By Pastor Kerry Nelson

Pastor David Hanson of St. John, Prairie Hill, was the first person to send me the following link: http://willimon.blogspot.com/2010/06/anything-worth-doing-for-god-is-worth.html
 
Bishop Will Willimon of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church (our newest ecumenical full communion partners in ministry) came to his position with a dismal 20 year old track record of decline. Year after year. Fewer baptized members. Fewer people in worship. Fewer ministries happening.  Fewer people being reached.  Fewer adult baptisms. Fewer financial gifts for ministry support. But, rather than presiding over continued decline, Bishop Willimon decided to try something different.
 
First, he reached back behind the history of the Methodist movement to the stories of Jesus and fruitfulness, to the book of Acts and the growth of the church. And he reached back into the history of the Methodist movement to John Wesley and Wesley's insistence on accountability.
 
From Bishop Willimon's blog from June 1st, 2010: Wesley frequently cites numerical growth as indicative of spiritual vitality. In his sermon "On God's Vineyard," Wesley celebrates that the London Methodist Society grew from 12 to 2,200 in just about 25 years...
 
Wesley sent pastors to those areas where, in his estimate, there were the most souls to be saved. He told his traveling preachers not just that they ought to read, but also put a number on it: at least five hours a day. Wesley also kept a close eye (with charts in the annual "Minutes") on how much money was collected each year for Kingswood School, for new preaching houses, for the pension fund, for operating expenses. The Annual Conference was invented, not just as opportunity for worship and fellowship, but mostly for the purpose of everyone rendering account and confessing their numbers.
 
I can't speak for other church families, but in the Wesleyan family, studied obliviousness to results, deploying pastors without regard to their fruitfulness, pastors shrinking churches, pastors keeping house among the older folks left there by the work of a previous generation of pastors, and churches having a grand old time loving one another and praising God without inviting, seeking, and saving those outside the church, do not make for faithfulness.
 
"Numbers aren't important." Really? Tell that to Jesus and his parables of growth and fruitfulness. Tell it to the Acts of the Apostles.
 
Then, in addition to casting this new vision of accountability, he actually made it visible by creating what they call a "Conference Dashboard":  http://www.northalabamaumc.org/weeklyreport.asp  Click on this link and you will see an online tool in which every congregation in their conference is expected to visit every Monday morning, reporting what it happening in their ministry.
 
You can just imagine the kind of pushback that Bishop Willimon has received! In fact, you don't have to imagine it. Just spend a little time clicking on the blogs and reading the comments.  Accountability is a hard thing to implement and adhere to. We resist it for any number of reasons.
 
The question is, has it been helpful? Here is an excerpt from Bishop Willimon's blog from last week:

We opened Annual Conference this year with our Conference Statistician (and Connectional Ministries Director) Lori Carden, giving us some dismal, rather frightening statistics. Then the next day Adam Hamilton opened his address by saying that if the general church continues on its present path of an aging and shrinking membership, the United Methodist Church will no longer be a viable entity in just five decades. Bad news indeed.
 
But now the good news: North Alabama has been engaged in a process of visible accountability for congregations and pastors (the Conference Dashboard), has instituted the evaluation process and renewal programs of Natural Church Development in all our congregations, and has cast a new spirit of setting goals for growth.
 
And here's even better news: It's working! In the last two years we have reversed the trend that has afflicted us for the last twenty years. We are showing measurable growth in our numbers for Professions of Faith and for Baptisms. This is because effective pastors and congregations throughout our Conference are making reaching a new generation of Christians into a top priority...
 
Among most Conferences, the goal is simply to slow the decline. North Alabama has dared to pray for more. And it is deeply gratifying to see visible evidence of the Holy Spirit moving among us. Behind every one of these numbers is a family reached, a person saved, a soul that is welcomed and included into the family of faith. And behind every number is a congregation and a pastor who is not threatened by our Wesleyan ethos of accountability and growth but is excited that we are focused on "the main thing" - salvation of the world in Jesus Christ.
 
"You only count what is important and whatever you count becomes important," says one of our slogans. By counting every week the new life that God gives us, we are making that new life the engine that is driving our church life. Not content to care for the needs of who is already there, our churches are reaching out to those who are not.
 
It's good news by the numbers which is Good News indeed.

How would our synod react to a weekly "Synod Dashboard?"

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