{"id":8720,"date":"2023-02-20T14:00:53","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T22:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/?p=8720"},"modified":"2023-02-20T09:29:14","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T17:29:14","slug":"change-your-metrics-the-fount-account","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/2023\/02\/20\/change-your-metrics-the-fount-account\/","title":{"rendered":"Change Your Metrics – The Fount Account"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been unpacking some lessons learned from planting a church within the Disney (World) employees by Steven Barr, the founder of \u201cCast Member Church\u201d. You can read the entire article here: Five Lessons Learned From a Church Embedded in The Walt Disney Company – Fresh Expressions<\/a><\/p>\n

So far we\u2019ve looks at the first two lessons, (1) Don\u2019t plant a church; plant Jesus, and (2) Prioritize Intercessory Prayer Over Strategy. This week, I want to examine lesson #3: \u201cChange Your Metrics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metrics<\/em> are what we use to measure the \u201csuccess\u201d of a church plant. For the most part, we have used the metrics of business to measure a church\u2019s successfulness up to now, so we enumerate \u201cbuildings, budgets, and butts in seats\u201d! When pastors gather at conferences, they almost always ask these types of metrical questions of each other. \u201cHey, Bob, how\u2019s your church doing? How many do you get on a Sunday now?\u201d And Bob\u2019s answer is usually \u201cOh, great, great! Yeah, we\u2019re worshipping a zillion a week now!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But Jesus used a different metric. He talked about fruit, not numbers. Jesus was\/is more interested in the fruitfulness of individual Christians and congregations than He is\/was the numbers (whether people or money). Jesus has more interest in lives being changed! To be fair, the \u201cnumbers\u201d game is founded on the assumption that \u201cthe more people we have, the more lives will be changed.\u201d But the reality is that large churches can be fruitless just as easily as small churches can be! In fact, Jesus said something about being faithful in small things translates into being faithful in larger things (see Luke 16:10).<\/p>\n

The Bible talks a lot about fruit. The fruit, or produce, of our lives is the indicator of our faithfulness or lack thereof. Growing fruit requires hard work, dirty hands, and a lot of faith! We can do all of the things right, and still not produce the fruit we intended to. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3:6: \u201c6<\/sup> I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.\u201c We can work and work hard and still not yield significant fruit if we are not working in line with God\u2019s plan for growth!<\/p>\n

So, our questions to one another should shift from \u201chow many attended\u201d to things like, \u201cAre there any stories of lives being changed? Was there significant prayer? Were people who don\u2019t know Jesus invited? Were there any miracles? Was worship deep and moving? How did God show up?\u201d<\/p>\n

Changing the metrics by which we measure our work as a church is an important shift. We are not a business, so much, as a mission outpost.<\/p>\n

Next time, we\u2019ll look at lesson #4: Stop Labeling People!<\/p>\n

Peace,<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been unpacking some lessons learned from planting a church within the Disney (World) employees by Steven Barr, the founder of \u201cCast Member Church\u201d. You can read the entire article here: Five Lessons Learned From a Church Embedded in The Walt Disney Company – Fresh Expressions So far we\u2019ve looks at the first two lessons, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8002,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[299,362,59,254,327],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-ages","category-christian-identity","category-church-news","category-discipleship","category-fruit-of-the-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8721,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8720\/revisions\/8721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}