Every pastor in the Church of the Nazarene must submit an Annual Pastor Report (APR). It contains the financial and attendance data from the previous church year. This data reports valuable information for the denominational research team. While the APR information may be prized to those few people in research labs and PhD candidates, a new APR short form could reflect more of what Jesus told us to track in the local church.*
The Jesus-inspired APR Short Form would not have worship attendance (Jesus didn’t tell us to gather crowds); it would not include total monies raised (to Jesus, generosity wasn’t determined by the size of the gift. See: the widow’s mite); and it would not include monies spent on buildings (there are no directives from Jesus to build any edifices). Jesus wasn’t overly impressed with money, buildings or crowds.
What would be included? Jesus’ Great Commission prioritizes baptisms and making disciples. Baptisms are easy to track (who got wet?). Discipleship is harder. Our disciple making matrix has been classroom (small group) learning. A better determiner of disciples-making is service involvement. Discipleship is caught not taught (although that is an oversimplification. Obviously, teaching is involved). Instead of counting Sunday School (small group) numbers, let’s track the number of people serving in some capacity. The new Jesus versioned APR would reflect baptisms the number of people serving (questions 1 and 2)
In Jesus’ famous judgement day, sheep and goat parable (Matthew 25:31-46), the priorities are feeding the hungry, offering drink to the thirsty; sheltering the stranger; clothing the naked; caring for the sick and visiting the prisoners. In other words, prioritizing the poor and justice matters. Any numbers on a APR should reflect the hours that disciples are in the community and dollars spent on addressing issues of poverty and injustice. (questions 3 and 4).
Here’s what the entire new APR form would look like:
Number of Baptisms
Number of People involved in ministry/service in the church
Number of hours spent in ministry/service in the community
Dollars given to help the poor/needy.
To appease the folks in Lenexa, there could be a box at the bottom of the form with the following question: Did you pay your apportionments in full? Yes or No. (Note: Jesus never told anyone to pay apportionments, but including the question would make the bean counters happy and show a commitment to the denomination).
That’s it.
That’s the form.
Four numbers to track and one question to answer.
This Jesus-inspired APR short form would be basis on which success and failure are determined and what is highlighted at denominational gatherings. If we get those four numbers right and we focus on just those four things, then all the other numbers on the APR long-form will take care of themselves.
Let’s simplify and prioritize the things that Jesus called us to prioritize.
*The long form with its bazillion questions (slight exaggeration) could still be collected for the researchers. Somewhere someone might benefit from knowing the number of children enrolled in Caravans (If you have to ask what’s “Caravans” put “zero” in that column), or maybe not.
**This post in no way is a dig at the research team at the Nazarene GMC. They do valuable work, and I deeply appreciate their efforts. The post is directed toward what is most beneficial to the local church and how churches can be laser focused in accomplishing the mission of Christ.
My Two Cent Offering 