Evangelicals love to count, and the higher the numbers the better. After all, the more people we count in our pews, the more people are "coming to know the Lord." In our better moments we know that is not necessarily true—most church growth is transferred growth, people just changing churches. But in our best moments, higher numbers mean people are coming to know Christ.
We've taken church growth statistics to new levels in the last few decades, and have created all sorts of formulas to determine whether we're growing or not. I recall as a pastor having to figure out how to determine "decadal growth rates" and "conversion rates." The goal of any card-carrying evangelical leader is to learn to count as high as possible, and there is something invigorating about that. But I wonder if we'd be wiser if we learned also how to count to one.
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