Thanks to Gary Rohrmayer for his link to the video!

That’s why it was so much fun to watch my friend Daniel Barrett of Northeast Christian Church in Bakersfield, California receive a church-planting award at Tuesday night’s Stadia dinner at the Exponential Conference.

Daniel’s church isn’t large (about 150 on a Sunday morning), but they have a large vision for church planting.

Northeast is the product of a merger between East Hills Christian Church and Great Beginnings Christian Church in 2007. As part of this merger, they gave 10% of the proceeds from the sale of their land to help launch Kaleo Christian Fellowship in Bakersfield this January. In addition to this one-time financial gift, Northeast is a regular monthly contributor to Kaleo and are full participants in Kaleo’s management team.

But the most remarkable part of the story is that Northeast also put aside $425,000 dollars in the CDF Church Planting Fund, and the interest on that money will go to fund church planting in California’s Central Valley each year. Most amazing to me is the bold decision of Northeast’s leadership — if they haven’t grown enough within three years to need the money for their own land and building, the full $425,000 will become a permanent gift to church planting and generate interest forever!

Northeast Christian Church is living proof that an “ordinary” church can be fully engaged in church planting. I love Daniel’s humble spirit — he truly doesn’t see this as anything special — just hearing the voice of God and then following in faith. He gives all the credit to Jesus, and minimizes the way that God has used him and his church to do extraordinary things. He was totally surprised and shocked when the award went to his church — further testimony to his humble and gracious spirit.

Now, I’m not a critic of megachurches — far from it! (Some of my best friends and spiritual mentors are megachurch pastors.) But one thing that has always bothered me about the whole megachurch phenomenon is the focus on the wrong numbers. It’s not that measuring numbers is wrong, because every number represents a person, and every person is valuable to God. Take a quick read through the book of Acts and you’ll see all kinds of references to numbers, starting in Acts 2:41, where we read that 3000 people were baptized after Pentecost.

In his article, “The Best Indicator of Church Growth,” Kent Fillinger writes:

Typically when we measure success in the church, we count nickels and noses—how much money is given and what is the total attendance—but the best indicator of church growth and health is the baptism ratio. Baptisms are the best indicator of health because baptisms measure whether churches are reaching the lost versus just moving believers around. A U.S. Congregational Life Survey found that just 7 percent of new attendees are formally unchurched.

I was taught, through the influence of Dan Spader (formerly of Sonlife Ministries), that a “healthy” evangelistic ratio for the local church was a conversion growth rato of 1:10 (one baptism per year for every 10 members in attendance). That means a healthy, evangelistic church of 100 ought to see 10 baptisms per year; a healthy, evangelistic church of 1000 ought to see 100 baptisms per year. (Note: our movement has found that the easiest way to measure conversions is baptisms — others might choose a different model. The point is not the number baptized, but the number entering a life-giving relationship with Jesus.)

Back to the article — Fillinger figured out that the average baptism ratio among these megachurches is just 6.4 per 100 in attendance, and notes that number is a drop from the old ratio of 7.2 per 100. Not only are megachurches slowing down in their growth, but they are slowing down in their conversion growth, as well.

Again, this isn’t an indictment on megachurches. After all, the average American church has a ratio of just 1% — a hundred member church baptizing just one person per year on average. Megachurches are at least six times as effective as the average church — not bad!

But it’s interesting to compare those number to new churches. Research by Ed Stetzer indicates that the average new church has a conversion growth ratio of 30% in the first year; slightly over 20% in year two, just under 20% in year three, and about 17% in year four.

Here’s what that means:

• The typical new church in its first year is 30 times more effective in evangelism than the average church, and 5 times more effective than the average megachurch.
• Even after four years, the typical new church is still 17 times more effective in evangelism than the average church and 3 times more effective in evangelism than the average megachurch.

My church plant is not a megachurch — far from it! But we have seen real kingdom growth. My last church was not a megachurch either — but we consistently maintained a conversion growth ratio of 10% or more.

In the kingdom numbers do matter. But let’s keep our eyes on the right numbers — the number of unchurched people entering a life-giving relationship with Jesus.

The temptation among spiritual leaders (perhaps, especially, for church planters) is to “never let them see you sweat” — to wear masks and disguises, to work behind the scenes to make things appear better than they really are. Sometimes this is an effort to make our church “look good” in the eyes of the ones we’re trying so desperately hard to reach. At other times, it’s an effort to make ourselves look good — an effort to convince ourselves and others that we really do know what we are doing.

But when we do this — when we turn to masks, manipulation, and maneuvering — we actually veil the gospel. People end up looking at us and to us rather than looking at and to Jesus. Ironically, the very thing that we hope to do — making things look more attractive — ends up detracting from what God is doing. This goes all the way back to the Garden, where we humans hid for the very first time.

Too many times we end up like the Saul of the Old Testament, small in our own eyes, trying very hard to hide our smallness from others. We heed the voice of the deceiver who convinces us to tell ourselves, “If they knew me for who I really am, they wouldn’t like me, much less follow me.”

How much better to be like the Saul of the New Testament, the Saul who became Paul, who realized that “we carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of ordinary lives,” and went on to tell us why we must do this:

“That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at.” (2 Corinthians 4:7b-8a MSG)

When I’m convinced that my ministry is “not much to look at” — not very impressive — I may be in the very place that God wants me to be, carrying His bright message around in a very ordinary container.