New ministry metrics

I've been working on my assignment for our Missional Leadership Initiative cohort group. We are supposed to come up with 2-3 new ministry metrics in each of the 6 resource areas: prayer, people, time, money, facilities, and technology. Then we're to come up with 2-3 new personal metrics in each of those 6 areas that will be necessary to support the new ministry scorecard (In other words, what will I have to do differently to support the new scorecard?). The idea is to help our churches change from being internally focused to more of an external (missional) focus.

This is all covered in chapter 4 of Reggie McNeal's book Missional Renaissance, on pp. 67-87. I like how he adds on p. 69, "If the notion of metrics and scorecards leaves you cold, try the notion of looking at what you currently celebrate and what you would celebrate in a move from an internal to an external ministry focus." That helped me.

We've actually been working on this since the first retreat in January. However, I admit that until this week I've had a hard time getting a grasp on what I was supposed to do. It helped to reread chapter 4, and when our cohort leader sent the last email explaining the relationship of 'ministry metrics' to 'personal metrics' (that the personal supports the ministry).

The other thing that has made this a challenge for me is that, I think, my church has been moving in a missional direction for several years now. I read Reggie's book The Present Future shortly after it came out (2003) and then took our church council through it in 2006, and we made a lot of changes then. So for a lot of things it's not necessarily that we need to make changes, but maybe just add a little more focus to certain areas. I've been trying to think of too many changes, and I think I started to just make stuff up for the sake of changing something. But once I realized the point - to help our church have a more missional focus - I realized we already do in many ways. So... the other night I sat down and wrote out some things. I won't share them here... It's kind of a cohort thing at this point still. But I am glad that it's starting to sink in a little.

Peace out; and in.