SUCCESS

George Barna, whose books I have read and whose seminars I have attended over the years, although his evangelical bent is not mine, has some interesting observations on how one defines “success” in a church. He asks: “Is it numbers? Numbers of people, programs, staff, square feet in your buildings, dollars in the plate? Or is it more a biblical perspective, which is life transformation?”

     He continues: “Jesus didn’t die on the cross just so we could fill up buildings and have fun events. He died so people’s lives could be changed, so they would be more like him, more like God, and live in a more holy and proper way. That’s not always a popular message. It means you have to sacrifice. It means your have to suffer. You have to be very conscious about what you believe and why and how you’re living that out…. That’s a hard message for a lot of pastors to give. Frankly, it’s a hard message for a lot of Christians to live out as well.” ( Dallas Morning News via Context)

     To be even more frank, it is a hard message for all Christians to live out. The truth is, if it is easy, or we feel it is easy, to be a Christian, to live out our faith in Jesus, we’re probably not living it as fully and as well as we can – and must. If sacrifice and suffering, freely chosen, mind you, are not part of our lives, if our goal is to avoid as much of both as possible, then we have missed Jesus’ message.

     Jesus came to show us how to, tell us that we must, transform our lives. We must begin to transform our lives, turn around our thinking, so to live as if the other comes first and we come second – and not the other way around, as our society and our culture almost scream out to us. That is indeed a hard message, as Barna asserts, a hard and difficult message to preach and to hear and an even harder one to believe and put into practice.

     But it is not an overwhelming or impossible task. Hard? Yes. Painful at times? Certainly. Unpleasant, something we would rather not do? Of course. Turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, giving the shirt off our back, however those metaphors are understood and lived out, none of that is ever easy and painless. If it is, then we are not being sacrificial enough. That truth is another one of those realities of our faith we would rather not hear. Christianity was never meant to be easy or “fun.”

     A successful church is one where the members gather regularly to pray and worship, to learn and grow, and, yes, to have fun and fellowship, in order to encourage and strengthen one another to live out that sacrificial love that is incumbent upon each of us through baptism. It is a church, a Christian community, that understands the responsibility to live out our faith in our daily lives, wherever we are, in whatever we are doing: truly wherever and whatever.

     Transformation is an ongoing, lifelong process. We never have a handle on it nor do we ever have it down pat – which is why there is no truly successful church. To succeed means that we have finally made it. We haven’t. We’re still on the journey together, a journey, often painful and difficult, but one freely chosen and made with joy.                                   

 WJP