The Church in America Needs to Redefine What Success Looks Like
My first time in a church, I was eight. I knew about God before that, but church is where I met him. I remember asking my mom, “Why can’t we go to church every day?” and being furious when my brother was too sick for us to go one Sunday. It felt like an injustice.
My core memories of church included running over to the bench where my uncle—the pastor of our church—sat during worship. He wore a dark brown, navy, or black suit, with his substantial KJV Bible laid next to him. During worship, he’d let me run across the sanctuary to sit by him. He’d have one arm around my thin shoulders and one arm raised high in the air, his eyes pointed upward and closed tight.
He loved it when I cleaned his office, because he knew I wouldn’t deep clean it. I’d just straighten it up to make it look better, so he could still find his books and notes and VHS tapes of old sermons right where he left them.
He was always the first to arrive at church, the last to leave. He’d bring me sausage and cheese biscuits from McDonalds on Sunday morning. And during the week, he’d spend hours up there on his own, seeking God’s face on behalf of people who would never know.
When he told someone, “I’ve prayed through, and it’s going to be ok,” it felt like the surest thing in the world.
He wasn’t perfect, but he was my definition of a true shepherd.
Claude Lorrain, The Sermon on the Mount, 1656
I won’t see my Uncle Bo again until the resurrection. The last thing I told him was that I’d remember what he taught me. I’ve finished college, moved several times across the country, traveled to Israel 10 times, met fellow believers from just about every Christian tradition you can think of, and attended their churches.
Over the years, I’ve grown more deeply connected to the Church, and yet I often feel disillusioned at the same time. I’ve struggled to find once more that experience of God through his church that so marked me as a child.
I’ve wondered why.
And when I think about the way my Uncle Bo led that little country church in Friendship, Tennessee, I realize that it wasn’t some thought-out formula to building a successful, ever-growing community with a bigger brand and bigger building. Our church was never known for either. He just loved people, no matter how broken.
Dietrich Bonheoffer said in his book Life Together:
The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.
In what begins as a holy desire to build spiritual community, many of us in the Western Church today seem to have turned it into an opportunity to build impressive things for God—whether institutions, programs, movements, etc. The problem is, it’s eating us alive. We’ve allowed the cultural values around us to infiltrate our lives and our communities by osmosis—and we don’t even realize what’s happened.
The values often prevalent in American culture are success, prestige, wealth, power, climbing the ladder, convenience, being well-known and well-liked. You’re perceived as valuable and impressive inasmuch as you can have everything you want and produce results that make it possible for others to have what they want. This often leads to the end justifying the means—over and over again, until we’ve all misplaced our souls. It’s utterly opposite to the way of the Kingdom.
I live in the DFW area, the “buckle of the Bible belt,” it’s called. Churches are built next to one another, like a buffet for the consumers of spirituality. Any denomination. Any music style. Any size (though mostly pretty big). Just open your maps app, type in your preferences, and dozens of options will come up. Church is a buyer’s market.
What’s more, churches are planted all the time in areas where there are already plenty of churches, because, “There’s not a church like ours here.”
Unfortunately, I’ve found only a few churches that aren’t just more of the same—and I’m not talking about denominations.
So what do I mean by more of the same? you might ask.
I’m referring to leaders, pastors, administrators of churches who view the following as indicators of success…
Weekly attendance
The amount of tithes and offerings the church brings in each Sunday
Number of conversions each Sunday or at a major event
Number of members
Number of staff
Number of volunteers
Number of ministry programs
Number of cross-cultural evangelistic missionaries supported
Number of conversions recorded by said missionaries
Well-known pastors, thought leaders, and institutions with whom the church is connected
I’m not saying any of these things are bad in and of themselves, but it’s dangerous when they become our aim.
