Stewards of God’s Mysteries
Or
Measuring (Campus) Ministry Effectiveness: The Numbers Must Sum to Grace
A Position Paper
April 2000
Bill Van Groningen
Abstract:
Numbers count, of course, but since we are "stewards of God's mysteries" (I Cor. 4:1), there is much more than numbers that needs recounting. After briefly deconstructing two common categories of ministry evaluation ("measurement" and "effectiveness"), we will explore some possibilities opened up by utilizing a "hermeneutic of grace." This interpretive approach begins with the assumption of a good work begun (creation), is aware of the reality of things not being the way they ought to be (sin and evil), and is alert to present signs and symbols that point to a promised future flourishing (redemption and consummation). For stewards "to be found trustworthy" (I Cor. 4:2), the numbers must sum to grace.
The death of Jesus carries with it the promise of resurrection, but the power of the resurrection is in God’s hands, not ours. Our actions are therefore to be judged not by their calculable efficacy in producing desirable results but by their correspondence to Jesus’ example.
--Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament p.197
Lurking around behind this paper is a sweltering decade (and more) of misunderstanding, contempt, bemusement, faithfully getting on with the job, accountability failure, the job not getting done, and a host of other concerns. In short, we—both practitioners of ministry and those called to supervise and evaluate those practitioners—have found it difficult to determine how best to measure effective ministry.
We are all guilty. We chafe at the need to justify our service in merely numerical terms. We know better. If numbers are all that counts, then let’s just do what it takes to draw a crowd. Door prizes, free food, slick advertizing, and an entertaining show: these all and more are guaranteed to bring in the masses. But we all know that that’s not what counts. What counts is changed hearts and minds. What counts is faithfulness and mercy. What counts is justice and truth. So why, then, when we gather as ministry staff, do we all find ways to report—numerically—just how big and busy our ministry is? This year, X number of people attend our weekly big-group event. Last winter, Y number of people crowded into a lecture hall to hear the public debate we sponsored. At orientation, we gave away so many Zillion hot dogs wrapped in napkins printed with our ministry address and logo.
Guilty. And we know it. We know—even if we sometimes have trouble convincing ourselves—that ultimately the numbers don’t really count. They don’t really tell us what we want to know the most. Somehow, though they recount all there is to know, they fail to tell us anything. Sting sings it well:
Sting
10 Summoner’s Tales, 1995 A&M Records
Epilogue (Nothing ‘Bout Me)
Lay my head on the surgeon’s table
Take my fingerprints if you are able
Pick brain, pick my pockets
Steal my eyeballs and come back for the sockets
Run every kind of test from A to Z
And you’ll still know nothing ‘bout me.
Run my name through your computer
Mention me in passing to your college tutor
Check my records, check my facts
Check if I paid my income tax
Pore ever everything in my C.V.
But you’ll still know nothing ‘bout me
You’ll still know nothing ‘bout me.
You don’t need to read no books on my history
I’m a simple man, it’s no mystery
In the cold weather, a hand needs a glove
At times like this, a lonely man like me needs love
Search my house with a fine tooth comb
Turn over everything ‘cause I won’t be at home
Set up your microscope and tell me what you see
You’ll still know nothing ‘bout me.
Yet, numbers are important. The Scriptures report numbers in detail—not just in the book so named, but also in the gospel records, recounting things like how many loaves and fish fed how many thousands of people with how many baskets left over. But just as surely, numbers don’t tell all of what needs to be told. Presence—“loitering with intent” as the slogan for campus ministry put it some years ago—is an essential though non-quantifiable characteristic of significant ministry. Few, however, would argue that just hanging around itself constitutes faithful, let alone effective, ministry. The point is simply this: what to measure (who showed up vs. changed hearts and minds), as well as how to measure (non-quantifiable ministry presence), is contested turf.
The dictionary states that an effect is “something brought about by a cause or agent.” To be effective is to have an intended effect, “to produce a desired impression.” But again, the turf is quickly contested. After all, who but God can truly cause hearts of stone to become hearts of flesh? Who, really, can gather the wind? At best we are agents, agents of the mystery of grace. Go figure.
