From Baseball Analytics to Church Discipleship: Why the Numbers Matter

By Pastor Doug

I’m a big Chicago Cubs fan. So you can imagine how I felt when they won the World Series in 2016—on top of the world. But in the nine years since that historic win, I’ve noticed something remarkable happening in the world of baseball: analytics have taken over.

It all started (at least in the public eye) with the movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt. The story follows a general manager who ditched traditional scouting instincts in favor of hiring a stats-savvy analyst to build a winning team. Instead of relying on what a player looked like, they looked at stats like On-base Percentage (OBP), Slugging Percentage (SLG), Weighted On-base Average (wOBA), and Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+). Some baseball purists hated it. Others embraced it. But there’s no denying: analytics changed the game.

And now, analytics are changing the Church too.

Moving Beyond Attendance and Budgets

For years, churches have measured success with the “three Bs”: butts, bucks, and buildings—attendance, giving, and facilities. But just like baseball moved beyond batting average, the Church is beginning to shift from output goals to input goals—the things that help people actually grow in their faith.

In a recent post, I shared a study from Lifeway Research about discipleship. They identified 8 attributes of a growing disciple of Christ:

1. Bible Engagement

2. Obeying God and Denying Self

3. Serving God and Others

4. Sharing Christ

5. Exercising Faith

6. Seeking God

7. Building Relationships

8. Unashamed (Transparency)

These aren’t just ideals—they’re measurable outcomes of spiritual growth. As I researched I also found that certain spiritual disciplines consistently help people grow in all eight of these areas. Four disciplines stood out above the rest:

1. Attending weekly worship services

2. Daily Scripture reading

3. Being part of a small community

4. Actively serving others

Putting Discipleship Analytics into Practice

In the middle of the pandemic in 2020, our church took the discipleship assessment from Lifeway. The results helped us refocus on these four key disciplines. So, our elders began to intentionally guide our congregation in these directions. Here’s how we translated those disciplines into actionable practices:

1. Sunday Morning Worship

   We encouraged regular, in-person attendance—making it a spiritual priority, not just a weekly habit.

2. Daily Devotion: The 5-5-5 Plan

   We introduced a simple, approachable rhythm: 5 minutes of Bible reading, 5 minutes of prayer, 5 days a week. This came from the “On Mission” training by the Missionary Church denomination. It’s an easy on-ramp for developing consistency in time with God.

3. LifeGroups: The Next Step in Community

   LifeGroups were already part of our church, but we challenged people to go deeper—not just studying the Bible, but applying it and holding each other accountable. One of the questions we began asking regularly: “How is your 5-5-5?”

4. Serving with Purpose

   We helped people discover how God designed them to serve using spiritual gift assessments, personality profiles, and their own passions and experiences. The expectation grew: everyone has a role in ministry.

A New Way to Measure Church Health

For the first time in 2025, we used these four input goals to evaluate our ministry year—not attendance, not budget, not how many events we pulled off. Here’s what we measured instead:

1. Sunday Attendance Engagement

   87% of our church attended worship on a typical Sunday.

2. 5-5-5 Participation

   Among our leadership team and their spouses, 83% were actively doing their 5-5-5. We still need a better way to track this church-wide, but it’s a start.

3. LifeGroup Involvement

   81% of our church were involved in a LifeGroup.

4. Serving in Ministry

   78% of our church was actively serving in some capacity.

Our elders emphasized one key truth: this isn’t about legalism. We’re not tracking numbers for numbers’ sake. These disciplines aren’t boxes to check—they’re pathways to heart transformation. We want people to engage in worship, devotions, community, and service with the right attitude.

Why This Matters

This shift was revolutionary for our leadership. For the first time, we had meaningful data that showed real growth in the hearts and lives of our people. We saw people taking their next step in following Jesus. We saw genuine life change.

And yes—the analytics backed it up.

We’re going to keep encouraging these four discipleship practices, not because we want higher stats, but because we believe the fruit will be more Christlike people. As the numbers grow, so does spiritual maturity. And that’s something worth measuring.

Switching Price Tags in Churches

Pastor Doug Beutler

There were 2 friends who loved to play pranks on people.  Over the years they had gotten really good at this.  There was a local store owner in this small town that did not like these 2 boys.  He thought they were disrespectful.  So these 2 boys decided to have a little fun and pull a prank on this particular store owner.  They snuck into the local store but they didn’t take anything.  All they did was switch the price tags on the merchandise.  A can of pop was now $695 and a TV was $1.25.  A gallon of milk was $1,250 and a computer was $2.99.  A dress shirt was $250 and a riding lawn mower was $5.  The next day when the store owner opened his store within an hour there was mass confusion and he had to close.

