Numbers Game

At a planning meeting for upcoming small groups I was really encouraged by something someone said in that meeting, but it also made me think a bit. In the discussion a question was raised as to whether or not the small groups would replace the evening service. Attendance at our evening service isn't outstanding by any means. We average about 30 people who attend the evening service. Which percentage wise from the morning service isn' t that great. We had a brief discussion then about this.

Sometimes as a Pastor I might get frustrated with the lack of attendance in the second service. I shared this a bit. It was interesting what an elder had to say then. He has shared this with me before, and I think I needed to hear it again.

The thing he said went along these lines: There are people who talk about canceling the evening service. It is interesting to note who the people are who want to cancel the evening service. It is usually the people who don't go anyway. So, really, why does it matter to them if we canceled the evening service? He also said, the people who should have a say, or vote whether or not we cancel the evening service should be limited to the 50 or so people that actually come to the second service. The one thing that I was reminded of again is the fact that the people who show up to the evening service want to be there. If we were to cancel the evening service, who would it affect, those who weren't coming anyway? Or would it affect those who really want to be there?

He had a great point and this really encouraged me. Yeah it may seem like a lot of time "wasted" to prepare for "only" 30 people. But would you rather prepare for 30 people who want to be there, or for those who don't want to be there?

This really got me thinking about how Pastors and churches think about success. Last year on my internship I found myself saying sometimes when only 12 kids would show up for youth group, well, this isn't enough to do what I was hoping to, so let's just watch a movie. Why do we think that we need more people to justify the amount of time we spend on something? Some churches only get 30 people in their doors a week.

I found out last year on my internship that no matter how many people showed up for a youth event, we still had a good time and made the best of it. I think we need to think this way sometimes about other things. Even if the numbers aren't that high, I think the quality of discussion or quality of the service is more important than quantity. So as our church begins this new venture of starting small groups, I pray that we don't measure its success purely by numbers. I hope that we can evaluate the quality of the discussions and how well people enjoyed going and how much people get out of the groups.