Thanks to Helen for the post I quote below.

On his blog Jesus Creed Scot McKnight has been asking pastors what advice they’d give a new pastor knowing what they know now.

In today’s post Scot asks my friend Rose Madrid-Swetman that question. Here’s part of Rose’s response

I would focus on “growing a church big rather than growing a big church.” When I first began as a pastor, I was taught to focus on buildings, budgets, and butts in seats. Those three words were, and in many cases still are, the measure for success. Today we (I don’t lead in a vacuum) focus on the other words: conversations, connections, and collaborations.

When one moves down the alphabet from buildings, budgets, and butts to conversations, connections, and collaborations, one counts success differently. Here are a couple of examples: We count how many people we have served rather than how many people attend our Sunday morning gathering (yes, we have one). We count how many people we are developing, encouraging, and partnering with to be practitioners, who are leading personal, local, and global expressions of God’s goodness and justice.

Growing a church big is a great adventure.

Who wouldn’t get excited about this? Here is a real option for people who have been longing for a new way to evaluate ministry effectiveness

• I notice the old evaluators were external, superficial, self-centered, easily measurable, done in isolation, and have no lasting value.
• The new ones are all relational, focused toward others, hard to measure, done through partnerships, and have deep significance for this life and all eternity.

This is great. Help me to unwrap it.