Vital Signs

What are the signs of vitality in ministry?  What do we measure to know if we are accomplishing what we understand God desires of us?  Discussion of these questions is a holy conversation.  What the PC(USA) asks us to measure each year in our statistical reports is membership gains and loses, financial receipts and expenditures.  These actually are resources for ministry, not the outcomes.  Worship Attendance is a ministry activity.  Professions of Faith and baptisms are  outcomes.  Less easily measured outcomes are transformed lives, transformed communities?  What difference is God calling you to make where you live?  

Looking at five measures of our congregations based on the Ten Year Statistical Trend Reports for the Presbytery of Lake Michigan:

1. 2011 Reported membership increase over 2006 (5 years)
2. 2012 Reported membership increase over 2011 (1 year)
3. 2011 Receipts greater than 2001 (10 years)
4. 2011 Worship Attendance increase over 2006 (5 years)
5. 2011 Validated Mission Giving (Shared Mission, PC(USA) Special Offerings) greater than in 2001

I discovered that:

4 Churches, No Report/Records

23 Churches with no positive indicators reflected in the above five measures. 

19 Churches with one positive indicator

14 Churches with two positive indicators

5 Churches with 3 positive indicators

Buchanan, First, 1 year members +1, receipts +$145,000, worship attendance +7 

Concord, First, 1 year members +5, receipts +$47,000, validated mission +$1,200

Homer, First,  receipts +$36,000, worship attendance +35, validated mission +$1,900

Kalamazoo, First, 1 year members +16, Receipts +$196,000, worship attendance +59 

Eastminster, GR, 1 year members +7, worship attendance +10, + $1,500 validated mission

Congratulations to these congregations.  How do you measure success?  The number of contacts with people?  More powerful than numbers are the stories of lives transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The church is blessed and is vital when it participates in such transformation.  Let us be part of those transformation stories, identify and praise God for them, and tell the stories!