I work in an industry where measurement is a really big issue, one that is hotly debated at every turn. If you can’t measure results, you can’t prove value, and if you can’t prove value, you can’t continue to collect checks from your customers. The problem is that measuring the outcomes related to the services my company sells is horribly difficult and, even worse, sometimes subjective.

One of the side effects related to the measurement challenge is that sometimes you default to measuring what you can measure, even if you are only measuring things you think are simple proxies that create plausibility. What happens next is that it is easy to fall into the trap of focusing on the proxy measures and managing to their achievement, which can be fine but often takes your eye off the ball. Eventually you look up from your work and realize that you aren’t even close to achieving the results you were after in the first place because your focus has been set too low.

I think sometimes measurement can get a church stuck as well. Not too long ago, I was home visiting my family, and I was able to visit the church where I grew up worshiping. It’s a small church. A Southern Baptist church. It was (and is) legalistic, well-intentioned, terribly traditional. In the hallway (pictured above) there still remains a “big board” that tallies all the mission critical stats for the church body. Enrollment. Attendance. Tithes. Bible read daily. Disregard the fact that the previous Sunday they only had 11 in Sunday School. I’d be making the same point if attendance had been 1,100.

I’m sure the church means well by tracking these statistics, and that they felt it was important to put them up on the wall. But I ask you, what in the world does it have to do with the mission of this church? The near-term success of this church? The legacy of this church? I know the next level of measures is much harder to account for and to verify, or possibly even to articulate, but if the church is focused on these measures to tell them how they are doing, they are going to fall miserably short of what God has for them.

Another common measure I see plastered in bulletins and on church walls is professions of faith. Which in some cases is THE ultimate medal of measurement. I’m not saying that leading people to Christ is inconsequential or not worthy of tracking. It just feels like an incomplete story for a church body if they are focusing their efforts on racking up as many salvation stories as possible without giving the same attention to growing Christians and serving their communities.

It’s always dangerous to start measuring. You can’t always effectively get to the right measures. You can’t always contend with vagueness around cause and effect. You can make misinformed judgements about what the measurements mean. You can misguide your focus. Numbers can play 1,000 tricks on you, which is why I despise math.

That being said, I’m not asking churches everywhere to take down their big boards, necessarily.

I’m just suggesting as a Christian community we think a little longer and a little harder about the things that matter most and if/how we can measure them.

I don’t think the secret lies in counting those who show up at the door or crack open their wallets when the plate comes down the line.