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I completely agree with you about quantifiable results. its neccessary. its pastoral. its accountabilty.

I know for me, the difficulty is in taking the time for honest prayer to really try to grasp the specific reason for our church’s existence. there are so many options to quantify church, but a lot of those may work for the calling of other communities but not ours. not to mentiont the fact that my time with Jesus may draw me to one set of milestones, but my heart often pulls me in another.

for our church, we’ve always felt called to being an authentic christian community that has a real and authentic stake in serving the place we find ourselves for the sake of Christ and His kingdom. That is nebulous and wishy washy talk, but its our calling. we are not primarily trying to fill a building, convert the masses, or plant other churches (although those are wonderful vocations I often wish we had).

so our quantifiable results are measured by how much would our neighborhoods and miss us if we did not do what we do and how differently would our lives look if we were not in OP together:

How are the members of OP becoming clearer examples of Jesus’ love? How does our our community reflect forgiveness, generosity, diversity, justice and peace? How deep is our commitment to the schools in our area and how much support do they get from us? How much of what God is doing in the lives of the elders in our area are we apart of? What about the homeless-would they miss us?

those questions hold us accountable to what we feel God has welcomed us into, it may not fit the mold of other churches, but it holds it down for us.

Wow!
Matt, thank you for this input. I’m totally agree with you.
Juan

Wayne, I am sort of agree. The Telos we aim at is the Kingdom of God nothing else. But perhaps the coming kingdom of God is not entirely connected to the quantifiable results of church growth or mission or neighbor. Consider the Desert Fathers, or the monastic lives of the early Church. For Gregory of Nyssa, monastic life was living out the ideal of Christian life, the community of believers and God (a trinitarian community). There is no growth factor in living in community. Only in business models of Churches where 15 people do not count as a viable church (we could call this “abortion of the church” and ask if this seem assinine?).

Also, if Mother Theresa’s suggestion that we “do good anyway” fails to be a viable option, then perhaps the telos that our “frenetic religious activity” is aimed at is not necessarily communion with God and others, but ego masturbation. The supposed deeper reason can really only be “we love because we are first loved.”
Shutting down a dream and re-asking the question why do good if in the end “it” doesn’t happen must first qualify what “it” is. Is “it” the unaccomplished dream, is “it” that good has not happened, is “it” that Kingdom values don’t happen? What is “it?” Because from what I usually encounter from pastor’s who have “failed” is a lack of growth. No growth=no good=no kingdom=(presumably) no Spirit (perhaps there were less than two or three. . . maybe).

We need to rethink our idea of Church as “presence” because it carries the connotation of separation. Church is community more than anything and the pressure of growth is a distraction to “knowing the other.”
Perhaps I sound a little abstract. Of course I agree with your vision of what a healthy Church is. . . for urban american contexts. But we need to ask if our church failed if it doesn’t look like this? Is that failure: when the Spirit moves upon a group of people to commit to each other in Christian community and worship and confession but the numbers, the ethnicity, don’t “reflect growth”. How much of your vision is urban, what would a rural church look like? How much is evangelical and doesn’t account for the Parish style ministry found in mainline churches? How much is american (we really need to consume more)? Again, i don’t disagree with you completely: The telos is the kingdom of God. But it appears completely erroneous to say failure has taken place because growth is minimal; this thinking forgets the very reason why we are saved, why we seek to grow, and what the purpose of God’s kingdom is: to be partakers of the life of God, which is to love and be loved. This is the predicate of Church: not mission, not presence, simply love.