Do you think outcome-based faith is a good thing or a bad thing? I was recently at a Faith/Work conference that taught Strategic Planning with God, an outcome-based faith approach to business. The first step is to dream with God and get a sense of what He wants to do in your business. There is an emphasis on big dreams with outcomes that reflect God’s power. And this should be a specific outcome because the next step is to plan for it to happen. It is not enough to have a dream, it is very important that you begin to strategize and plan out how this outcome might be realized. That is an expression of your faith and your role in bringing about the outcome.

This sounds like the prosperity gospel applied to business, but the outcomes are not for wealth or business success. They are kingdom of God outcomes that glorify God. Testimonies were provided where this process produced amazing fruit.

I struggled with this teaching because it brought back memories of my time leading a college fellowship. I became a follower of Jesus while taking a year off from college. When I returned to campus, I was elected to the leadership committee of our college fellowship, along with 4 other students who were all less than two years in the faith. We attended a leadership retreat in which we were encouraged to strategically plan to reach our campus for Jesus in a similar manner as I was hearing in this Faith/Work conference. We dreamed big and planned events with the expectation of a significant impact. The events were okay, but they did not have the significant impact that we were encouraged to expect.

While there are testimonies of God accomplishing great things through this type of faith, there are far more outcomes that do not approach what we dream about with God. The lack of significant impact that we experienced was not unusual. I believe it was the experience of most, perhaps even all, of the college fellowship leaders at that retreat. I did not hear about any campuses being “turned upside down for Christ”.

This experience did have a significant impact on me and my fellow leaders. We were not only disappointed but were disillusioned to the point that we began to doubt our recently embraced faith. Why after all our prayers and planning did our events occur without any noticeable activity of God to make them more fruitful? Did this God really exist after all?

In a blog post titled “Beyond an outcome-based faith” Anna Kettle writes, “Both time and experience have taught me that any faith which focuses on outcomes – the gifts rather than the giver – is always shaky ground to be standing on.” This was true for me as that college fellowship leader. The retreat that encouraged me to focus on outcomes put me on shaky ground for my faith.

So is outcome-based faith a bad thing? I am tempted to answer “Yes”, except for an important consideration. There are places where I see Scripture presenting outcome-based faith as a good thing. I will look at that next week.