quality and not quantity

Excellence in Scripture is much more about the character of Christ and the love of God rather than statistical achievement. In fact, in the Bible, counting resources and measuring achievements are often used to illustrate pride, self-reliance, control and oppression – the darker side of merit-based culture. Paul Valler LICC

In an interview for support in the work I do in ministry I was asked how I would measure success. Foundationally, I said, people are not projects nor trophies, each person has intrinsic worth. It is in the quality of relationships I have, not the number of them. Yet my own organization is partially trapped in this because the only easy way to assess performance is numerically. Advertising uses numbers as facts to convince people that something is worth while and yet this is such an incomplete story. If we remember Abraham's bargaining with God about not destroying a city, or the fact that only one person was healed at the Beautiful Gate by Peter and John. Clearly it is about individual people, their personal importance, and their particular need and the micro scale.

It eventually rolls into numbers but it isn't a primary focus, in fact it is only with hindsight. Quality may roll into quantity, if I ask how many people would cry for you if you died tonight. My colleague Mimi told me about her father's death in Goma a city in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo on the border with Rwanda. Given the wars and violence between peoples, it's not the thousands who went to the funeral but that they were from differing religious affiliations and tribal groups which is the true assessment of the quality of the relationships he had. To understand the tensions of real living or to remove the blandness of your faith, we need to hear stories like Mimi's own personal story (here). I think the quality of Mimi's relationships is already reflected in the number who would mourn the loss of it.

Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let those who boast boast about this: that they understand and know me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth, for in these I delight, Jeremiah 9:23-24