Church members regularly express their judgments about the church they attend. Listen to their conversations and you will hear what church members deem important about their church, what they like and dislike. You will hear their judgments because people talk about what is important to them.
You may hear words about the pastor. We hope the words are complementary — things such as “He is a good preacher” or “He really cares about people.” The pastor is important to a church. He is a catalyst that God uses to help make things happen in the congregation. He plays a central role in helping people hear and respond to God’s claims on their lives.
You likely will hear comments about the music program. Music evokes emotion from participants and church music certainly does. Conversations about the music style can be heated as some defend and others condemn various music styles. When church members talk about the music of their church, you will have no doubt about whether they like the church’s music style or not.
Church members may talk about other things related to their church. They may talk about a sense of belonging or the importance of the church fellowship in their life. Church members may talk about church giving them a place to serve or any number of other things.
Pastors, too, express their judgments of the church they serve, especially in conversations with other pastors. Pastors frequently talk about how many new members their church received through baptism or transfer of membership. They like to talk about church budgets. Being ahead of budget is good. Being behind budget is bad.
New buildings, renovations or building updates are always good for lengthy conversations among pastors.
Ask a denominational worker about a church and the first thing you are likely to hear is the baptismal statistics, followed closely by the church budget numbers and the Cooperative Program giving record.
Obviously how one judges a church depends on the role one plays in the church and the role the church plays in one’s life. But all of these judgments have one thing in common. They are all about what goes on inside the congregation.
Perhaps that is why one new church start put on its Web site that its goal was to develop a 25-acre campus and showed the master plan for how the site would look when the church reached its target of 1,000 members.
The judgment of the people planting that congregation was that people cared about how the buildings would look and how many people would be in the church.
That may not be true. Those whom Baptists have traditionally called “lost” — now called “pre-Christians” in some writings — care little about buildings. They are searching for God. They want to see the difference God makes in the lives of those who talk about “abundant life in Jesus Christ.” They want to see the difference God is making in the community through the church.
One noted Christian writer recently observed, “The ultimate measure of cultural relevance is what happens in the community, not the church.” He went on to argue that building the perfect church in terms of buildings or successful models will not attract the pre-Christians.
Frequently churches withdraw from their community and concentrate on what goes on within the walls of the church building. For those of us already in the church, these can be important times.
But hanging around in “holy huddles,” as one writer called such churches, does not take the gospel to the lost. It leaves the church unconnected to the community and confirms the judgment of the pre-Christians that the church is unimportant.
One pastor moved to his new congregation to find it aged and unconnected to the community. The pastor led the church to adopt a local elementary school. Faculty members provided a list of children’s needs and 60 percent of the church members became involved in responding to those needs.
When community members saw the church exhibiting the love of God by loving the children, their judgment of the church changed. The church became important to them. People listened to the message of salvation and the congregation experienced renewal.
A few years ago, an influential national leader convened the pastors of a midsized city and asked them, “What would this city look like if churches were doing their job?” That is a fair question. Would lives be changed? Would families be strengthened? Would the hungry be fed, the sick cared for, the homeless housed?
There is a related question that should be asked. What would the church look like if churches were doing their job? Would members still talk about the music, or would they talk about the ministries? Would pastors talk about buildings, or would they eagerly share about the blessings of helping others? Would denominational leaders recall a church’s statistics or a church’s influence for Christ? Would the focus of the church be inward toward members or outward toward pre-Christians?
How one judges a church is important. It makes a difference in what a church does.
So, how do you judge a church, your church?
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