Last week I attended Q, a thought provoking faith-and-culture conference. One session dealt with how much the church can learn from statistical data about attitudes and trends in the church and society in America, and the interpretation of those statistics into strategic initiatives for the church.

I am an active, appreciative consumer of information, and I find statistics as interesting as the next person does. But I sometimes wonder when our American obsession with statistics and strategies might be excessive, or even border on idolatry.

Idolatry of what? Well, of information, and of human strategizing, if it replaces our dependence on the leading of God's spirit.

What's idolatry? It's letting anything apart from God interfere with our allegiance to, obedience of, or dependence on God. It's letting anything take God's place.

So I found myself wondering some things.

If the disciples and early followers of Jesus only had better data about the demographics and social landscape of their time, would the book of Acts have recorded anything different about the growth of the early church?

In the 21st Century, does our prowess with an abundance of information put God at an advantage???

Is God relieved by the sheer brilliance of the strategies that we cook up these days, to help bring about God's purposes, all based of course on good data?

What's the proper place of information and strategy in God's global church?

What does the church in other cultures have to teach us about this?

I'm not saying we throw up our hands or throw out the tools at our disposal, I'm just thinking perhaps we need equal doses of humility and dependence on God's power, as we pursue the mandates God has given.

Today's "better data" might give us some prophetic insights, as an expert rightly suggested to me the other day; but then, so can God, 100% of the time.

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
- James 4:13-14