A few days ago I stumbled across a sentence that absolutely captured my attention. It’s from the blog of a nationally-known Evangelical pastor (I’m pretty sure you’d recognize his name).
The sentence is part of a longer blog post, and is not meant to stand entirely on its own, yet it set the stage for the rest of the post that celebrated what God had done in the past and the lessons the pastor had learned in the first 15 years of ministry. Near the very beginning of his post, he said:
“The fact that we’ve grown to over 12,000 people worshiping and serving each Sunday at 14 locations in four states is proof of God’s grace.”
I read the quote several times. It bounced around in my head, making noise like two random and unrelated piano keys struck at the same time. I couldn’t read the rest of the article. Instead, I pasted the sentence on to my facebook and Twitter pages and asked my friends for their reactions. Here are a few samples:
- It sounds like a dangerous presumption.
- Yes, I do think it’s by God’s grace, but it sounds more like “12k people! 14 locations! 4 states! Ergo, I AM AWESOME!” Somebody’s big fat ego peeked out behind what was probably a sincere attempt at giving God the glory, which is His alone. Darn.
- The fact that I run circles around everyone shows that God is good. WhatdoyathinkofmeNOW?
- Jesus only had a handful of people, no building, and no cash. How sad that by Western standards, he didn’t do a great work.
- More needs to be known . . . The numbers might be good, and might not be.
- It sounds like a guy who wishes he could cage fight Jesus 🙂
- The proof of God’s grace is what the 12,000 people are doing Monday through Saturday.
- Numbers alone are only proof of crowds gathering.
- That quote isn’t universally true, but it may very well be true of their situation. Numbers alone don’t tell the whole story.
My own thoughts were as varied as a bag of Skittles:
