One year ago I accepted a challenge from Michael Gatlin.  It boiled down to this (paraphrasing wildly):

“Set a goal for how many people will be led to Christ through the ministry of your church in the next year. Be bold about it, and then have the guts to tell your church about it, and then keep count.”

I didn’t like that very much. Primarily because it presented me with yet another opportunity to fail (as if it were about me anyway, right?).  But, in the interest of full-disclosure, it scared me to death–and largely for personal/selfish reasons.

What if we don’t even come close? What if I get up in front of the whole church and tell them we’re gonna do this, and tell them how important it is, and a year later I have to get up and tell them that it was a huge flop?  Besides, focusing on numbers makes me squeamish.

But we went for it anyway.  The goal: 100.  At the time the church’s attendance was about 250.

We set up an admittedly flawed system to count (we didn’t want to just count hands in the air, so people had to come to us afterwards and we gave them some information).  It’s impossible to keep an accurate count of something inherently spiritual and completely supernatural, but we felt it was important enough to try.

Last Sunday was the one year mark.  The total: 98.

Maybe it was more, and maybe it was less…but we counted 98, and I’m ecstatic!  My heart changed a few months into this deal.  I realized that it gave us focus and a clear vision, and whether we got close to our goal or not, the bottomline was that our church was going to reach more people. Suddenly saving face didn’t matter.