313 completed surveys for a response rate of 41% for the pastors. The member survey went to a sample of 965 lay leaders selected from the 2009 district journals. A total of 417 surveys were completed for a response rate of 43% for the lay members. One question we asked pastors was, If a district superintendent were to contact you requesting that you prayerfully consider accepting a call to pastor another church, what information would you like to be able to look up regarding that church? Respondents
were instructed to check all that apply from the following list (% choosing option is shown before each item): 19.5% - No information, I would not want information to interfere with my praying to find God s will 42.5% - Number of members 63.9% - Number of people participating in worship services 62.3% - Number of people participating in Sunday school or other small discipleship groups 61.0% - Number of laity involved in some form of ministry 65.5% - Whether the church was supporting ministry beyond itself 49.2% - Total raised for all purposes 42.5% - Pastor s salary 39.3% - Pastor s benefits 38.3% - Other (Please specify) Almost one in five (19.5%) checked that they would not want any information, but 32.8% of those people also checked another option. That means 13.1% of all respondents chose no information as there only option. On the other hand, almost three out of four (72.8%) chose two or more options, and several wrote-in that they would want to know everything they possibly could. The most often indicated option was, Whether the church was supporting ministry beyond itself (65.5%). Within the current reporting system this would be most easily seen in giving to education, district and world evangelism funds. Involvement in the church s local community would be indicated by expenditures for local benevolences and the yes or no question, Does your church engage in compassionate ministry within your community? But neither of these items gives any real information about the kinds of ministry the church is involved in beyond itself locally. Slightly more than six out of ten pastors want to know the number of people participating in worship (63.9%) and the number participating in Sunday school or other small groups (62.3%). Interestingly, only 42.5% wanted to know the number of members. I interpret this to mean that many pastors do not consider membership as good an indicator as attendance. Just under half (49.2%) of all pastors wanted to know the total raised for all purposes. Even fewer were interested in knowing the pastor s salary (42.5%) and benefits (39.3%). I suppose many pastors see a conflict between financial considerations and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead in their call to a local church.
More than 1 in 3 pastors (38.3%) indicated that there was some other piece of information they would like that was not listed on the survey. I tried to categorize these suggestions and arrived at the following: Category Number Church s health, vision, mission, strengths and weaknesses 16 Area demographics 14 Attendance, new Nazarenes, baptisms, statistics 11 Everything 10 Tenures of former pastors; why a new pastor is needed 9 Finances 8 Missional activity in community 5 Worship style 5 Age groups 3 Relationships within congregation (any conflict) 3 Expectations of congregation 3 Presence of Holy Spirit in congregation 3 Parsonage or housing options 3 Prayer ministry 3 Salary and benefits 2 Ministry structures 2 Nothing 2 Community services available (special needs in family) 1 Web site 1 Age of church 1 Why me? (Did God lead you to me?) 1 How many are praying for God's leadership 1 Near family 1 The largest category ended up being a grouping around the ideas of church health, church vision, church mission statement, and church strengths and weaknesses. It could be argued that I included too many items in this category and that is why it came out on top, but it seemed to me that all of these are part of the language we use when talking about church health. A few pastors specifically mentioned Natural Church Development (NDR) as a way to measure church health. If I had chosen to create a category around the care of the pastoral family, it would have been the largest within the other write-ins. The issues around the tenure of former pastors, expectations, salary and benefits, housing and some of the statements about finances could all be related to determining how a congregation cares for its pastoral family.
If given a different scenario (something other than a DS asking a pastor to prayerfully consider a call to another church) it s quite possible that the things a pastor would want to know or measure would be different from the above response. Would the pastor of a rural church with a ten-year tenure want to know or measure the same thing as a new pastor of an inner city church? While it seems there is a need for some universal measurements that can be applied to all Nazarene churches in all settings, it also seems appropriate that pastors and churches should develop their own measurements based on their own setting and goals. Another item on the ANSR Poll asked pastors to mark all the reasons that apply to the statement, The purpose of annual reports to the district should include: 64.5% - Making the rest of the church aware of the work God is doing in the congregation 68.1% - Creating a historical record of the work God is doing through the congregation 72.2% - Maintaining accountability of the congregation to the extended church 57.8% - Providing information for future planning locally, on the district, and generally 11.2% - Other All four purposes listed received majorities indicating each should be included as a reason for giving annual reports to the district. The purpose of the annual report most often cited is Maintaining accountability of the congregation to the extended church. Almost three out of four pastors (72.2%) indicated this. Accountability was also the most popular write-in comment (see list below). This reminds me of a quote attributed to author David Brin, When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else. Category Number Accountability 6 Encouragement 4 Testimony pastor s faith 4 Number being saved/sanctified 4 Give God glory 3 Prayer 2 Celebrate 2 Help churches 2 Report too much 2 DS accountability 1 Prayer 1
