June 13, 2006
Successful Church
Recently one of our ministers reported on his mission trip to the Philippines. When asked about church growth, he enthusiastically explained that churches were springing up all over that country. “In the Philippines a church of 25 people is considered successful.” With a shrug he quipped, “Where, here in the US, a church isn’t considered successful unless they have 5,000.” Excuse me? Now, I’m assuming his comment was nothing more than regurgitating statistics, but where is this stuff coming from? I’d like to meet the man brave enough to tell a congregation of 150 that they’re unsuccessful. Jesus has a definition of success, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” Matt 18:20 NIV
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Gail;
----Satan is not choosey about his means of attack. He will take what he can get or twist what he can not get. In the case of meanings in the heart of the church, he does the latter. Success in the church is the measure by which one or more people increase in mature manhood towards the fullness of the stature of Christ as a result of the church's practise. The only correlation success may have with physical number in the church is in regards to the physical number of people who actually have increased in spiritual manhood.
----But Satan is more than happy for us to continue to guage the success of our efforts by numbers of warm bodies only. He knows that not only will any old warm body do, but the more spiritually cold the warm body, the more corrupting may be the effect it will have upon the "successful" church. So, the more the merrier.
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