Is 50% Good Enough?

Today I had the opportunity to attend a Sunday Morning service at my home church in Texas, and the message topic was service. Our senior pastor was preaching, and he said that a lot of churches that are doing a really good job at whatever it is that churches do have about 25-30% of their members/attendees involved in somehow serving their in the congregation. He challenged us as a congregation to get to a point of 50% involvement.

I understand that some leaders definitely want to avoid unrealistic expectations, but I feel that we are selling ourselves short on this one. I think that to expect such a low turn out from a church sets the bar lower than it needs to be. If we had a church where 50% of the members were evangelistic, would we be satisfied? Yes, it would be higher than the average in most churches right now, but would we be satisfied? Would we call it good enough if half of our people decided to show up on any given Sunday? My guess is that we would not.

When we set a goal for ourselves and for the people that are involved in our ministries, we are, in a sense, responsible for the outcome of it. If we set the goal too low, people will not be challenged enough or have to be stretched to reach it. Is it then better to set a goal too high?

There is a good chance that this goal of 50% involvement will not be reached by Hillside. I then wonder, if the goal was set at 75 or even 90% if the challenge would be great enough to cause serious inspiration and call for a radical commitment to the cause of Christ and actually reach above the 50%? Would a church filled with people who would make a commitment like that cause the community around it to take note?