Good Consistory Meeting
We had our July consistory meeting last night (postponed from last week because of the fireworks we were supposed to have then) and I have to say, the elders’ part was one of the best elders’ meetings we’ve ever had. Not that we discussed anything particularly new or controversial but we did finally come to a basic answer to the fundamental question: how do we know how well we’re doing?
It’s a difficult question to answer. How does a consistory evaluate the effectiveness of a congregation’s ministry? There are a number of ways: income, numeric growth, baptisms, involvement, etc., etc. We’ve decided to evaluate according to the three pillars of the Isaiah Agenda. I’ve recommended The Isaiah Vision before - and let me recommend it to you again if you haven’t read it. It’s VERY good. If you look at the original post, you’ll see there are three aspects to the idea:
- The Isaiah agenda (From Is. 65.20-23),
- Invitation to worship, and
- Invitation to discipleship.
Our version of it is a little more broad:
- Ministry to others
- Worship
- Discipleship & Devotion
The idea is simple. Without being legalistic, we can agree that the scriptures promote these three things for each and every single believer. In other words, there is a problem if someone does not value (and, in some way, participate in) each of these three things. Of course, it’ll look different from individual to individual and family to family, and there are a myriad of ways these three priorities can be expressed and embraced, but the idea is simple: our “job” as a board of elders (and a consistory, as a whole) is to do what we can to ensure every member of our congregation (and “member” here is a very broad term) embraces all three to as great of a degree as possible.
I have been encouraged (in a healthy way) by the elders to begin “afflicting the comfortable” as strongly as possible toward these three things which induces a certain amount of nervousness but also immense excitement. We’ve discussed this with the entire consistory and expect a certain amount of resistance but are all on the same page (what a great feeling!)
This approach is both easily evaluated and, I think, broad enough to prevent a legalistic (”check-list style”) approach.
Did I mention that I’m excited?
I wonder what the next year is going to look like?!
Grace and Peace,
`tim
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