And whose desires are supposed to be met anyway? Whose impression really counts? If one person honors a ministry to the “littlest and least” while another seeks to feed “five thousand, with room for many more,” is one desire more normative than the other? And if so, why? If a person’s life was completely changed as a result of some ministry and that person therefore has the impression that the ministry has a comprehensive, transformative effect on people, should that impression be invalidated by the impression of many others that the ministry is of little account since it only really effects a few people? Again, the turf is quickly contested.
Perhaps we should ask, “What would Jesus do?”
Clearly, the intended effect of God in sending Jesus into the world was to redeem the world. The “desired impression” was that creation would once again flourish freely in all its dimensions. Measured against the promise of God’s eschatalogical victory, we reflect on God’s work and, echoing the days of creation, say again: it is good. But measured against the current complex reality of the “already but not yet,” things perhaps don’t really look so good after all. Here and now, people die. Creation groans. Does this mean that God is not really effective?
As the above little deconstructive forays suggest, when we apply a “hermeneutic of suspicion” to the notion of measuring ministry effectiveness, the notion crumbles all too quickly into a rubble of conceptual confusion. The confusion arises, it seems, because the notion requires that we have readily at hand, or can easily construct, an objective and verifiable standard for measurement and effectiveness. Alas, such is not the case. And the works of Nietzsche, Foucault, Wolterstorff, Derrida, Westphal, et.al., teach us that when we think such is the case, we merely impose/force our subjective preferences on others. Interestingly, the biblical record seems to agree.
In the biblical narrative, the shepherd leaves the many at risk for the sake of one lost sheep. Conversely, one (Jesus) is abandoned in order that the world (many) might be saved. Neither the one, nor the many, quantifiably justify anything. The one and the many always justify only in relation to the other. It is the relation that counts (and the pun is fully intended!).
Likewise, in the biblical narrative, “major” prophets are utterly ineffective—Ezekiel and Jeremiah fail to effect the transformation they demand—while ineffective “minor” prophets (e.g., runaway-Jonah) are agents of redemption for entire cities, including the livestock they contain! When effectiveness is understood in terms of empirical (demonstrable, verifiable, quantifiable) outcomes, it is soon rendered moot to what matters.
So what does matter? Precisely here, when we turn from critical analysis to positive alternative, a “hermeneutic of suspicion” becomes utterly useless. Suspicion can provide an invaluable reflective—constructively critical—task, but by its very nature is unable to provide a way forward. It looks back, not ahead. (This, by the way, is essentially the Christian critique of all post-modern deconstructive theorists. Insofar as they serve a constructively critical task, so good; but when they say that that is all that can be done, they say far too much—usually saying that all there is, is absolutely relative!)
By contrast, Christian theorists employ what some have termed a “hermeneutic of retrieval.” Remembering especially the prologue of John’s Gospel, they literally remember that the Word of redemption and renewal is voiced by none other than the Creator, whose originating Word is the genesis of all things good. And while we are admittedly always constrained by our own subjective particularity, that is therefore not the end of the story. For insofar as what we say and do—in so far as the story we tell—participates in the larger story of God at work in our world, so far are our particular, subjective stories rooted in the Word. Our words, rooted in the Word, participate in—retrieve and present anew—the truth that is at work in our world.
When we apply a “hermeneutic of retrieval” to the notion of “effectiveness” we see that what we are after is the most complete and comprehensive way to “retrieve and present anew” the good things God has given. Biblically, then, effectiveness is a matter of incarnation. It is the Word being made flesh (Genesis 1, John 1). It is God’s indwelling presence flooding over us and throughout the world (Acts 2). It is all creation once again being set free to flourish (Isaiah 60, Haggai 2:6ff, Revelation 21). What counts is that we are found “on the Way” to that great Day—regardless of the immediate outcome, be it martyrdom (Stephen), conquest (David), or the more ordinary daily routines of suffering love (the good Samaritan).
