Terry's post about a recommendation that churches measure their divorce rates over time to measure how well the church is doing spiritually. Now, to start, I would agree fully that how marriages are doing is an excellent measure of a church's vitality and spirituality; if a believer does not understand that his marriage reflects on Christ's relationship to the church, something is very wrong.
That said, I've got two big reservations about using statistical methods in the church. The general problem is that those who use them a lot in a corporate setting know very well that they tend to be applied in an impersonal, "hands off" way. Management loves these in great part because it allows them to "do something" without really interacting with the people involved. Disaster often ensues because the statisticians and managers don't realize that what they've found only correlates to the real problem--but is not the real issue. To get at the real issue, they've got to get themselves on the shop floor, or (perhaps better) out to the smoke shack. (I don't smoke, but I do a lot of good quality engineering with the lovers of cancer sticks)
Now consider that the goal of the church is to enter into close--really intimate in a way--relationships and make disciples of all nations. The "hands off" approach is generally a problem in a corporate setting; it can be a disaster in a church. It often distracts the deacons and elders/pastors from what they really need to be doing; again, making disciples.
Regarding the proposal specifically, it falls into the problem of measuring outputs instead of inputs; a divorce is not a cause, but is rather the result of years of poor decisions by one or both spouses. The husband decides he doesn't need to be discipled, or to disciple his family. The wife looks elsewhere for spiritual leadership. Without discipleship, that wonderful part of marriage gets neglected. One or the other looks elsewhere, and then things go rapidly downhill from there. Church members who have said "hi" to them for years, or decades, are shocked.
While at the church, this couple has had three different pastors, ten different boards of deacons, and has interacted with a number of people that is four times the current membership. Statistically speaking, how do your sort it out? There are simply too many variables.
You sort it out, of course, by remembering what our Lord tells us to do in Matthew 28; make disciples. If one desires statistics to be used by church leadership to evaluate how the church is doing, ask the pastor how many members he's gotten to know well. How often is he a guest at their homes, and vice versa? Ask the deacons the same thing, and then.....
....ask the members. Put simply, if you want a statistic that you can use to improve your church (and reduce the divorce rate), count the number of members who are actively discipling their families and each other, and have the pastor and deacons guide that effort.
Sometimes, it really is as simple as.....the Gospel.
Podcast #1047: The Roman Caesars’ Guide to Ruling
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6 comments:
Hi BikeBubba,
Thanks for the link!
I'd like to clarify my original intent. I'm not arguing that you can gauge the spiritual health of the church by the metrics I propose. I'm saying that churches generally want to sweep the issue under the rug. So we tend to see a lot of idealistic posturing about the bible and the spirit, but at the end of the day the divorce rate for Evangelicals is (depending on who you believe) either slightly better or slightly worse than that for Atheists.
My fundamental question is one which you probably pose on a regular basis in your work. How can churches improve something they don't bother to measure? And if they do manage to improve it, how could we tell?
We are what, 50? years into the sexual revolution, and marriage and divorce rates in our society both continue to move in the wrong direction. And far too many kids from "good Christian" homes no longer have the advantage of intact families. At what point do Christians decide doing the same thing (denying the problem) isn't working?
Agreed; the place I part company with you is in what to measure. In many places, you don't measure certain outputs--you control the inputs.
To draw a picture, Michelin doesn't measure the color on their tires, but rather controls the compounds and processes that go into them. Measuring outgoing color on the tires merely confirms failure.
In the same way, a church ought to measure not failure (divorce), but rather the processes that can lead to success (happy, fruitful marriage). The failure statistics only serve inasmuch as they spur action on the critical inputs.
Good analysis of the issue, Bike Bubba.
It really is, in the end, about discipleship, isn't it?
I have thought about this some, and I think a large part of the problem is the church's unwillingness (fear?) to teach Biblically sound doctrine as it relates to marriage.
Think about Titus 2 with me for a second. The reasons given for the express commands to husbands and wives is so that the word of God wil not be reviled (implication being it willl be reviled by the world as it witnesses us, correct?)
Look at what the world has to say about the Christians who have risen up to decry homosexual marriage. They in effect say this:
"Well, we can't make any more of a mockery of marriage than y'all already have!"
And still, the church shies away from calling husbands to sacrificially love, wives to submit and raise their own children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and to effect, protect our witness and God's word.
Effective discileship is impossible if you're afraid to offend with the truth.
Am I making any sense or have I gotten totally off topic again?
Oooh....I see another post about quality control and spirituality coming!
To draw a picture, Michelin doesn't measure the color on their tires, but rather controls the compounds and processes that go into them. Measuring outgoing color on the tires merely confirms failure.
A closer analogy would be Firestone and catastrophic tire failure. Divorce isn't just another flavor of marriage. If you don't examine the blowouts, you really are burying your head in the sand. Everyone will have a theory as to what the underlying cause of the failure is. But if you don't track the rate of failure and only the changing inputs it becomes far to easy to turn a few knobs and declare success.
Having seen this in other organizations the cynic in me says this is what will become of any effort which doesn't involve measuring actual divorce rates.
After all, this can't be the first time the topic of divorce has come up in the church. I'd bet good money there were folks having the same discussion 20 or 30 years ago. Someone probably said, well we just need to read these three bible verses and all will be fixed. They may have been on to something, but by avoiding measuring their results they managed to avoid any of the hard parts too.
Google "Atheist Divorce Rates" if you want to see a perfect example of this. Someone had the bad taste about ten years ago to actually compare divorce rates between Christians and Atheists, and it didn't look good for Evangelicals. Evangelicals faced a choice: fix the issue or explain it away. Which do you think they chose?
I know this sounds harsh, but how many millions of kids now live in broken homes because Christians ten, twenty, and thirty years ago didn't have the constitution to look the problem in the eye?
Understand the point, but even the Firestone debacle doesn't prove the need. The ugly reality is that Firestone had made a choice not to include a part--a teflon bead if I remember right--that would have made the tires far more robust vs. heat.
In the same way, we've got a "teflon bead" in the church called "active discipleship." If we keep that in mind and work those statistics, we won't have much occasion to collect stats on divorce.
Put differently, we know it's a disaster in many ways--look at Ham & Beamer's "Already Gone" for another bit of stats. Time to step away from Minitab & JMP and learn to make disciples.
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