Common things you might hear from leaders who define ministry success with the list above:
Referring to church as, “my church” rather than “the church,” “God’s church,” or even “our church”
Talking more about what God is doing in their church than what God is doing in their city or in the world
Viewing other churches or denominations as a threat
Allowing their theological and missiological views to be shaped by a particular narrative in the culture rather than the other way around
Sweeping the sins of leadership under the rug because it would damage the church’s brand reputation (often referred to as the church’s “witness” in the community), allowing abuse to go unchecked
This might sound harsh. I don’t mean for it to. I’ve never been a pastor, so I don’t understand all the pressures. It’s worth acknowledging that I speak as an observer. And from what I’ve observed, I don’t think any pastor or leader starts out on this path with bad intentions. I think there’s a desire to do great work for God. To produce results in the Kingdom. The only problem is, as good as those intentions are, producing results for God is never what he required of us.
It’s as if many pastors and leaders—as well as followers of Jesus who are called to be on mission in other parts of society—imagine God the Father, the Spirit, and King Jesus sitting around a massive table in a heavenly board room, serious expressions on their faces, hands clasped, saying, “Show me your numbers.”
According to the Bible, that’s not it. Thank God. Because that’s either exhausting and demoralizing, or a road to a prideful downfall—both of which we’ve seen much of lately among well-known Christian leaders in the US. Think of all the burnt out pastors who walk away from their church or even from their faith. Think of the pastors who step down (or over to another church) because of a moral failing or public scandal.
Author and Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today, Dr. Russell Moore, says it well in his book Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America:
We see now young evangelicals walking away from evangelicalism not because they do not believe what the church teaches, but because they believe the church itself does not believe what the church teaches.
The thing is, God expects so much more, and so much less of us.
Here’s what I mean by that.
Rather than the boardroom scenario, I think what we’ll hear from God is not, “Show me your numbers,” but rather, “Show me your heart.”
From the heart proceeds everything else (Matthew 15:10-20).
Show me someone who has a consistent and deep prayer life, and I’ll show you someone who walks in wisdom and wants what God wants, rather than what the culture tells them to want.
Show me someone who is willing to examine themselves and repent daily, and I’ll show you someone who can live a holy life both in private and in public.
Show me someone who associates with the weak and lowly though they have nothing substantial to offer either in financial contribution or connections, and I’ll show you someone who is blessed with favor and honor everywhere they go.
Show me someone who bears trials and suffering with honesty, humility, and a commitment to stay the course, and I’ll show you someone who can actually shepherd people with vulnerability, credibility, and compassion.
These are the kind of results God is looking for. Just read Matthew 25:31-46.
So, where do we go from here? Only the Lord knows how to heal his church. But here’s a truth we can hold onto as we examine our own hearts and then keep walking forward…
Paul states twice in 2 Corinthians 4 (I recommend reading all of chapters 3-4) that, “We do not lose heart” (4:1, 16). The reason we don’t lose heart is because of the beautiful balance of responsibility shared between God and us, with God ultimately directing the course of all things.
It is not our job to “get results,” to “fix people,” “to facilitate exponential growth,” etc. It is our job to be faithful witnesses to Jesus, which is possible when we behold his glory. When we see him, it shows on our faces; its fragrance attaches to our lives (2 Cor 2:14)—to every thought, word, and action.
We cannot help but speak of the reality we’ve beheld. Some will respond favorably and some will not. That’s not up to us. And Paul exhorts the Corinthian church, and us today, not to resort to “disgraceful, underhanded ways” of spreading the gospel (2 Cor 4:2). The numbers are in God’s hands, not ours.
At the risk of using unhelpful business and sales terminology—we’re not supposed to close the deal, we’re supposed to make the pitch. And we do this first with our lives, from our hearts.
It’s not my responsibility to save people. It’s not yours either. It’s up to us to bear witness to Christ. Whatever the solutions are for our moment in church history, our part to play is beholding Jesus, and in beholding him, to reflect the light of his glory around us.
May what was said of the disciples in Acts 4:13 be said of us today: “And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”
May we as the church be a people, “holy and dearly loved” (Colossians 3:12), who are loyal to God above all. And from there, may we meet needs, right wrongs, and reconcile the world to God through Christ—and let go of everything else.