Ah..Numb3rs. I love the show…but I also seem to love numbers. Perhaps it is because I am, in real life, a computer guy. I dig math. However, God called me out of the computer matrix into the church. What I find is I can still dig math, statistics, and numbers. Yet, I’m begining to sense a dark side to the whole numbers game. Living in the United Methodist tribe, I find we love numbers. We have forms to fill out and get in on time so others can see our numbers. We have websites that track numbers. We even (for a while) had a catchy slogan; "We count people because people count" Why do we keep track of our numbers? So we can know how we are doing….ah…there’s the rub. What I’m discovering is that when I become focused on the numbers, I’m focused on the wrong thing. What I’m finding is, when the folks in my congregation are focused on the numbers, they are focused on the wrong thing. Actually, as we focus on the numbers, we take our focus off the main thing. Bottom line: we get distracted. Numbers do have their place I guess. But they also can generate a very real problem especially as we try to find new forms of ministry. Here’s an example: In our community there are several "social networks" that meet on Sunday mornings. Perhaps they are Pop Warner players, flea market shoppers, model airplane flyers, or some other ‘social network’ that people belong to. If the social network meets on Sunday, guess what, that is the main time for worship in the area I serve. If I’m focused on the Numbers, I will have a great tempation to "convince" people to forgo their social network and come join the social network I’m a part of (Church). If I’m focused on reaching social networks with the Good News, I might be more apt to convince folks to go ahead and be a part of their social network and to inflitrate it with the Good News (which could take quite a while). With the focus on reaching new social groups it means that the Sunday morning numbers will be down. Also, if the congregation is more focused on social groups than numbers then it means we will ‘do’ church differently. I am becoming more convinced that it is time to do away with our Number crunching. So far it has caused us (United Methodist Tribe at least) to be far to focus on things to get people into the church building so we can count them (because they do count after all). If we do away with the Numbers, perhaps the church will be free to focus on reaching new social groups and going out to them rather than bent on getting them into the building. I’m sure I’ll have more later…..but this was quite a lot.