Tony Little – Headmaster, Eton College, Boarding Schools’ Association annual conference in Torquay 6th May 2010.
Mr Little said: “Our national obsession with data tends to segment and fragment and risks undermining the subtlety and complexity of (boarding) school life.
“There are real threats to the all-embracing way we operate. Some of these threats come from well intentioned legislation that has consequences dreamt not of.”
He added: “It is a sad thing, it seems to me, that where once men were able to speak of sweeps of history such as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason, we now seem to inhabit the Age of Measurement.
“Only that which can be measured has worth, if it cannot be measured it can have no worth. This kind of thinking cuts to the heart of everything I believe in as the head of a (boarding) school.”
We now inhabit the age of measurement – only that which can be measured has worth – if it cannot be measured, it can have no worth.
Ernest Rutherford was the father of nuclear physics. He gave us the planetary model of the atom with a tiny nucleus and electrons orbiting around it and made all kinds of discoveries about radioactivity. In a saying much loved by physicists and chemists like me, it was Rutherford who once most memorably said that that ‘All science is either physics or stamp-collecting’. Either you measure stuff and model it mathematically, or you are just collecting facts to stick in your fact-album. So Rutherford any the physical sciences and so much of the empirical thinking of the age of Enlightenment has brought us to the Age of Measurement.
We now inhabit the age of measurement – only that which can be measured has worth – if it cannot be measured, it can have no worth.
Some people think this is true in Education
People measure schools by all kinds of criteria – and overlook much if not most of what schools at their best are there to accomplish.
EDUCATION – “A child is not a vase to be filled but a lamp to be lit”
Passion for the subjects – pupils who kindly said they chose to study my subject so they could be taught by me.
and for other things – passion for sport / music
Team spirit – working together – can’t be measured but so important.
Compassion for other pupils, charities around the world etc
It is absolutely true that so many of the important things in education are those things which cannot be measured. But nevertheless, Tony Little is right. In the eyes of politicians obsessed with budgets and parents obsessed with Ofsted reports, so many people make the same mistake,
“We now inhabit the age of measurement – only that which can be measured has worth – if it cannot be measured, it can have no worth.”
Meeting with other ministers we were reflecting on how this Age of Measurement has crept into church life as well. How especially where we are so close to London, the American obsession with setting goals and budgets and creating policies and procedures can so easily distort church life.
Christians can be obsessed by statistics. Again people like me are entirely to blame for this because I have spent a long time studying church growth patterns and statistics. For a while I was a postgraduate student at Spurgeons College studying church growth, and wrote some reports for the Baptist Union analysing church growth statistics for them. But statistics are a very dangerous tool in the hands of people who don’t know how to interpret them properly.
Church life
Membership statistics
Churches declining,
childrens work in decline.
It was very encouraging at the Christian Resources Exhibition to talk to Christian Research about their research into faith journeys. www.faithjourneys.com
Church life isn’t about numbers – it’s about the journeys
NSBC – our numbers have been very encouraging. More folk at morning service and at evening service. More folk at Toddlers. We can be encouraged by this – but we mustn’t forget that every single individual is precious in God’s eyes.
I know I have told you before and I will probably tell you again the story of the starfish. It was early morning and an elderly man was on the beach. He walked with a cane, carefully surveying the beach that the receding tide had left exposed. A young man was looking on, fascinated as every now and then the old man bent down to pick something up and toss it into the ocean. He realised that the old man was looking for starfish. It was then that I realized he was looking for starfish. Every time he saw one lying helpless in the sand, unable to get back to the ocean on his own, he would lovingly pick it up and toss it gently back into the sea. “Why are you doing this?” the young man asked. “The starfish are left behind after the tide goes out,” he said. “If they don’t get back into the ocean they will dry up and die beneath the hot summer sun.”
“But there are endless miles of beach and there must be millions of starfish,” the young man said. “Surely you don’t think you can save them all. What difference can your efforts possibly make?” Slowly the old man bent over and picked up another starfish. As he tossed it into ocean he turned and replied, “It made a difference to that one”
Our task is to take the gospel to North Springfield one by one!
Church life is about SO MUCH MORE than numbers. God DOES care about numbers – every hair on our heads is numbered, but God cares much more about other things.
Let’s remember we serve the Living God who is way beyond our measuring!!
God Himself
Psalm 145: 3Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.
Isa 40:12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales
and the hills in a balance?
15 Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales;
he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.
18 To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare him to?
21 Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
25 “To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
26 Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.

Children’s talk on how big is God?
Galaxy is 200 billion stars.
Estimated 30,000 trillion stars in the universe! God is big! His greatness no-one can fathom.

JOB 9 8He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea. 9 He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south. 10 He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted.

Isaiah 40: 28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.

Isa 55:8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

God is beyond our measuring. But more than that we can so easily forget that most of the things which matter in the Christian Life are things which cannot be measured.

LOVE – sacrifice
Ephesians 3: 17 And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
OBEDIENCE
HOLINESS
2 Corinthians 3: 18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
PRAYER
Our generation likes intercessory prayer, because it has an obvious measurable outcome in yes/no answers. But we struggle with other forms of prayer like adoration and praise and confession and contemplation because they don’t have predictable outcomes or goals.
PASSION FOR GOD
Message when I preached with a view – Eternal life is our relationship with God – not to be measured but to be enjoyed!
Blessings of Love, Joy, Peace, Victory, Freedom – come through our relationship with God.
Through prayer, worship, Bible Study, Fellowship, Communion with God

“We now inhabit the age of measurement – only that which can be measured has worth – if it cannot be measured, it can have no worth.”
On the contrary – the things which really matter in life, and the things which really matter in the church, are things which cannot be measured!

Teach us Good Lord, to serve you as you deserve
To give and not to count the cost
To fight and not to heed the wounds
To toil and not to seek for rest;
To labour and not to ask for any reward
Save that of knowing that we do your will.
St Ignatius of Loyola