Standardized Spiritual Maturity?

In a culture fixated with numbers of all sorts, it was only a matter of time...

Today, while enjoying my afternoon caffeine infusion at a local coffee shop I couldn't help but overhear a self-proclaimed "Christian Maturity Data Analyst"(honestly, I wasn't being nosey, the person was simply VERY loud!). He was busily regaling his potential client with stories of the importance of "tracking baby Christians" -- measuring the speed with which they are progressing toward maturity and their ability to "meaningfully contribute" (in dollars, hours and skill sets) to the life of the congregation within the shortest amount of time. And apparently, this evangelist for charts, graphs and metrics had developed the computer software that would crunch such numbers.

Six Sigma meets Salvation. Good Lord, deliver us.

Apparently the proprietary software assigns mathematical values to:

1. The number of times one attends worship.

2. The number of church-sponsored education/enrichment opportunities one attends (and number of worksheets correctly completed for "credit").

3. The number of tasks one performs for the benefit of the congregation (appropriately "weighted" to account for the investment of time required for each task).

4. The number of outreach activities in which one is engaged and last but not least...

5. The amount of money one gives each year, with an emphasis on the "growing one's financial commitment" to the life of the church.

I was sitting with my back to this conversation, attempting to remain focused on my reading when I heard the following from out of the salesperson's mouth:

"After all, church is too important to allow non-productivity. Let all those other so-called churches with their touchy-feely penchant for 'mercy' (he said sarcastically) have the dead weight! Those churches are dying anyway. The way a church grows to its fullest potential is when it minimizes the elapsed time between a new person's arrival in the church and the time when that same person maximizes his/her giving for the furtherance of the ministry."

The Protestant penchant for works righteousness meets the information age. Uh oh. I have to confess, I didn't stay around to hear if the salesperson made the sale, but the emphatic nature of his presentation made it clear that he was a BELIEVER -- if not in Jesus, then certainly in the product he was peddling.

I'm not sure how I feel about the salesperson's ease with the "assembly line approach to faith development." His fixation with metrics doesn't fit well with my understanding of the ongoing maturation process, which is such a crucial part of the spiritual journey.

We grow in fits and starts. Some days we're feasting on the "meat of the Gospel" and other days we're barely able to swallow a bit of "spiritual milk". We cannot be "processed through to productivity" (yes, I actually heard this phrase!) by the sheer application external pressure.

Maybe the "Christian Maturity Data Analyst" was right. Those of us who are into "mercy" will not likely produce mind-blowing statistics or accurately track new members' conversion ratios. Perhaps we'll simply have to settle for stories of lives changed by an encounter with the Risen Lord.

Come to think of it, those 1st century followers of Jesus didn't have any means of tracking their progress. They were simply too busy making tracks to the next town to tell their stories of Jesus. And along the way, they lost count of how many were joining up with them for the trip...but by the looks of things, enough people down through the centuries have showed up and stuck to it, and we are the beneficiaries of their faithfulness (standardized or otherwise!).

Thanks be to God.