Growing Your Church Through Evangelism and Outreach

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The only value of numbers is in comparison; that's why you find statistics in columns.
—Wayne Jacobsen

Lucy finally met him face to face among the trees in the soft moonlight. She had seen the great lion earlier but had been dissuaded from following him because of the taunts of her friends. Now the lion Aslan, after a gentle rebuke, tells her what she must do: "Go and wake the others and tell them to follow. If they will not, then you at least must follow me alone."

In my office hangs a large sketch of a lion that depicts this scene from C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. The eyes of the lion, who symbolizes Christ, seem to plead, "Why won't you simply follow me and not worry about what others think?"

I needed that encouragement and correction as I pioneered a new church. I remember the time five people showed up for a Sunday morning service for which I had prepared a keynote sermon on that body's development—and two of those were visitors. Back home I went into my study and wept. Not for ministry lost, not for the needs of people, but in anguish that others would find out about it. I wept wondering if my call had been a mistake.

Though confident about God's work most of the time, I fought feelings of failure whenever I looked at statistics. And believe me, people gave me the opportunity often. Even though we grew from twenty-five to one hundred during this two-year stretch, I came to see how preoccupation with numbers does more to stifle real growth than to nurture it.

Our Christian subculture usually focuses on statistics as the measure of pastoral success. I feel it whenever someone asks me how the fellowship is doing. Invariably the next question is "How many people are coming now?" After fighting that question ...

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