Ready to Hire a Mystery Worshiper?

Thursday, Christianity Today's online mag posted an article titled: "Get Thee Behind Us, The Devil's Latest Marketing Guise."

It concerned a new service called "Church Check." Church Check is the brain child of a mystery shopper company which has expanded to now provide "mystery worshipers" who you can hire to visit your church and give you feedback on how you are doing and how you can better reach your community.

Included in their pitch is this promise:
Our team of savvy professionals can secretly worship at your church, analyze it in detail, and present you with a report detailing items that are lacking. With this report, you can make changes that boost your retention rate and make your church grow. Make the adjustments our team suggests and you'll not only retain more of your first-time visitors, you'll get them talking to their friends about you.

The article's author, Mark Galli, asks this probing question about their statement:

Should churches really make it a goal to "boost your retention rate and make your church grow"? Is that not a product of other things, like faithful worship, meaningful biblical teaching, and sacrificial love for one another and the neighbor? What has happened to a church that makes "boosting your retention rate" a focus, instead of these other things?

I'm curious what your thoughts as church planters are on this.

When we enter into a church plant, what should be our goal?
How do our goals differ from that of an "established" church? Or do/should they?

Should it be to "grow"?
Should our goal to be to have a high retention rate?
How do you plant a church if these are not foci of yours?
How do you avoid compromise if they are?

It seems to me that in order to answer these questions we need to answer some more fundamental questions.

What is a church planter?
An missionary/evangelist?
A pastor?
Both?

If he is an missionary/evangelist, then should we be casting the seed and then bringing in someone after us to actually shepherd the flock that God grows?

If he is a pastor, then should we be as driven by growth as we are?

Another question that we need to wrestle with is: "what is the purpose of the church?"

I think we can all agree with Rick Warren at least in one regard- we do need to be "purpose driven."

But what, really, is the purpose of the church?
And as I ask this, I'm thinking of the institution of church- not the individuals composing a local body of believers which I believe Dr. Warren actually does. We are all called to worship, do ministry, fellowship, disciple and be discipled, and to evangelize. But is this the call of the institution of church? Clearly that call is closely related to the call of the pastor. As a believer, he is called to these five things as well, but in his role as pastor, what is his specific call?

These are some questions it seems to me that we need to do a better job wrestling with and, unless we wrestle with them, I don't see how we can possibly have any basis by which to judge whether or not to hire "Church Check."

I'd like to share some of my thoughts and I will, and I hope that you will too.
What do you think?

-Doug