By Elie Haddad

Another year has gone by. It has become a practice for many churches and ministries to publish an end-of-year report highlighting the activities and accomplishments of the previous year. This is mostly a sincere attempt to quantify impact and measure success. We even do this at ABTS. But is this a healthy practice? How should we think about success and accomplishments?

Looking to Scripture to get an understanding about success, it is obvious that the New Testament does not address this topic directly. However, we may be able to gain valuable lessons by studying the stories and examples in the Bible to discern some patterns. Two of these examples were “deacons” appointed in Acts 6 to serve the church because they were godly and Spirit-filled.