Real Growth

These days, so many churches are run like major corporations.  We have big budgets, "performance incentives" for the staff members, and we judge success by the amount of people that attend our events.  I can think of all of the youth pastor events and conferences that I've gone to over the years.  Every person has the same answer to this question: "How is your ministry going?"  Their answer is always "Well, we have _____ number of students in our ministry..."  That's how we start a conversation!  Why do our numbers define us?

Let's do an analysis of a church leader: Self taught pastor that never attended seminary.  He had a small group of 3 leaders that he mentored and had 9 others job shadowing him.  His church fluxuated in numbers on a weekly basis.  Some weeks it would be a few hundred.  Other weeks, it would be 10,000.  The large amount of people would only come to hear him speak when he was offering free food and medical attention.  When he challenged the crowd spiritually, they would attempt to stone him.  He was betrayed by one of his "interns."  At the end of his ministry, he was surround by 2 people, one of them being his mother.

How would you grade this pastor?  Probably not very high.  But in the end, we look at this person as the "guru" of ministry.  Of course this profile was about Jesus.  But seriously, say you didn't know it was Jesus...would you want Him as your pastor?  Most of us would say, "Of course!  Why wouldn't we?"

But think about it.  How many times do we throw stones (not literally) at our pastors for a challenging message?  If they do something that WE don't agree with, we have them put on notice or try to get them fired.  We want our pastor to give us "warm fuzzies" and keep us happy.

Jesus never promised "warm fuzzies;" in fact, he promised the exact opposite.  He says in Matthew:

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.'” -Matthew 16:24-28

I don't know about you, but those verses don't give me any "warm fuzzies."  When people came to Jesus asking for free food and health care, this is what he would tell them.  He would say that the "Cost of Discipleship" is not easy.

So, I ask you, "What does REAL growth look like?"  Is it how many people attend church on a weekly basis?  Is it how many people read your blog or search your website?  OR should growth be judged on how each persons relationship is with Jesus?  Should real growth be judged by life change?  Jesus was never about numbers...so why are we so concerned with them?