Is Our Church Growing?

Mike Leake

Is your church growing?

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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Photo source: here

You Don’t Fix Ingratitude This Way

Mike Leake

The little boy is crying because he didn’t get the Christmas present he wants. The parent, not wanting to raise an ungrateful sod, reminds him off impoverished children just down the road who get nothing.

A little girl refuses to eat her food because it isn’t her favorite. She pushes the plate away and refuses to eat until she gets her favorite foods. The frazzled mom, not wanting to raise a spoiled brat, reminds her that there are malnourished children in Africa who

A single mom is crying in your office because she isn’t sure how she will be able to pay for that vacation she promised her kids. She can barely pay all her bills. She keeps trying to squirrel a little bit of money away to bless her kids but she just cannot seem to do it. She feels the weight of living paycheck to paycheck. Wanting to help her gain a little perspective you remind her that if she even has $5 to spare she is more wealthy than a large percentage of the world.

I was reading a book on depression the other day which made a similar argument. The book has been great and the author’s overall point is sound. His aim is to rescue us from hearts of ingratitude. But I would argue that his strategy, an extremely common one, of pointing out reasons why we don’t have it so bad actually undercuts the heart of gratitude. The path to gratitude isn’t to reassess what you have compared to others who don’t have so much. It is to view things in light of eternity.

Consider Asaph in Psalm 73. Dude was depressed. And angry. And this was because he was being an ungrateful brute. He noticed the hearty steak on his unbelieving neighbors plate and realized that even on his best night all he could muster was a TV dinner salisbury steak that is better described as “animal product”. And it ticked him off. He was the kid at Christmas whining because he got a Kindle Fire instead of an iPad.

So how was he snapped out of his brute-like state? Was his Grinch-heart grown two sizes when he realized that another Who down in Whoville didn’t even have roast beast but only a paltry can of French peas? No. His heart was transformed when he went into the temple. Gratitude doesn’t come from stacking the deck so that we win the comparison game. It comes from having an eternal perspective. It comes from realizing that life isn’t about steak or peas.

Here is why that game doesn’t work. It’s one that can only be played somewhere like America. How do you teach gratitude to the kid who doesn’t have $5 in his pocket? What do you say to the family who really truly doesn’t have a next meal? Do you say, “buck up, at least you don’t have Ebola”? No. That’s a fool’s game. Gratitude doesn’t come from realizing we’ve got it better than some other poor chap. Gratitude comes from realizing that our Father delights to give to us His kingdom. And when we come to properly value the kingdom then we see the world as Asaph finally saw it. Steak is great, but if steak is all you’ve got (if steak is your kingdom) then some day it’s going to get maggots. And that’s true whether you’ve got the Banquet variety of animal product or a Ruth Criss steak.

The better way to counsel our hearts when we’re given over to ingratitude—and especially that nasty type which leads to despair and depression—is to compare what we’ve got to God’s kingdom. We’ll see that what we have in our hands is paltry—no matter how it compares to what is in our neighbors hands. And then we’ll see that this glorious kingdom of His is freely given to us out of the Father’s delight. That leads to gratitude. And if you are given the grace to see more of His kingdom than you see of your despair you’ll be rescued (at least a bit in the here and now) out of the doldrums.

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Photo source: here

READ This! 01.24.19

Mike Leake

A Graveyard Is a Good Place to Make Big Decisions

Interesting thought.

7 Churches That Are Often Tough to Pastor

But they still need pastors.

The Countries Where It’s Most Dangerous to Be a Christian in 2019

Make this your prayer list.

Does She Spark Joy?

This is a reflection on the methods (and gospel gap) of Marie Kondo.

Grooming the Next Generation

This is one of the most balanced articles I’ve read on this topic.

Why American Churches Are at a Tipping Point

I tend to agree.

3 Approaches to Preaching

I always shoot for that third one but I think I fall into that second one at times.

16 Truths About Digital Time and Real Friends

These are great.

Why is racism still an issue?

Is It Okay to Affirm the Good Anymore?

Mike Leake 1 Comment

I saw on my newsfeeds last week everyone was talking about a Gillette ad. Quite a few people seemed upset and I kept seeing responses about toxic masculinity. I get it—I’m not a fan of a company that inspires shaving either, but I didn’t know what the big deal was about this ad. I figured the ad was some liberal jargon akin to Irina Dunn’s “women need men like fish need a bicycle.” I didn’t watch it, until a couple days ago.

Because I did not watch it or read articles or see the social media discussions I went into the thing expecting something pretty silly. But I also went into watching it without any partisanship. And I have to say after having watched the thing…What in the world is everyone so upset about?

I understand that this doesn’t portray every man. I also appreciate the commercial which was recently put out by a watch company showing another side to masculinity. And I think Greg Morse is spot on when he reminds us that while machismo is a perversion of biblical masculinity so is being effeminate.

But if this particular video by Gillette stands alone, then I don’t see the big deal. It’s basic message is that real men don’t sexual harass women or bully others. We use our God-given strength to protect and make the world a better place, not to tear it down. I think we as the church ought to give this a heart ‘Amen’. But we can’t. And we can’t because we’re so entrenched in cultural battles that we’re afraid to take up the wrong side. If we’re so entrenched in cultural wars that we cannot affirm the good whenever and wherever we see it or expose evil whenever and wherever we see it, then we’re fighting a battle foreign to the New Testament (Phil 4:8).

There is a particular ill which plagues our society. And I see it plaguing the church—maybe even more so in the church. The ill which plagues us is the inability to address a thing as it is. In our postmodern culture we realize there are many facets to this diamond we call life. Every statement you make can have a “yeah, but”. You cannot say everything in one article or ad. Things are far too beautiful and complex to be exhausted by a blog post or a 2 minute video. But we think in our day that if a facet of a diamond is left off that we’ve got an obligation to be ticked off about our neglect, and that all the world is going to go to hell because of the slippery slope which this awful oversight has created.

You can choose to get upset about all the things this ad from Gillette doesn’t say. You can buckle down and take it as an offense to masculinity. Maybe “boys will be boys” isn’t such a bad philosophy for raising a young man who is chiseling his armor. But maybe, just maybe, there really is some good in this ad that needs affirming. I break up fights about every Wednesday night. And it isn’t because “boys will be boys”. It’s because they don’t actually know what it means to be a man. And maybe we, as the church, ought to affirm the good in this Gillette ad and shave off the rest.

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