HippoChurch

I work at a big church. A church that among 3 campuses, on the weekend, may have as many as 20,000 people attend. That’s fun, but it’s not really important. In fact, it’s dangerous when it wedges down in our flesh and creates an attitude of, “We’re winning because we have all these people showing up.”

It’s not a megachurch thing either. I think most pastors judge how they’re doing based upon the size of their congregations relative to other pastors, be it your 100-person congregation compared to someone else’s 80-person congregation, which is also irrelevant.

I had a great reminder of that this weekend because of something I forgot to communicate in one of my rare public-speaking instances. You see I usually work with the lead pastors of churches that are typically less than 200 people. I was visiting one of them this weekend and addressed their volunteers prior to their service. I thanked them for all they do and the hours they put into setup/teardown church. I mentioned how North Point started back in 1995 as a desire in the hearts of 6 people. Their first office space was the basement of someone’s home. For 2 and 1/2 years, they met every other Sunday, yes, every other Sunday. In three different venues over that period. I wanted to remind this local partner that what they’re doing now matters a lot, even when the numbers are small and that because of their efforts (changing diapers, unpacking and packing children’s toys, setting up chairs, audio/video, etc.) they would literally change eternity for some people. That’s a miracle. And God uses them to play a part in it!

My mistake was mentioning the numbers to which those early efforts at NP had grown into without re-emphasizing what’s really important. (Did I mention that I rarely do public-speaking? ) Thankfully, I had one of their volunteers (thanks Chris!) come up to me while we were breaking down the environments and ask, “How do you measure success? What number do you have to get to to be considered successful?” I immediately smiled with appreciation and said, “I’m so glad you asked that question.” I told him that success was simply life change. 1 person discovering who God is and what He’s done through Christ to have a relationship with them. That’s it. That’s success. If that’s “all” that ever happens through our efforts, I can’t imagine any better measure than to know someone is in the Kingdom because God used your efforts to reach them.

For all of you out there leading and laboring in church world, for all of you drowning in droves of people checking your church out, or for all of you who haven’t seen a new face in years but you long for it, or for all of you that ever started something with passion and conviction only to see it wither in time, if 1 person gave God a chance because of your efforts, I can’t imagine Him being more pleased. Can you imagine Him tying up that loose end in heaven one day? “Come here. I want you to meet ‘John’ or ‘Susan’. He or she is here today because you trusted in me and sought to bring me glory by telling them about me.” Wow!

Numbers can be great, and it’s certainly a worthy goal to be attractional because the Jesus I see in the Bible certainly is, but always remember there’s no sum greater than 1 in all that we do.