Measuring part 2

My last post on measuring community was about practical and concrete evidence. Recently I had an opportunity to have a conversation with Bob Laurent, teaching pastor at Granger Community Church about how you measure true community. This brief talk with Bob led me to a fact that may seem easy to measure, but in actuality is not.  Here it is:

"What God touches grows."
  If we are in a truly God centered community, where His vision and purpose are central, then that community will grow in numbers, in maturity, and  in how it impacts the community around it.  It's not about numbers alone.  Strictly looking at numbers can be very mis-representative of the health of a community because there can be growth without God's touch.  What you cannot have is God's touch without growth.  Numbers are easy to count, so many churches will stop there: attendance, hands raised in commitment, size of the budget.  But how do you count maturity and community impact? How do you measure those? That was the question I had for Bob.

 Here is his answer: Sacrifice. Being willing to be vulnerable is one of the greatest sacrifices you can make.  To be willing to take off the mask you wear, and show who you really are is a huge sacrifice because it puts your very self on the table for examination.  It's personally risky because every one of us knows that it's like dying if that openness is cut down, judged, and dismissed as lacking.  And we all know we aren't perfect, so we know what we are revealing when we are vulnerable.  We know we are revealing something that is not good enough, and never will be good enough.  There's something broken in everything, including ourselves. We are broken, and admitting it to someone is risky.

 Here's what I would add to this: Christ calls us to go one step further into that sacrifice, to not only be real with each other, but to also openly confess to each other where we fall short.  And when someone confesses to you, your job is to forgive as God's representative.  There's a lot of meaning in offering this forgiveness.  For starters, we are being given the responsibility and authority of heaven with this task of forgiveness.  Jesus said when he gave his disciples the Holy Spirit in John 20:23 "If you forgive anyone's sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."  And after he taught the Lord's prayer in Matthew 6 he immediately followed it with the words "If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins."  So not only do we have the job of giving forgiveness, but we have a personal stake in doing so.  If we withhold forgiveness, God will withhold forgiveness from us.

So, if we are trying to measure a community by how well is sacrifices, here's how we do it:  look at how well that community offers forgiveness.  How gracious are we, when we are cut off while driving?  How forgiving are we when someone hurts us?  How patient are we?

Matthew 6:12  "and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us."