All of us in ministry want a full room. I don't know anybody who says, "I want to spend the next 5, 10, or 20 years leading an empty church." We want our churches to grow, period. However, to both Christians & Christian leaders the definition of growth is far to narrow. Even though it feels really shallow to admit it, we believe that a growing church is simply a church that fills the room.
What if we used just one new metric? What if we celebrated the fact that the crowd gathering in the room is getting bigger but also asked about another number? What if we not only looked at how many people we're able to gather but also how many people we're able to send? There are a lot of things we could measure, but I think this one thing could revolutionize our ministries & congregations. You see in Luke 15, Jesus tells three parables about lost things: a sheep, a coin, a son. In all three stories the lost thing is recovered. However, in the last story, the one about a lost son, no one actually went looking for him. Someone tracked down the lost sheep. The lady tore her house apart to find a lost coin, but nobody went looking for the lost son. Why did Jesus leave that out of the story?
You see, godliness isn't just about being well behaved & moral. If it were, the older son in that final parable wouldn't look so bad at the end. If he were really as good & righteous as he claimed to be, wouldn't he have gone looking for his lost brother to invite him to come back to the father? The father was waiting. The father was hoping, but no one went out looking for that young, rebellious boy. As Jesus looked at the spiritual landscape He saw older brothers who were moral & who thought they were pretty righteous. He also saw the ones who were far from God. They were the "sinners & tax collectors." They were "those people." However, the supposedly godly religious elite didn't reach out to those who were rebelling against God in hopes that they might repent & come back to the Father. Instead, they condemned them, marginalized them, & encouraged everybody else to as well.
Jesus however was the true older brother. He did what the older brother in the story should have done. He left the Father & at His own expense set out to find those who were lost & do whatever it might take to bring them back home. For Jesus no price was to high to rescue the lost. As followers of Jesus do we have that same mindset? Do we see that part of our growth as a Christ follower is that we would set out to seek that which was lost so that we might invite them to come home to the Father? Shouldn't that reality be a huge part of how we measure growth? Shouldn't we be looking at how we're going out into the world seeking the lost? Shouldn't we value boots on the ground as much or more than butts in the seats?
"We Should Be Just As Concerned With Filling The Field
As We Are With Filling The Room."
Jesus told His disciples that the field was ready for harvest. That wasn't the problem. The problem is that there weren't enough people willing to go into the field. Things haven't changed. The Gospel is still powerful, still life changing. People are still lost in sin & held captive by the things of this world, & the Gospel is the only thing that will set them free. The issue isn't our message. The issue is that not enough of us are in the field. There aren't enough of us filling the field of our community, our school, our workplace, or the field that extends to the ends of the earth. Filling the room is actually kind of easy, at least easier than filling the field, but it's filling the field that changes lives & give us even more to celebrate the next time we gather to fill up the room. Filling the field actually makes filling the room more meaningful. Are you out in the field or are you content with just being in the room once a week? Does your congregation value filling the field the way they value filling the room?
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