Sometimes I think the church looks like this today.  For decades the church has looked at success as having 3 elements.  The first element of success was how many people you have coming to your church.  The more people you can squeeze into your sanctuary the better.  The second element of success was once your sanctuary is packed then you need a building program.  The building program would attract even more people and it would look like your church was going places in the community.  The third element of success was that as the church grew it would need staff which that would require money.  The more money you could raise the more programs you could run.  If you did not have these 3 elements in your church then you would be considered a failure as a pastor.  There are denominations and churches who still believe this lie.

One of the churches that pioneered this philosophy was Willow Creek Community Church.  But in 2010 Willow Creek took a look at whether the church was actually producing disciples that were maturing in their faith.  In a blog by Chuck Warnock he wrote that the results of Willow’s study showed church programs in and of themselves do not produce spiritually mature Christians. Non-Christians and new Christians grew with Willow’s programming but those “close to Christ” and those who are “centered on Christ” their programming didn’t help.  https://chuckwarnockblog.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/willow-creek-study-says-church-programs-dont-make-better-disciples/  So the question is what helps people to grow Spiritually?

LifeWay Research began a study in 2011, as part of their biggest discipleship study to date, and interviewed discipleship experts from eight countries, as well as surveyed 1,000 pastors and more than 4,000 Protestants from North America.  The intense study revealed 8 attributes of discipleship that consistently show up in the lives of followers of Christ who are progressing in spiritual growth.  They are:

1)     Biblical Engagement

2)     Obeying God and denying self

3)     Serving God and others

4)     Sharing Christ

5)     Exercising faith

6)     Seeking God

7)     Building relationships

8)     Unashamed (transparency)

https://www.lifeway.com/en/articles/transformational-research-attributes-of-growing-disciples

What do these 8 attributes have to do with attendance, building campaigns, or money?  That is the question that is getting a lot of attention today.  Maybe we have our price tags confused.  Have we bought into is good business model but not necessarily a good church model?  The desire to be bigger, better, and the best have driven many away from the church.  It has caused many to question whether following Jesus is worth it.  It emphasized ‘doing church’ instead of ‘being the church’.

But there is hope.  There are spiritual disciplines that we can implement that will help us grow spiritually.  What is even more amazing is that there are no requirements for churches to be a certain size, have so much money, or have a new building campaign.  Churches can implement disciplines that produce these 8 attributes in their people and small churches are a perfect place for this to happen.  What are those Spiritual disciples?  Next time I will share with you what I learned from taking the Lifeway Assessment and digging into the data about how to help people grow spiritually.  I will share with you 4 spiritual disciplines that followers of Christ can implement that will impact all 8 of these attributes of spiritual maturity.   Until next time.

Small Churches are Ripe for Revival

By Doug Beutler

I was being interviewed on a podcast a couple weeks ago about small churches and the host asked me why I am so excited about small churches.  I told her that the reason I am so excited about small churches is because I believe they are Ripe for Revival.  She then asked the most important question, “Why are small churches Ripe for Revival?”. 

Here is why I believe small churches are Ripe for Revival.

1)    Small Churches are positioned for change 

Most small churches have a limited number of programs or they don’t have any programs at all.  Unlike larger churches that have many programs that demand a large workforce small churches are lucky to have 1 program.  Discussions can be easier to have in smaller churches because there is less politics, deeper relationships, and fewer people to convince.  People only have a limited amount of time to donate to the church.  Churches need to prioritize how to best use that time.  We are learning in the church that relationships are more important than programs.

I will never forget when one of the people attending our church came to me very frustrated.  I asked them what was wrong.  They said they didn’t have enough time to make disciples.  They then described for me all the “things” that they were involved in with the church.  Women’s ministry, outreach ministry, drama ministry, children’s ministry, and worship ministry.  Where did they have time to build relationships and make disciples?  After some discussions she decided it was more important for her to make disciples then lead a special event for the church.  So we stopped doing that special event because there was no one else who had a passion or time for it. These are the tough decisions that churches need to make if they want to have a disciple-making movement in their churches.

2)    Survival in a small church is a real thing

Financial pressure, finding and keeping a pastor, and having people continue attending your small church are realities that a small church faces every week.  Losing a family or 2 in a large church may not even be noticed but for a small church, it can be devastating.  Because of this pressure, it forces small churches to be open to change in ways larger churches may not be.  It creates situations where small churches may now accept what in previous years they would have never considered accepting.  Like changing the color of the carpet, changing music styles or having music at all, or using technology in the worship services.

