“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” -Ferris Bueller
Life moves fast, and we like it that way. We, by nearly every measure, are a people who want things quickly and feel shortchanged if anything takes too long. Why won’t the traffic light change? The drive-thru isn’t moving fast enough, and where is my Amazon order already? If I need to know who that actor in that one movie was, I can take out a rectangle from my pocket and look it up, but it’s loading too slow. One of the big reasons why gym memberships surely drop after the spike that inevitably occurs on New Year’s Day is because results do not come quick enough. We are conditioned to be impatient and look for shortcuts to quick results.
This posture is no different for Christians when it comes to personal growth and pastors when it comes to church growth, whether measured spiritually or numerically.
Every Christian has wondered why they are not further along in their walk with Christ. Shouldn’t we be further down the road by now? It can be terribly frustrating.
Every pastor has wondered why their faithfulness to ordinary means of grace has not yielded more mature Christians or larger attendance. Isn’t there something I can do to speed things up a bit?
We ought to resist urges as pastors to bring about growth that may be quick, but is likely synthetic. We ought to resist the urge as Christians to get frustrated, discouraged, or give into the temptation to give up if our sanctification is not going the speed that we would prefer. In both cases, we must not chagrin ordinary, faithful plodding through ordinary means of grace given to us in Scripture.
After healing a woman who had suffered from a lifetime of being doubled over, Jesus asked this question: “What is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it?” (Luke 13:18, NASB). His answer?
The kingdom is like a mustard seed and like leaven.
A mustard seed was one of the smallest seeds that His audience in first century Palestine would be familiar with and often saw. Even though it was small, it would grow to be a tree that could reach over ten feet in height and the birds of the air would make nests in it, finding shelter and comfort. It was a modest seed, and even became a modest tree. With tender care and persistent tending, it grows slowly in the soil, would break through even the toughest ground, and would grow overtime to become a place of comfort and shelter.
A little bit of leaven would be put in the flour and with patient diligence, the leaven would spread throughout the whole lump. Eventually, it would permeate the whole thing, if only the woman would continue to work the dough. Like the mustard seed, it would start small, and its growth could be imperceptible through the process, but eventually, it would touch every part of the dough.
The kingdom of God is like that. Christian growth is like that. Church maturation and multiplication is like that.
My dear Christian brother and sister, pursue the ordinary means of grace that God has given you: prayer, Scripture reading, church membership, church attendance, accountability, confession, and the ordinances. Results will come, but they will be slow. That is a good thing. Patient endurance, faithful striving, keeping your eyes on Jesus, these are the ways in which we grow like a mustard seed. These are the ways the gospel and the beauty of Jesus begin to permeate our entire being until they touch every part of us like leaven in a lump of dough. Sometimes our hands will hurt, sometimes the change will be imperceptible, but we keep plodding in response to the gospel.
Brother pastor, there will be a constant draw to attractionalism (what will people like?), pragmatism (what “works”?), and programs that will get people in the door and grow a church numerically. This can be done relatively easily and relatively quickly. The motivation may be good: if we get people to the church, they’ll hear the gospel, and isn’t that the goal?
We must be careful, however, in our goal to reach people and grow the church, that we turn to methods that create synthetic growth wherein we make consumers rather than disciples. The old saying is true: what you win them with is what you win them to. If you win them with a circus, you better keep the circus going, lest the customers leave once the circus is withdrawn.
The pressure may feel like it’s on, pastor, when you play the comparison game and see other churches seemingly growing at a faster clip. We ask, “How can I enjoy that same ‘success?’” But there’s the key: how do you measure success? If success is faithfulness, and not numbers, then ordinary means of grace will be much like a mustard seed. How you measure success will determine what you do and lead your church to do.
Preaching the Word, singing the Word, praying the Word, loving the people, leading the church to biblical church membership, and equipping your members to be sent out to leverage their lives for the kingdom will be slow and often times frustrating. Often the difference it is making in your people and your community will be imperceptible, like leaven. Continued cultivating, watering, and (if I can mix metaphors) plodding, will yield results. Your church will be a place where people can find shelter and shade. Your church members will be kingdom-minded people where the lenses of the gospel will, more and more, be how they see all things in their lives.
Christian friend, brother pastor, if it seems slow, that’s not a bad thing. God works through the small and the unimpressive. Keep going, keep trusting, keep Jesus as the hero of your life and church. If you do that, you will be a success.
The Bearded Ecclesiologian 