Is Efficiency a Good Metric for Ministry?
The costs of church as a professional event
The shepherd in Jesus’ parable leaves the 99 and goes looking for the 1 lost sheep. Which is kinda dumb when you think about it. A 99% retention rate of sheep in the sheepfold is pretty good. It does not appear to be an efficient use of this shepherd’s resources, time and attention. It’s not a particularly “professional” take on his shepherding duties.
Unless efficiency is not a driving characteristic of this shepherd’s role. Unless the sheep are not merely “stock”, and he’s not primarily motivated by a good Return On Investment. If there is a relational connection with this sheep, then searching for the 1, regardless of how much time, attention and resources are used, is a great investment.*
If this is the characteristic of Jesus, to take slow, relational time to search for and care for the sheep, then this ought also to be the characteristic of his church. And yet, often, our churches are using metrics of efficiency and managerial professionalism to measure ministries and run our events.
In the previous episode of The Shock Absorber podcast, Stu Crawshaw, Joel McMaster and I talked about the theology of church ministry teams and how the body of Christ metaphor in Paul’s writings provides an image of how to think about being the church together.
This episode, we dig into the strategy of ministry teams, and how thinking of church more as a family meal, and less like an event, may help us to do ministry together as friends, and how to use the resources of these friendships to share the truth and love of Jesus, person to person, generation to generation, culture to culture, and place to place.
Listen along on your favourite podcast platform, or watch the conversation on the YouTube link below.
*This is not my original take. As I explain in the podcast, I first read this in an edition of Matthias Media’s publication The Briefing, possibly an editorial by Tony Payne, but I am happy to be corrected.