I remember when LifeWater merged with a struggling small church in 2009.  I was surprised by the tone of the discussions between the two groups.  The church that was struggling wanted to merge with us because they had lost hope that they could survive and they desperately wanted to continue being a light in the community.  They were willing to adopt our church name, accept our doctrine and denomination, allow us to put screens on the walls to project words for our worship songs, and accept our contemporary style of worship.  All these changes I would guess they were unwilling to accept before but were willing now because they knew they had to change or die.

3)    Small Churches have a trained pastor available.  

I went to an invite-only Catalytic Church Planting Gathering in Houston Texas this last fall.  There were 10 or 12 churches there that had been chosen to come and talk about church multiplication in a new culture.  We spent lots of time talking about the difficulty finding qualified church planters, the limited amount of money available for church planting, and the restrictions in training church planters.  We were there for 2 days and worked about 10 hours a day on these questions.  We did a great job identifying the issues but not a lot of solutions.

One of the great things about small churches is that most of them already have a pastor.  These pastors love their people and their community.  They already have relationships built and have earned trust in the community.  They have taken classes at a Bible College or Seminary and have a good foundation about what they believe.  They have sound doctrine and if the church is part of a denomination the pastor has had to go through their credentialing process.  These pastors are aware of discipleship and most of them have a desire to improve in their disciple-making abilities.  There are fewer worries about false teaching, inappropriate behavior, and misleading people in a small church structure compared to other multiplication structures.  Desperate recruiting is not necessary and the pressure to “find someone” is lessened. 

4)    It does not cost money are require a minimum number of people to make disciples.  

One of the great things about small churches is that beginning a disciple-making movement in small churches that lead to revival doesn’t cost money.  You don’t need expensive resource materials, you don’t need a band, you don’t need an expensive sound system, you don’t need an elaborate marketing plan, you don’t need critical mass, you did need a vast variety of programs, and you don’t need multiple staff to run all those programs.  The only thing you need is a pastor who has a passion for Jesus, for his people, believes in the scriptures, and a desire to make disciples.  They start with one person who is open to growing in their faith and they meet with them weekly.  They experience life with them, walk with them in faith for the long run, and then they ask them to invite a friend to join them.  That is how revival and multiplication begin in a small church.

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 There are many small churches in America that are ready for this change. They are ready to impact their communities for Christ. They are positioned for change, they are motivated by survival, they already have a pastor and people in place, and it doesn’t cost any money or require a minimum number of people. Small churches are Rip for Revival! If you are a small church pastor please prayerfully consider what your next step could be in starting a disciple-making movement in your small church. If you go to a small church talk to your pastor and see what your next step could be in creating a disciple-making movement in your small church. If you need help reach out to us here at Seeds of Change. https://www.lifewatercc.org/seeds-of-change

Does God Still Call People Today

By Doug Beutler

During COVID-19 I heard a lot of pastors ask this question, “Does God still Call People to Ministry”.  Times were tough and they still are for many in the church.  Many pastors have given up on the ministry, given up on their call, and given up on the church.  What we need to remember is that our calling from God is what helps us to survive the hard times.  I know I need to remind myself of this constantly.

The Apostle Paul remembered His calling when he faced so many challenges as he traveled the world to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.  “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’  So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.” (Acts 13:2-3 NIV)  That memory must have flashed through Paul’s mind hundreds, if not thousands, of times whether he was in a synagogue, in jail, or in the marketplace.

I still remember vividly in 1980 at First Missionary Church Pastor Mark Klinepeter asked people to come forward if they felt the “Call” on their lives to go into full-time ministry.  My fiancé at the time, who later became my wife, walked to the front of the church with me to give our lives to God and to go wherever He called us to go.  Looking back it has been quite a road with stops in Van Wert, Ohio, Goshen, Indiana, and Ft. Wayne, Indiana.  I have served in YFC, Lifeline Youth and Family Services, and the church.  I have had the privilege of ministering in Campus Life clubs and youth groups of 100’s, churches in the 1,000’s, and now for the past 27 years pastoring in churches under 100.

There are 3 things I have learned about a calling from God:

1)     The Location can be different but the calling is the same! 

