Do Numbers = Success and Significance?
"Nowhere more than in America are Christians caught in the twentieth-century syndrome of size. Size will show success. If I am consecrated, there will necessarily be large quantities of people, dollars, etc. This is not so. Not only does God not say that size and spiritual power go together, but He even reverses this (especially in the teaching of Jesus) and tells us to be deliberately careful not to choose a place too big for us. We all tend to emphasize big works and big places, but all such emphasis is on the flesh. To think in such terms is simply to hearken back to the old, unconverted, egoist, self-centered Me."
~ Francis Schaeffer, No Little People, No Little Places (Collected Works, p. 9)- first published in 1974
Of course, large numbers also do not mean that a church or ministry is of necessity born of fleshly motives. Neither, by definition, does small indicate great faithfulness. As Paul says, our job is not to be successful, but merely to plant and water, because it is God who gives/causes the (real) growth. Nevertheless, Schaeffer's warning is as needed today, if not more so, than when he wrote it in the early 1970s. My problem usually is not to be overly satisfied in small numbers, but to be overly unsatisfied with small numbers. Why? For a preacher living in the flesh before the world, numbers = righteousness. So what to do? Repent of my continual obsession with self-glory, and freshly receive and embrace the gift-righteousness of Jesus. Then, if numbers come (even in small quantities), I will be prepared to love and serve them, rather than count and use them.
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