Eternal outcomes for our ministry are in the hands of the Lord Jesus. For example, it is not appropriate for us to set an objective of bringing three people into the kingdom per week. When we say that our goal is to plant one church per year, we may get trapped into thinking about a mere building and forget about the true nature of the church. The church is a born-again community, whether meeting in a building or under a tree. Healthy churches are measured by the quality of faith rather than by the quantity of buildings.
Dangerous philosophies are often below the level of our awareness.
The Western world has been strongly influenced by logical positivism, which argues that all meaning must be verifiable by empirical data. Behaviorism claims that observable behavior is all that matters. The secular world tells us that what we can see and count is the only reality. We will set goals that will make us look good at the end of the year rather than goals that grow from faith in a God of hope. Such goal setting is a dreary exercise.