In The Gospel-Driven Church, author and pastor Jared C. Wilson shows how to lead a culture shift in a church from a focus on numerical success to the metrics of grace. He includes diagnostic questions that will help leaders measure--and lead team transparency in measuring as a group--the spiritual health of their church.

Chapter 1: The Dilemma This chapter will introduce the problems many evangelical churches, including (perhaps, especially) numerically growing ones, continue to face---namely, the wide-open “back door.” Many churches have expressed that they tend to see as many people leave as arrive, or that they continue to lose members who would otherwise be considered mature. Sometimes these folks say frustrating things like “I’m not being fed.” This chapter will address the demonstrable discipleship deficit in the church and also offer the provocative claim that evangelicals are not reaching the unchurched at the rates they think they are – even the churches aimed at the unchurched tend to be falling short in this area. But acknowledging there is a problem is the first step to addressing it. Chapter 2: The Metrics That Don’t Tell Us Everything This chapter will outline the number of things we often “count” in a church that don’t actually tell us the whole story of a church’s spiritual state---attendance, decisions, dollars, and experiences. Following from Jonathan Edwards’s classic work The Distinguishing Marks of a Move of the Spirit of God, readers will see how the things they normally count can tell them something about their church but not everything, or even the most important things. This chapter will cover what we might call “neutral signs” and explain why what we normally count is normally enough. Chapter 3: The 5 Metrics That Keep Us On Mission If a leader is interested in actually cultivating a spiritually healthy church---not just a big one---he will need to shift his sense of measurement in church growth. Counting heads and dollar signs---or even “decisions”---is good, but doesn’t tell us everything we need to know. This chapter will follow Edwards’s proposal for 5 marks of a genuinely fruitful church---namely: i. A growing esteem for Jesus. ii. A dogged devotion to the Bible. iii. An interest in theology and doctrine. iv. A discernible spirit of repentance v. An evident love for God and neighbor Obviously these metrics are harder to “count” than what we normally use to measure our church health, so the chapter will also include a list of diagnostic questions to help leaders measure---and lead team transparency in measuring as a group---the relative spiritual health of their church, as well as a practical prescriptive plan for implementing this metric-measuring strategy without becoming legalistic! Chapter 4: Putting the Gospel in the Driver’s Seat The opening chapter will explain (gently) how not all purposes in the purpose-driven model of “doing church” are created equal and make a succinct biblical case for gospel-centrality. The main foci will be defining the attractional and gospel-centered paradigms and distinguishing them from each other and then demonstrating both biblically and statistically why the attractional model doesn’t accomplish what it hopes to Chapter 5: Steering from the Stage As Melville says in Moby Dick, “The pulpit is the prow of the world.” This chapter will focus on the importance of gospel-centered preaching as the primary way to “seed” gospel-centrality in a church culture and direct a church away from an attractional ethos to desire more beholding of the glory of Christ. I will talk about what gospel-centered preaching looks like: the difference between the to-do’s and the “It is finished” of the gospel, the logic of Christ-centered preaching, and how to preach different genres and texts in ways that make Jesus and his finished work the main point. Chapter 6: Building Your Service Around Beholding The attractional church leans too heavily on cleverness and creativity in its weekend worship gatherings. This chapter will argue that our worship service tells a story about what we believe and communicates where our trust for transformation lies. I will describe how the gospel ought to inform and shape the worship service, covering everything from song selection to order of service. I