What counts as being on the way, of course, is again always open to interpretation. The early chapters of Luke’s Gospel are helpful here. As Jesus is baptized, a voice from heaven declares “you are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased” (3:22) And from that point forward, Jesus’ public ministry unfolds. He resists the devil’s temptations (4ff), he teaches and preaches with powerful effect in the local synagogues (4:16ff), he casts out unclean spirits (4:35,41), heals a slew of people—even mothers-in-law (4:40), preaches some more (4:42ff), calls disciples (5), heals more people—lepers and paralytics (5:12ff), calls Levi—a tax collector—to come be a disciple (5:27), and teaches a whole bunch more, generally restoring our withered condition. In his wake, people and communities and all creation begin to flourish like never before.
Meanwhile, though rotting in Herod’s prison, John the Baptist undoubtedly hears about all this good stuff. And just as surely, John also hears that the local folks in Nazareth don’t think much of Jesus (4:16ff). Nor for that matter do many of the respected religious leaders of the land. And, much more directly, John can’t help but wonder whether his present rotting reality ought to “count” for or against Jesus. So John sends his disciples to ask Jesus: Are you really the One?
Characteristically, Jesus doesn’t really answer the question. He responds instead with what may be termed a “hermeneutic of experience.” What do you see? What do you hear? What does your experience tell you? Is the story of God’s good news unfolding in our midst? Is God’s good creation being set free to flourish once again? Is God’s presence becoming incarnate among and within his people? In other words, says Jesus, if you were to tell the story of God at work in our world, what would you tell? What, of all the stuff you see me saying and doing, fits into the story? What, from what you see and hear, counts as Gospel? What counts as being “on the way”? What, from the perspective of God’s great Day, needs to be included in the story? What recounting of the story best reveals how God is at work in our world?
When Jesus responds to his questioners like this, he is engaging in a hermeneutic of experience. He is not teaching his disciples an apologetic strategy. He is not telling them to go “research the facts” and prepare for a debate with the doubters of the day. He is not advising them to search out what is absolute, what is scientifically verifiable, what is without doubt. No. Jesus is goading his audience to dare to live just as they know—trusting that the revelation of God’s goodness as it is revealed among us, will be sufficient to the day. It is not absolute; it requires faith. It is not without doubt; it requires humility and trust. We do not always get it right. People stumble and fall. We all sin. But God’s grace is sufficient to the day
Sufficient to the day.
When asked to tell the story of this or that ministry, would we not do well to rely on that which is sufficient to the day, namely, a “hermeneutic of grace.” Might it not be the case that a “hermeneutic of grace” could provide the best interpretive filter for what counts (and what doesn’t) for the story we need to tell? What would happen if, rather than evaluating our ministries in terms of (numerical) measurements and (intended) effects, we instead recounted the story of our ministries filtered through a “hermeneutic of grace.” Such, it seems to me, is what Jesus was prone to do. And such, it seems to me, is what the Scriptures do.
A hermeneutic of grace, I suggest, would assume a hermeneutic of retrieval, engage a hermeneutic of suspicion, and send us forth with a hermeneutic of experience. Would not the stories of our ministries, born of such reflection, recount our situation well? Such stories would not deny sin or evil. Nor would they start there. These stories would not be fanciful tales of preferred realities, but earthy and concrete reports of what is. Amazing and mysterious things would no doubt often appear. Seasoned with hope, these stories would nonetheless refuse to diminish the frustration, the ambiguity, or the complexity of our broken lives and troubled times. They would be stories of grace and truth—a potent telling of reality. They would be stories of the kingdom come—stories that tune our hearts and focus our minds to rejoice in the light that shines through the cracks of our living. Such stories would describe in detail any and all creative, nurturing, inclusive spaces harboring the littlest, the least, and all those labeled “other.” They would tell stories of welcome and flourishing—however humble their scope. These stories would recount fear and wonder, revealing the contours of grace, however darkly perceived in that day.
In the end, of course, numbers still count. But since we are "stewards of God's mysteries" (I Cor. 4:1), there is much more than numbers that needs recounting. For stewards "to be found trustworthy" (I Cor. 4:2), the numbers must sum to grace.
