How can you tell if your church is missing the mark?

It seems one of the most popular topics for articles in Christian leadership circles is about how to tell if a church is “on target.”

Or if a church is “on the right track.”

Or “on mission.”

Or just as important, how can you tell if a church is “missing the mark.”

Missionary and author, Lou Nicholes, tells a story about how a church learned it was “missing the mark” the hard way:

Some time ago an 18-year-old girl from Washington state attended a worship service. For the first time in her life she heard the gospel message (Mark 16:15). The next week the church received a letter from her. It read: “Dear Church members: Last Sunday I attended your church, and I heard your preacher. He said that all men have sinned against God. Because of their sin they all face eternal separation from God. But then he also said God loved men and sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to redeem men from their sins and all those who believe in Him would go to heaven and live with God eternally. My parents recently died. I know they did not believe in Jesus Christ. If what you believe is true, they are damned. You compel me to believe that you yourself either don’t believe this message, or that you don’t care. You see, we live only three blocks from your church, and no one ever told us.”

Using that story alone as an example of what it means for a church to miss the mark might be overly simplistic.

Even so, we must always come back to this …

The mission of the church is to make disciples (Mt. 28:18-20). The ministry of every Christian is a ministry of reconciliation, with every Christian equipped with the Gospel to serve as ambassadors for Jesus Christ so that God can make His appeal through us (2 Cor. 5:28-20). So if a church is failing to proclaim the Gospel to the lost, it is missing the mark.

Scotty