{"id":11008,"date":"2016-07-23T08:07:10","date_gmt":"2016-07-23T13:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/?p=11008"},"modified":"2016-07-23T09:00:48","modified_gmt":"2016-07-23T14:00:48","slug":"members-church-have","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/members-church-have\/","title":{"rendered":"How many members does your church have?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend said, “Preachers love\u00a0their large churches.\u00a0 The bigger the better. But I tell you, when they start giving account for their flock before the Lord, they’re going to wish they’d had a lot fewer members!”<\/em><\/p>\n

In truth, the Bible puts no prize on the size of anything.\u00a0 “It doesn’t matter to the Lord whether He saves by the few or by the many,” said Jonathan in I Samuel 14:6.\u00a0 And he was right.<\/p>\n

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,” said our Lord (Matthew 13:31).<\/p>\n

Not that preachers believe this.\u00a0\u00a0 Most of my\u00a0colleagues in the Lord’s work seem to\u00a0believe we need bigness in everything, particularly we want lots and lots of members.\u00a0 The more the better.<\/p>\n

The more members you have, the more resources you have: personnel, finances, visibility and influence in the community, denominational respect, etc etc.<\/p>\n

At least, that’s the theory.<\/p>\n

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Hebrews 13:17 sends a shudder through the heart of every right-thinking minister.\u00a0 “Obey your leaders and be in submission to those who have the rule over you in the Lord for they keep watch over your souls, as those who must give account….”<\/p>\n

Pastors keep watch over the souls of their flock. Pastors will account to the Lord for each member of their congregation.<\/p>\n

Yikes.\u00a0 And double yikes.<\/p>\n

That’s one reason of a thousand\u00a0why the Lord has to call people into this work. No normal person would volunteer for a calling with such heavy responsibilities and such\u00a0strict accountability.\u00a0 .<\/p>\n

This fellow told in our newspaper\u00a0about interviewing\u00a0the chief of a small-town volunteer fire department. “How many members do you have?”\u00a0 The chief said, “Are you asking how many people show up at our fish fries? or how many fight fires?”<\/p>\n

Those are two entirely different things.<\/p>\n

William Wyne pastored Missionary Union Baptist Church in Columbus, Mississippi, an all-black congregation.\u00a0 When I read that the mayor of Birmingham, Dr. Richard Arrington, was going to be speaking at that\u00a0church\u00a0 the following Sunday afternoon, I drove across town to hear him.\u00a0\u00a0As I entered the sanctuary, the ushers escorted me\u00a0straight to\u00a0the pastor’s office where\u00a0I met\u00a0Pastor Wyne, a few other ministers, and Dr. Arrington.\u00a0 At one point, the mayor said, “William, how many members do you have?”<\/p>\n

Pastor Wyne’s\u00a0answer was classic.<\/p>\n

“In the army or on the field?”<\/p>\n

Those are two entirely different numbers.<\/p>\n

In our Baptist churches, we have two\u00a0basic categories of members: resident and non-resident. When\u00a0someone moves out of town or we’re no longer able to find them, they’re dropped into the second file.\u00a0\u00a0In time,\u00a0that one dwarfs the first.\u00a0 Theoretically, when our people move to another city and join a local church, that office notifies the previous church so they can delete the name from their rolls. When the second church does not notify the first,\u00a0that person ends up\u00a0having membership in two churches.<\/p>\n

Thus do numbers get inflated.<\/p>\n

Across the denominational landscape, a few of our churches are better at drawing people to “make decisions” and be baptized than they are at making actual disciples (which is\u00a0our mandate, found n\u00a0Matthew 28:18-20).\u00a0 Consequently, some churches might show hundreds of people being baptized\u00a0in a year, even if they cannot find them.\u00a0 They baptize them, add their names to the\u00a0membership rolls, and move on.\u00a0\u00a0As a result, their annual report to the denomination indicates\u00a0a large number of converts, and their membership\u00a0rolls show enormous numbers,\u00a0yet the church never seems to grow.<\/p>\n

The next time someone tells you his church has x number of members or that a denomination does, keep in mind that those numbers may be true or completely unrelated to reality.<\/p>\n

Why, an outsider asks, would pastors want to pump up their numbers?\u00a0 Short answer:\u00a0\u00a0Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I’d say\u00a0they have become convinced that Jesus wants numbers.\u00a0And, contrary to everything\u00a0Scripture teaches, they seem to believe that just getting someone to “pray the sinner’s prayer” and be baptized is of far more importance than “teaching them to observe all the things\u00a0(Jesus has) commanded” (Matthew 28:18-20). \u00a0Of course, what\u00a0the Lord\u00a0wants is obedient, growing disciples not “decisions” or “converts” or even baptisms.<\/p>\n

And those are two vastly different things.<\/p>\n

Jesus is not looking for crowds at a fish fry but fire fighters.<\/p>\n

He’s not looking for inflated numbers for the army but obedient disciples for the field. The story of Gideon’s 300 should forever disabuse us of the notion that the Lord requires huge armies to do HIs work (Judges 7).<\/p>\n

George Myers was a neighboring pastor who farmed on the side.\u00a0 Some of his rural expressions have stayed with me decades after\u00a0the Lord took my friend to\u00a0Glory.<\/p>\n

Remarking on a preacher who had left to pastor a church with a huge building but small congregation, George laughed, “You know, Joe.\u00a0 I’d rather have a syrup-bucket full than a number 3 washtub with only half-an-inch in it!”<\/p>\n

Hard to argue with that.<\/p>\n

While we’re on the subject, let me lodge one more pet peeve about a habit of some of my colleagues in this area.\u00a0 A pastor will arrive at a church whose attendance has dropped during the interim period.\u00a0 Under the previous pastor, let’s say they averaged 200 in attendance, but for the last six months with an interim preacher, the average was more like 120\u00a0 Then, the new preacher arrives, and stays, let’s say, five years.\u00a0 During this time the attendance grows to 250, which is good.\u00a0 However, on a special day in which they burned the note on the longtime debt and had a celebrity guest, the attendance hit 1200.\u00a0 So, now, get a look at the pastor’s resume.’<\/p>\n

During Brother Sammy’s tenure at Shiloh Church, attendance went from 120 to 1200.<\/em><\/p>\n

That is what is commonly known as misrepresenting the truth.\u00a0\u00a0Playing with numbers.\u00a0 Lying.<\/p>\n

It’s not worth it, pastor.\u00a0 Let us stop this carnal game of trying to impress someone somewhere (I have no idea who we think is not onto our games!) with our numbers and focus on trying to please the Master.<\/p>\n

“Not everyone who says unto me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).\u00a0 Doing His will is what we are all about!<\/p>\n

Let us seek to impress Him and Him only.<\/p>\n

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A friend said, “Preachers love\u00a0their large churches.\u00a0 The bigger the better. But I tell you, when they start giving account for their flock before the Lord, they’re going to wish they’d had a lot fewer members!” In truth, the Bible … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthy-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11008"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11018,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11008\/revisions\/11018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}