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Sphere of Influence

Jim Thomas

At a Pastors seminar, I held up two rolls of pennies and I old nickel.  I asked the group which they would rather possess.  Like most of us the group chose to embrace the 100 pennies.  It was later that I explained the nickel was a 1930s (VF condition) nickel which had been purchased at a coin shop for $5.00.  Value is not always demonstrated by quantity, sometimes it is better measured by quality or potential for value.

I had been a small church Pastor for about 3 years when I was introduced to the “Sphere of Influence” concept.  In essence this model measures ministry effectiveness by the amount of influence you have in a community.  Rather than looking at attendance as a measure of growth, you measure attendance in comparison to potential.

Here’s a simple formula

Target area – x number of people
Attendance – y number of people
Divide target area by attendance = Sphere of Influence

When I view my church in terms of my target area, I focus on the influence in my community.  In my situation I am surrounded by towns of 200 and our target area is 2000 people in our community.  Currently we average 100-120 people.  That means that each week, I speak to 5-6% of my community.  In my previous ministry I was part of a multi staff church averaging 400 in a community of 80,000.  We only reached .05% (not even 1%) of our community.  We were one of the larger churches in the area and would be considered very successful in terms of “church”, but in reality I have far more impact in our rural area than I did in a city area.

When viewing attendance with this formula, it is actually possible for a ministry to be healthy while remaining numerically stagnant.  If I am in a declining rural area, but my church attendance is remaining stable, that becomes a source of encouragement rather than frustration.

As an example

2000                                                    2005                                     2005
Target area – 2000                  Target area – 1500                   Target area – 1500
Attendance – 100                     Attendance – 100                     Attendance – 75
Influence – 5%                             Influence – 6.7%                      Influence – 5%

I would like to encourage you to rethink the ways that you view numbers in small church ministries.  The ability to “bloom where you are planted” is essential to a healthy small church ministry.