Questing Parson:

June 06, 2012

Here begins the rant:

On National Public Radio recently there was a piece about hiring practices in this age of massive unemployment. One point of the story was the new practice of online applications. It turns out the computer into which one inputs the application is programmed to eliminate certain applicants based upon specific parameters. Those rejected by the computer are eliminated from any possibility of a person-to-person interview. The head of human resources at a major corporation became so frustrated with the process he applied for a position with his own company. The computer rejected him.

Hold that thought.

Every week I receive an email from my denomination. It asks me to input certain data for a program called Vital Congregations.

My denomination conducted a study of “successful” churches a while back. The folks who conducted this study of many thousand congregations determined that “vital congregations” had certain things in common. As a result of this study, it was decided we'd engage ourselves in this vital congregations program.

Here's the interesting thing. I bought into it. I completely bought into it. I bought into it so much I got the folks at the congregation I serve to buy into it For months we met to study the vital congregations program. We even purchased a demographic study of the area in a ten mile radius of our church. We set goals. We decided to be a servant community. After all, we'd been told that the purpose of the program was to evaluate church's performance with a new criteria. We thought that criteria was how well the reporting church served its community.

Each week I receive an email from my denomination asking me to input data into the vital congregations data base. It asks me to tell the computer:

1. 1. Total worship attendance
  2. Total number of persons received on profession of faith
  3. Number of baptisms.
  4. Total number of people engaged in small groups.
  5. Number of people actively engaged in local, national, and international mission outreach.
  6. Number of people outside the congregation to whom congregation was in outreach
  7. Total amount given by local church to other organizations for support of benevolent and charitable ministries

Now, truth be told, I'm still in favor of this program. It's such a vast improvement over what has been asked to be reported in years prior. But we're still asking for how many and how much. I submit a church cannot truly be evaluated by how many and how much.

Here's the problem as I see it:

When we input the data on the number of people outside the congregation to whom our congregation is in outreach, Florence is reported as a number. But there's no way to report that one of the members of my church goes by Florence's house weekly to check on her. There's no way to report that someone from our congregation also makes sure she gets the leftovers from the community dinners we sponsor. (Come to think of it, there's no way to report those community dinners.)

There's no way to report the layperson in our congregation who bought a house specifically for the purpose of making it available to our church for use as a transitional house for a single mother with children, and did it completely without recognition.

There's no way to report the hundred children who will be given school supplies, new clothes, book bag, and a hair cut for boys or visit to a hairdresser for little girls each year.

There's no way to report the welcoming manner in which the people of this congregation embrace gays, people of other races, as well as the outcasts of society. There's no way to report that this is such a welcoming congregation you're welcome to bring your dog to church.

There's no way to report it because the recipients of the ministry of this congregation are not numbers. They are people who have been blessed to bump up against the people of this congregation.

I could go on. Suffice it to say I'm getting a little tired of not being able to report the real character of this church, the things that cannot be quantified in a computer program.

Maybe a more accurate picture of the ministry of this church could be gleaned if some church superior would drop in one week and bump up against, not the numbers, but the people who define the ministry of this congregation and the people, not the numbers, who are the recipients of such.

I'm thinking of that human resource director who couldn't get hired by his own company. I'm fearful that the data, as reported, will not qualify this congregation, of considerably less than one hundred members but which matches the ministry of churches with thousands, to be hired as a church.

Here ends my rant.