God has called people to serve Him.  He has called pastors to lead their flocks.  Sometimes it’s in our hometowns and sometimes it’s in places we have never heard of.  Sometimes it’s in a living room of 20 or a large auditorium of thousands.  God leads us to places that He wants us to be.  The details are different but the call is the same.  I remember moving to Van Wert, Ohio a real small town to serve as a Campus Life Director.  It was my first ministry job.  It was a great learning time, ministry time, and God moved in that area.  After a few years I felt the tug on my heart that God had something else for me.  So I moved my family to Goshen, Indiana to serve as a Campus Life Director there.  The club I was assigned to was a small group and when I arrived they were struggling with their past director being gone.  I sat down with the kids and told them about what I wanted to see happen with the club.  I called them to help me impact their school for Christ.  They were extremely excited and went out and impacted their school the next few years I was there.  I have been called to serve God in ministry and I have experienced that call in various locations and contexts. I have learned that the context can be different, the location can be different, but my calling has always been the same.  This is what keeps me going through the difficult times.

2)     Faithfulness to God is the key to fulfilling His calling! 

There have been times when everything I tried went wrong and there have been times when everything I touched went right.  I have experienced people knowing my name and wanting my advice and I have experienced no one knowing who I am or cared about my advice.  All that activity is just outside noise.  I have tried to be faithful to what God has called me to regardless of what is being said or not said.  No matter what is happening in my life and ministry, whether it is good or bad, I need to be faithful to God first.  This focus has been the key for me.  I remember a season of ministry where everything was going wrong. Everything I tried failed. I lost my confidence and people in my church were losing confidence in me. People were asking me, “What are you doing wrong?”  The answer…”NOTHING”.  I wasn’t doing anything wrong. God was teaching me a very important lesson. He was teaching me to be consistent in loving people and being faithful to God.  I have learned that the outcomes of ministry are up to God, they are out of my control.  My job is to remain faithful to what God has called me to.

3)     God is always on the move so keep up with where he is going! 

A couple of years ago I thought that my ministry may be coming to a close.  I was in my early 60’s and as I looked to the end of my ministry I was happy with what God had done through me.  But I remember clearly last year that I felt God was saying to me, “I am not done with you yet.  Retirement is not an option for you right now.”  I was surprised.  I was like “God what do you want me to do next”.  I felt like He was saying to me, “Be patient and I will show you.”  In the spring of 2024 my wife and I had a very unique spiritual experience where we both felt the leading of the Holy Spirit to minister to small churches and their pastors while remaining at LifeWater.  That led us to start Seeds of Change and gave us eyes to see the amazing disciple making that had been happening in our church.  We began to see the impact that our church was having in our community.  We began to see the impact that our church was having in making disciples.  We began to see the multiplication in disciple-making to the 3rd and 4th generation that was taking place.  We began to see the relationships that our people were making with people in and outside of our church.  It was like God was saying “I am moving this way…Keep up!!”

I am excited about what God is doing in my life, in my family, and in my church.  I am excited about where God is going and I desperately want to stay up with Him.  Pastor, Youth Pastor, Children’s Pastor, Church Planter, leader, volunteer, you can have this same excitement and connection with God.  Is God calling you to ministry?  Is God calling you to be a pastor?  Is God calling you to Go Make Disciples? 

We had our church leadership retreat recently and in this retreat I had our leaders go and spend some time in prayer for what God was calling us to do.  One of our young leaders later told me, “I heard one word: ‘Go!’”  God is calling this young man to go.  I don’t know where that going will lead and neither does he.  I don’t know when that going will take place and neither does he.  I don’t know what going means and neither does he.  But what this young man needs to remember is that God knows.  Let me encourage you to remember the location can be different but the calling is the same, faithfulness to God is the key to fulfilling His calling in your life, and God is always on the move so keep up with where he is going.

When Momentum Hurts

When Momentum Hurts

Pastor Doug Beutler

I remember going to a conference and hearing a speaker say, “Momentum makes you look better than you are and the lack of momentum makes you look worse than you are.”  Most of my ministry life I have been taught that momentum is a good thing.  You need it to grow.  You need it to convince people what you are doing is right.  You can’t go anywhere without momentum.  Recently I have been thinking about what happens if momentum hurts you?  Is that even possible?  Even writing that sentence makes the hair on the back of my neck rise.  It goes against everything that I have been taught but I now believe is true.