Lay members were asked a similar question, What information do you think is important for churches like yours to report to the district annually? (Please mark all that apply.) 2.4% - No information 70.7% - Number of members 83.5% - Number of people participating in worship services 78.2% - Number of people participating in Sunday school or other small discipleship groups 58.3% - Number of laity involved in some form of ministry 72.7% - Whether the church was supporting ministry beyond itself 67.9% - Total money given/raised 45.1% - Pastor s salary 42.7% - Pastor s benefits 16.3% - Other Just ten lay members (2.4%) responded that their church shouldn t provide any information to the district. On the other hand, 83.5% indicated that their church should report the number participating in worship. Less than half of the lay members thought their church should report the pastor s salary (45.1%) or benefits (42.7%). Open-ended Question I often hear that the Church of the Nazarene is too numbers driven; the implication being that we would be more spiritual if we just quit keeping track of (as one pastor put it) nickels and noses. So the ANSR Poll also gave pastors the option to respond to an open-ended question that asked, What information do you think should be reported that is not now included in the annual pastor s report? While we received some responses like, Some type of rating from a pastor to signify how he views his church or how the Board views it in terms of spiritual vitality, openness to outsiders, and other indicators to track the true health of the church, and, The report should be less statistic focused and more ministry focused, many of the suggestions actually started with, the number of. These responses include the number of hungry people fed, the number of naked people clothed, the number of sick people healed, the number of prisoners visited, the number of visitors to church, the number of giving units, the number of prospects, the number of people ministered to in the neighborhood, the number purposely praying, the number being discipled, the number saved, the number sanctified, the number of people
at the altar, the number of holiness messages preached, the number of hours the pastor spends with people outside his/her church, the number of hours the pastor spends with his/her family, etc. Quite a few pastors responded that our question was difficult to answer. Many said the new annual report is simple, sufficient, inclusive, and suitable for its intended purpose. But there were also plenty of pastors who said that we are not measuring but should be things like church health, spiritual vitality and spiritual growth, and the church s impact in the community. This was expressed by one pastor who wrote, The report to the general church is basic data of attendance and finances. The report to the district includes significant events. What seems to be missing is that which deals with the health of a church. Whether people are working out of their strengths, serving their congregation and community, learning to be stewards of their time, talent and treasure. Several pastors suggested reporting the church s strategic plans for the coming year. How is the church responding to changing demographics? What is your church doing that impacts the community? Maybe the best way to assess church health or spiritual vitality is through a narrative report rather than a statistical report. Several pastors expressed dissatisfaction with the time allowed for oral reports at the district assembly and suggested more time was needed so that stories could be told about how God is at work in the local church. One pastor wrote, The general trend to make the pastors reports shorter and shorter gives the pastors and the grass roots the impression that the powers that be don't really want to know or hear what is happening around the district...and that it's not really important. Another wrote, I wish there was a way to share the stories of lives changed. Some pastors suggested that when they arrived at a new assignment it would have helped to have some stories from the church s history to read. Of course, pastors begin to pick up some stories from those in attendance, but having a yearly narrative of the work of God in the local church from the pastor s perspective could provide a helpful assessment of the congregation. Available Resources for Assessment
Several of the assessment tools suggested by pastors are available from the Nazarene Research Center. Information about these services can be found at the Research Center web site, www.nazareneresearch.org. Assessment tools the local church will find most helpful are: Community Demographics: Using data from the US Census and other estimates, demographic information is available for any location in the US. Nazarene churches are shown on the maps. Church Statistics: Statistics for Nazarene churches are available and cover the entire life of the church. For example, if a church started reporting statistics in 1910, our online tool will include everything from 1910 to the present. Religious Groups Present in the Community: A listing of denominations and other religious groupings (includes the number of churches, members and total adherents) available by county, metropolitan area, Nazarene district, state or nation. Congregational Mapping: The Research Center will take a church s address list and map the location of each household. When compared to the area s demographics, some assessment can be made concerning who is being reached and who isn t. Nazarene Missional Church Survey: A comprehensive survey instrument and report designed for the local church. It is intended that the survey be completed by everyone in the congregation age 15 or older. The report includes graphs and a discussion guide for the congregation. Assessment tools at the denominational level include: The Nazarene Composite Index: A compilation of around 20 statistical items tracking the USA Church of the Nazarene since 1980. ANSR Poll: Surveys of pastors and members for almost 30 years. Faith Communities Today and the US Congregational Life Survey: The Research Center has been working with these two interdenominational studies since 2000. These organizations have produced significant assessment
resources and do something our own surveys cannot they provide a comparison for us with other religious bodies. The Research Center receives many other requests for information, statistics, and surveys. Almost all of these requests could be classified as assessment. Assessment is a never-ending, often difficult process that is dependent on the collection of information. I end this paper with a quote of how one pastor summed up the difficulty of assessing his ministry. No awards, no banners, just faith that God called and until He says otherwise, I m here to stay. How do you put that into a report? Maybe it s good enough that it s recorded in heaven.