Somebody asked me this awhile back and I wasn’t quite sure how to answer it. Usually we mean is your church growing numerically? If you had 150 people in attendance when you became the pastor of the church are you now pushing that mystical 200 number? Or are you beginning to dwindle?
That’s a hard question for me to answer because I tend to have to ask, “which church”? But even that isn’t a good barometer. I cannot call what happens here on Wednesday evenings, “church”. Church is the gathering of believers. I would say about 70% (if not more) of those in our building on a Wednesday night are unbelievers. And it isn’t because we are giving them lollipops or playing games where you see how many Alka Seltzer tablets you can shove in your mouth without vomiting. We are trying to be as Jesus-centered as we possibly can. And the kids keep showing up. But many of them haven’t come to know Jesus yet. So numerically speaking our Wednesday night program is growing.
But Sunday?
I don’t think I’ll be getting any pastor of the year awards if its measured by attendance. We are in a lull. Some folks are leaving. My heart is breaking. I keep preaching my guts out and our numbers aren’t catching up. That’s true financially. That’s true of our Sunday school numbers. Numerically we are dwindling. And it causes me on a weekly basis to reassess everything.
But I’m not convinced that if you’d ask Paul if a church was growing if he’d look at the financials, or the attendance record, or the number of new converts. I think that’s part of it. It’s certainly part of how things were measured in Acts. But in 1 Thessalonians Paul speaks of the growing Thessalonian church but he has much different rubric (see 1 Thessalonians 3:11—4:13.
A biblically growing church will grow in love. It will grow in holiness. It will grow in missional labor. And those are messy. Consider just one of these—growing in love. Do you realize how painful and difficult and sloppy it is to grow in such a thing? I grew in love with my wife not only by watching movies and going on dates and doing fun couples things. I grew in love with my wife by confessing sin. Going through painful times together. Dealing with tangled webs of personal brokenness and coming out the other end holding tear soaked hands.
Mark Dever is right:
We demonstrate to the world that we have been changed, not primarily because we memorize Bible verses, pray before meals, tithe a portion of our income, and listen to Christian radio stations, but because we increasingly show a willingness to put up with, to forgive, and even to love a bunch of fellow sinners.
And that’s messy. Which is why he is also right when he says this:
If your goal is to love all Christians, let me suggest working toward it by first committing to a concrete group of real Christians with all their foibles and follies. Commit to them through thick and think for eighty years. Then come back and we’ll talk about your progress in loving all Christians everywhere.
So is our church growing? I sure hope so. I know I am. It’s painful but I’m learning to love better. And that seems to be what Paul was thankful for when he looked at the Thessalonians. I’ll admit that I get discouraged sometimes when I don’t physically see people responding to a sermon. I get discouraged when it feels a bit more dead than I’d like. But I’ll also admit that I get super energized when I hear stories of folks growing in love towards one another.
Is your church growing?
Maybe it’d be better to ask, “How is God growing your church?”
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