Momentum is defined as the quality that keeps an event developing or making progress after it has started.  So many times the church uses the word “momentum” for vision, numeric growth, and greatness.  I have experienced momentum many times but I have rarely heard the term related to disciple making.  I usually hear it used in relation to attendance, number of services, or satellite campuses.  I have learned the hard way over the 27 years of pastoring a church under 100 people that momentum hurts the small church.  There are 3 reasons:

1.      Momentum is seductive. 

I remember when I was a youth pastor of a large church in the 1980’s.  When I started as their youth pastor the youth group was about 50 kids.  The church was over 1,000 people.  As I started sharing with the kids my vision for the youth group they got really excited.  I started seeing some good leadership in the youth and I started to give them responsibility.  The group grew to over 100 in the first year.  By year 3 we were averaging 150 kids and our outreach events were over 400 kids.  It was an exciting time.  It was more than that.  It was seductive.  People were calling me from all over the country asking me what I was doing.  I was asked to serve on many district and denominational committees in my denomination as a result.  Looking back I can see how it fed my evil inner self.  It was addictive that feeling of superiority.  I was now an expert.  Everyone knew me or wanted to know me.  People almost worshiped the words that I spoke.

That is what momentum can do.  It puts you in a place where you take credit for what is happening.  You take the glory and give little or no glory to God.  You find yourself saying things like, “I did this…” or “I made this decision” or “I made this happen”.  Jesus had something to say about this in Matthew 22:37 when He said, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind…”  When we place anything above our relationship with Jesus that is Idolatry.  It is no wonder that so many pastors fall because they start believing what is being written about them.

2.      Momentum is distractive.

I remember after I came on full time at LifeWater after being their bi-vocational pastor for 9 years we saw our church begin to gain some momentum in our attendance.  We started seeing our average attendance grow over 100 people.  We started feeling good about our church and we started asking the question, “What is next?”  We had our leadership retreat shortly after I came on full time.  Our big question was “What does God want us to do next?”  We wrestled through the pluses and minuses of being an attractional model church and being a disciple making church.  We felt the Lord speak very clearly that we were to be a disciple making church.  So out of that retreat we formed LifeGroups, the church started discussing the sermons, we developed curriculum for these LifeGroups, we started preaching about disciple making, and we had testimonies for those who were beginning to experience disciple making.  For the next several years we started gain traction in disciple making.  We helped start a new church plant and we started having discussions about future plants.

During these 5-6 years there were 2 to 3 different times when we started seeing real momentum in growing numerically.  Every time we started averaging over 100 people we would start talking about our parking lot, space in the sanctuary, and the need for 2 services.  As we started talking about those things more we talked less and less about disciple making.  I remember one particular leadership retreat where we spent the majority of the time talking about moving to 2 services and what that would take.  We worked on the details of what that would look like.  We talked about how the people would have to adjust.  We didn’t discuss disciple making once at that retreat and I went home confused.  “What had we just done?”  We were so distracted.  Paul said in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”  I fell right into Satan’s trap.  I confessed that to God and 6 months later there was no more need for 2 services because people had moved away or passed away.

3.      Momentum is destructive.

You may be thinking, “How can momentum be destructive?”  It can destroy relationships, God’s call on our lives, and proper priorities.  What if God has called us to a small disciple making ministry?  What if God has called us to focus on individuals and not the masses?  What if God has called us right where we are right now?  Momentum, or the lack of, can cause us to doubt our call with a sense of disappointment with our present circumstances.  Momentum creates a drive in our hearts that makes us not satisfied with where God has us.  We keep pushing for more, bigger, bolder, better and are not content with where God has called us to.  It reminds me after B.J. Thomas became a Christian I watched an interview with him and he made this statement, “All I need is one more hit song”.  I still remember how odd that comment was because he had found a relationship with Jesus but it didn’t seem like it was enough. 

I remember one time a good friend of mine, Bill Armstrong, who was a church planter planting in California told me a story.  He said that when he had moved out to California before he planted his church he spent about 6 months building relationships with people.  He got to know this one person, I’ll call him Tim, and he spent a lot of time with him.  He had won Tim to Christ and Bill was discipling him.   After 6 months it was time to plant his church and so he started preparing the teams to launch his church plant.  He became very busy trying to get everything organized and didn’t have as much time to spend with Tim.  About 3 months after Bill successfully planted his church Tim came to him to tell him that he was going to go to another church.  He missed the time he spent with Bill and he felt like Bill was too busy to have a relationship with him.  He told Bill, “I wish you would have never started this church!”  That always bothered Bill because the desire for that momentum forever hurt his relationship with Tim.

Creating a disciple making movement in our churches does not require momentum.  You don’t need a minimum amount of people, a band, fog, lights, a dynamic series, many programs, an amazing communicator, or a spectacular children and youth programs to create momentum.  We only need to love people, spend intentional time, and follow the Holy Spirit’s leading.  When we try to substitute these precious gifts from God with momentum is when momentum hurts.