Measuring Effectiveness

Steven Furtick begins this post by making a reference to 2 Samuel 24 :

God got very angry with David for taking a census in 2 Samuel 24.  In fact, this single act of disobedience resulted in a plague that destroyed 70,000 people.  The level of punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime.  All David was doing was taking inventory of his kingdom.  But God is about to send a reminder: it wasn’t his kingdom.  These people belonged to God, and David had no business claiming the increase of Israel as his own.

That’s not a bad lesson to learn. Everything belongs to God. True, but for the sake of clarity, I don’t think that was the exact problem in this passage of scripture. Here are a couple of excerpts:

^{2 Samuel 24: 2-4, 9 -}

²So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, “Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.”

³But Joab replied to the king, “May the LORD your God multiply the troops a hundred times over, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king want to do such a thing?”

⁴The king’s word, however, overruled Joab and the army commanders; so they left the presence of the king to enroll the fighting men of Israel…

…⁹Joab reported the number of the fighting men to the king: In Israel there were eight hundred thousand able-bodied men who could handle a sword, and in Judah five hundred thousand.

Furtick sees this as an ego issue for King David. God got mad because David was proud of how large the Kingdom had grown. Again, this would be a wonderful lesson for Steven to learn, but I think the actual problem for David was not ego, but lack of faith. Rather than relying on God’s protection for Israel, he was putting his trust in the number of troops available.

However, if Steven interpreted it that way, it wouldn’t be much use to him in justifying his ministry practices.

The post continues:

As leaders, we’ll always be tempted toward an unhealthy preoccupation with quantifying our own success.

Has Steven seen this clip from his mentor, Perry Noble? Is Furtick condemning the “Scoreboard” argument?

Nope, he actually makes an attempt to justify it two paragraphs later:

Here’s the distinction: it’s good to be concerned with numbers.  But we’ve got to be concerned about the right numbers…for the right reasons.  We’ve got to make sure we’re measuring ministry numbers to measure our effectiveness and enlarge the Kingdom of God…not simply to placate our ego.

This is where the real problem rears its head. You absolutely cannot measure your effectiveness in the Kingdom of God by counting the number of people who attend your event.

The Muslims and Mormons are increasing their numbers daily. Are they being effective for the Kingdom of God?

As long as ministers measure success by worldly standards, they will have to continually compromise God’s Word to achieve their desired results.

Numbers

With all Perry’s recent “scoreboard” nonsense, It reminded me of something I once heard Steven Furtick say. I found a version of it on his blog. This account is slightly different, but the meaning is basically the same:

“If you get the impression that we’re all about the numbers, let me clarify…
Of course we’re all about the numbers. What else would we be all about? The spaghetti supper? To hell with the spaghetti supper. I want to see some changed lives!”

(The original quote actually went “Of course we’re all about the numbers. What the hell else would we be all about?” I think the spaghetti supper must have come to him in one of his visions.)

Seriously though Steven, what else should we be all about? I don’t know…Jesus, maybe?

I didn’t know it was a competition

Brad Cooper reports from Perry Noble’s recent staff pep talk, including this advice on how to respond to critics:

On Critics:

“Scoreboard”

And here I was thinking we were all on the same team.

I really don’t know if Noble is contradicting or following his own advice from an earlier post called Thoughts on Unity:

We don’t have time to debate methods. I am not getting caught up in it–nor will I allow the staff to go there. We realize who our competition is with…and it’s not with various websites or the church across town…it’s with the kingdom of darkness…and every single piece of artillery we have will always be pointed in that direction…and NOT at people on our own team.

UPDATE: Because there has apparently been a little confusion about what Noble meant, let me try to explain.

“Scoreboard” is used in sporting contests as a retort from a player or supporter of a winning team towards a player or supporter of a losing team who is complaining about the winning team. Instead of addressing the complaint, the winning player or supporter merely points to the scoreboard and reminds the opponent that he or she is losing. Outside of a contest where one side is clearly in the lead, Noble’s “argument” makes no sense.

The question is, what are the teams, which is the point of my uncertainty in the third paragraph. The most charitable interpretation is that he’s comparing churches. His church has more people and converts than the critics’ churches, so they need to shut up. However, that seems to contradict his Unity advice in showing that he is actually competing with other local churches.

A second interpretation, which seems more in line with what else he’s been saying lately, is that his critics represent the kingdom of darkness. In that case, his scoreboard retort is consistent with his promise to keep all his artillery pointed at the devil and his friends.