Over the past several months I have repeatedly heard church leaders, it seems, talking about how important it is for the future of the church to move past our preoccupation with the numbers (i.e. people and offerings), and seriously start asking ourselves an important question:

How big of a difference are we making in our community, and if our congregation were to suddenly disappear, what size hole would we leave?

In part, as a result of our consumer-driven culture, most communities are filled with LOTS of churches. But how many of them are considered indispensible by the majority of citizens who live there?  It's a notion most church leaders, I fear, have not given much thought to before, myself included.  But since the beginning of this year, the idea surrounding how indispensible our congregation might be to our community has stopped being a question and has now become a challenge.

So where is your congregation in all of this?  Where are you?  Would you consider the question this post suggests to be valid? And if so, how might you suggest we measure this theoretical "hole?"  To get you thinking, here are three possibilities:

• How easy/difficult would it be for your community to replace your church's work among the poor and unemployed?
• If your church were to stop doing for the community what it's been doing, would it make the front page? the back page? Any page?
• Do the other congregations in your community look to your church for resources of any kind?

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