How do we measure what really matters in the church?

In this episode of Compassion Matters, Michael Adam Beck explores why traditional church metrics—like attendance and finances—fall short of capturing true spiritual vitality. Drawing from his top-performing Substack essay, he puts missional theology in conversation with sociological frameworks like intrinsic religiosity and social capital. The episode challenges institutional maintenance mindsets and proposes a new set of adaptive, relational, and outward-facing metrics to measure discipleship, compassion, and community transformation.

This conversation will inspire leaders to shift from counting heads to changing lives—real, flesh-and-blood lives that reflect the self-giving love of Jesus.

In this episode of Compassion Matters, we dive into the intersection of theology and sociology by exploring the Incarnation—the belief that God became flesh to dwell among us—and how this divine act offers a powerful antidote to today’s epidemic of loneliness. Drawing from the life of my late brother, McKinley, and Émile Durkheim’s sociological insights on social integration, we reflect on the vital role of community in preventing isolation and fostering belonging. The Christmas story isn’t just a historical event but a living call to create compassionate communities that heal, restore, and reconnect those who are broken and alone. Join me as we explore how the presence of God in the world not only reshapes our understanding of grace, but also calls us to embody incarnational community—today, and every day—offering the ultimate Christmas gift of togetherness in a lonely world.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” This is a fairly standard question that most children will hear at some point of their development. Responses can range from musician, firefighter, surgeon, president, to fairy princess or teenage mutant ninja turtle (Michaelangelo for me). However, in some sense, I feel this is the wrong question. It is a self-limiting and socially confining question, as if what we do for a career will be definitive of our personhood. What if we asked ourselves a different question, “what kind of person do you want to become?”

What we can learn from the intersection of adaptive leadership theory, Ignatian spirituality, and the influential American sociologist C. Wright Mills and the sociological imagination? Is there an integrative framework that can help guide us on the dance floor of life? How might these discoveries help leaders and congregations flourish in the twenty-first century? Go deeper with the episode here:

What we can learn from the intersection of influential American sociologist Talcott Parsons’s AGIL framework and the adaptive nature of the early church as described in the book of Acts. How might these discoveries help leaders and congregations flourish in the twenty-first century? Go deeper with episode here:

What is adaptive ecclesiology? In this episode we begin to pair up a theological concept with a sociological concept and see what we can learn from the intersection. Today, we will be looking at German social theorist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas, and Jeremiah, who is known as the “Weeping Prophet.” We will examine the concepts of contextual awareness, social diagnosis, kind and wicked domains, and “lifeworlds.” We will learn when we find ourselves in an adaptive challenge, how to become an adaptive community. If you want to go deeper with the episode, check out our Substack and order the book Gardens in the Desert. 

This episode will explore a core claim of passio Dei, that theological reflection and praxis should be grounded in the compassion of Jesus. Ecclesiologically speaking, we need a compassionate way of being church, that normalizes the experience of Jesus’s own kenosis (self-emptying) and passion. Passional theology is a way of doing theology from below, located in the experience of the oppressed, and grounded in the incarnation. Thus, the anatomy of Jesus’s compassion reveals that God’s essence is mostly fully expressed through immersion in human vulnerability and suffering.

In this inaugural episode of Compassion Matters, we explore the deep theological foundation of compassion, locating it in the very nature of God. Compassion is not a mere feeling, but an integral part of God's essence, rooted in love and relationality. We delve into the biblical portrayal of God as filled with compassion (רַחוּם rachûwm) and highlight how creation itself is an act of compassion. We also reflect on the importance of compassion in healing a world grappling with loneliness and isolation, emphasizing the church's role in embodying this compassion. Through a blend of theology and sociology, this episode sets the stage to understand the divine and human infrastructure of compassion.