Stetzer, Ed and Rainer, Thom S. Transformational Church: Creating a New Scorecard for Congregations. B&H Publishing, 2010. ISBN: 9781433669300.
Meet the Authors
Ed Stetzer is the President and Missiologist in Residence of LifeWay Research. Ed is a contributing editor for Christianity Today, a columnist for Outreach Magazine and Catalyst Monthly, serves on the advisory council of Sermon Central and Christianity Today’s Building Church Leaders, and is frequently cited or interviewed in news outlets such as USA Today and CNN. Additionally, he is a visiting professor of research and missiology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, visiting professor of research at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and has taught at fifteen other colleges and seminaries. He also serves on the Church Services Team at the International Mission Board. For more information, like him on facebook, follow him on twitter, or read his blog.
Thom S. Rainer is the President and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources. Previously, he was the founding dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and also President and CEO of The Rainer Group. He is the author of over twenty books including Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Proven Ways to Reach Them, Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples, and Breakout Churches: Discover How to Make the Leap. For more information, follow him on twitter or read his blog.
Book Basics
Transformational Church is an important read for those who serve in church leadership positions because it seeks to provide a new standard for how local congregations measure success. The old scorecard of bodies, budget and buildings was church-absorbed and inadequate for analyzing the health of a given local congregation. To generate a new scorecard, Stetzer and Rainer engaged in extensive research with American Protestant congregations. The process began with 7,000 phone interviews of Protestant pastors, which enabled them to generate basic criteria for the top ten percent. The next phase consisted of 250 face-to-face interviews with pastors from congregations in that top tier, which led to the further refinement of criteria and survey of 15,000 church members. Together all of this data suggests what the authors call transformational church principles.
The top local congregations, known as transformational churches, measure favorably against the new scorecard or transformational loop. The loop consists of three categories with seven elements:
- Discern (1 element: missionary mentality)
- Embrace (3 elements: vibrant leadership, relational intentionality, and prayerful dependence)
- Engage (3 elements: worship: actively embrace Jesus, community: connect people with people, and mission: show Jesus through word and action)
While the graphic chosen for the loop shows a move from one to another of the categories, the authors indicate that congregations can and do begin at any point.
Transformational Church provides a helpful mix of statistics and stories that enable readers to visualize what each element might look like in their own ministry context. In the conclusion, Stetzer and Rainer sum the transformational work up with these words:
We must work for nothing less than the church’s mission to see people transformed to look like Christ, churches to act like the body of Christ, and communities changed to reflect the kingdom of God. The living goal of the church must be the living Christ alive in others (p.230).
So What?
How does your local congregation define success? Do you measure more than just bodies, budget and buildings? If so, what and how?
As you continue to refine your understanding of what success looks like and establish means to measure progress toward that goal, how do you ensure it becomes part of your congregational DNA?
Would you characterize your congregation as a transformational church? Why or why not?