Numerical Nonsense: The Immaturity of Three Statements
By Chris Elrod |
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I recently read a blog posting where the writer said, "numbers are important to God". No they are not...people are important to God!!! That is why we see the 3,000 at Pentecost listed in Scripture...as well as the one Ethiopian on a desert road. That is why we read in God's Word about the one sick man being lowered through a hole in the roof...as well as the 5,000+ fed with fish and loaves. 1 is just as important as 100,000 to God and vice-versa!!! Numbers in the Bible are only recorded to remind us that God loves people...all people...whether it is 1 or 1,000 or 1,000,000. He has as much concern for the thousands that are hungry as He does for the one sparrow that falls. It is only the immaturity of man that has diminshed the reaching of 1 and elevated the reaching of 1,000. It is only the immaturity of man that dismisses the reaching of 20,000 and appaluds the reaching of 20. Whether it is a small group of people reached or a large group of people reached for cause of Christ....they are all God's people...and a reason to rejoice!!!
© Photographer: Javarman | Agency: Dreamstime.com | Back in the spring I was at a conference for church planters where I overheard a conversation which disturbed me greatly. A first-time church planter was talking to another guy about where he was going to launch his church. It seems that another church was also launching just a few miles away from their intended location. Then came the statement, "I don't care how well the other church does...I've just got to get my first 200 people before they do!" I sat there stunned at the complete lack of Kingdom thought behind such a immature statement!!!
Last month I was having lunch with a local church pastor and we were discussing the new types of churches being planted. He began talking about a recent blog post about a video venue church that saw several hundred come to Christ in a single day. The pastor snorted, "They only reached that many because they put on a laser light show on Sundays and water down the message...that's not true Biblical conversion...that's just selling spiritual goods to consumer Christians!" I had to step into the bathroom to regain my composure because of the anger I felt for such a utterly immature statement!
Last week I was on a conference call with some seasoned church leaders. We were discussing other church planters that inspire us. I mentioned a small church that had launched about two years ago and was reaching a pretty hardcore group of people that no one else wanted to reach. Then came the statement from another person on the line, "Forget about those guys...they're not sucessful...they don't know anything...they haven't even had 100 people in attendance yet!" My heart broke as I made an excuse to get off the line. The sheer immaturity of such a statement was just staggering.
I can't believe how we...in our lack of spiritual and Biblical maturity can slap God in the face like that. To say that one moving of God is more succesful...or less successful...than another because of the numbers involved just floors me. Does it not occur to us that our measurement of success is not God's measurement of success? God inspired the writers of the Bible to list numbers so He could get the glory...not to keep some kind of spiritual score card for Peter, Moses, Paul or David. He intended numbers to be used to communicate to the feeble and fallible mind of humans the sheer magnitude of His work...and moving.
A man by the name of Kimball was a Sunday School that led a young D.L Moody to the Lord in the stock room of a boot store. D.L. Moody's ministry went on to lead tens...if not hundreds...of thousands to Christ. Moody also founded schools of higher learning that still train men and women to reach people for Christ today. The millions reached for Christ by the ongoing Moody ministry would not have been possible without the one reached for Christ by the Kimball ministry. They were both equally important...and valid...in the overall big picture that is the Kingdom of Christ. The 1 and the 1 million are both successful in the mind of our heavenly Father!!! It is only the mind of man that establishes any difference.
I find it hard to imagine that God intended numbers to be used as some kind of weapon with which to beat each other over the head with or to provide a substandard human measurement for the validity of a ministry. I also can't imagine that God is too pleased when He looks down on the lobby of any pastor's conference in America and sees His "chosen" shepherds saying, "so how many do you have in attendance?" As pastors, we are only too blessed to be the ones that God has chosen to lead 1 or 1,000 into His Kingdom. Yet, we sit around in our immaturity and talk like some group of little boys in a elementary school bathroom. "My daddy is bigger than your daddy! Yeah, well my daddy may be smaller, but that's because your daddy takes steroids!"
I don't have a lot of answers when it comes to church leadership, but I can guarantee one thing. When...in our immaturity...we say that only having dozens in church attendance is unsuccessful...or that we have to reach a certain number of people to be sucessful...or that reaching hundreds of people for Christ through a video screen is "cheap grace"...then we've essentially told God His work doesn't matter. When we tell Him His work doesn't matter then we also tell Him that His people don't matter. When we do that ...He'll take us out of the quotient altogether...because our immature leadership will no longer matter!
Chris Elrod is the pastor of Compass Point in Lakeland, Florida. |
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Thanks for the reality and humility check. One of the attitudes I've been trying to change at my small church is this idea that we need to get more people to come to our church. I keep saying, No, no, getting more people in here isn't our goal. Showing Jesus to people IS our goal. At the same time, I gotta confess that when you're in pastoral ministry, it's easy to feel jealous of that church up the road that has 10,000 members. You want to feel like your ministry is bearing fruit, and sometimes when you compare your small numbers to someone else's ginormous numbers, you can feel pretty unfruitful. So again, thanks for the reminder.
I agree Chris. Thanks for the response. The last half of Hebrews 11 really speaks a different message about the measure of success. Years ago God really broke me over that passage and my own pride about what success in the kingdom had to look like. The highest compliment in scripture is given to the people who never saw the fulfillment of the sacrifice of their lives: "...The world was not worthy of them." If the numbers come, there is a different challenge than if they don't. But it is not inherently the sign of God's favor or on the flip side, a sign of his disapproval.
Well said Chris! If the only numerical statistic worth counting is "butts in attendance" we may miss the broader picture of what God is doing. But it's easier to put quantitative figures to membership activities than to track Kingdom-like activities. I have been probably more guilty of questioning the reports of mega-numbers and their attractional methods. Thanks for the reminder that God can work in the midst of the masses as well as in the one on one.
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