Success...

I’m repenting. So centered on self. So focused on success. Maybe that’s the problem: defining success with self at the center. What does success look like for the church?

Jesus came, embodying the gospel, and taught us love and grace. He modeled it with his life and his death. Then he told us to go and do likewise, and in so doing, to make disciples.

This is the model of success for the church. Grace. Love. Disciples. Discipleship is a word we invented so we could streamline it, make it productive and reproducible. Disciple-making was meant to be relational.

I was raised to see this mission through modern eyes, where numbers of converts equaled success. The church was a factory, where the assembly lines and conveyor belts pushed out hundreds of newly-affirmed Christ followers by the hour.

These products had all the right components to make the big man happy. They had made the ultimate cost-benefit analysis and had chosen heaven as their afterlife experience. They confessed Christ, were baptized, and filled with His Spirit. They then stopped any questionable behavior in order to fit in with the rest of the products and tried to make themselves pray, read their Bibles, and do right.

The sad thing about the factory was, there wasn’t much else going on besides production. Somewhere in there you just realize there’s something more… there has to be. When did “life more abundantly” turn into this factory? When did this radiant dream of following Christ become all about numbers, attendance and conversions?

I started imagining what it would be like to not care about modern measures of success and just begin to trust God to bring life-change through gospel-driven relationships. What would it be like if we could stop all our scurrying about trying to please God with our mass-production and just began enjoying the fact that He is pleased with us? What would it look like to have 5 relationships that grew deep into the word...that began being truly transformed by truth, instead of 50 converts who’s goal was to find... more converts? Wouldn’t the deep life-change that is found in relational disciple-making promote such growth that people would naturally begin making new disciples? Would it look more like a process or a moment of conversion? Where would you even start?

I broke free. Well, at least I thought I did. I began investing myself into others and digging deep into the rich truths of the gospel… but old habits die hard.

I’m in a Bible study the other night with two close friends. Normally there are 5-10 people here but due to the holidays, attendance has been down in all our gatherings. It was a great night. We laughed, opened our souls, and prayed for one another. It was a marvelous, Spirit-led time.

At the end of the meeting, one of them mentioned coming to our Thursday Bible study as well. I was overjoyed. In my joy I said, “Yeah! Come! It will be good! There will actually be people there besides just us three.” I meant it would be successful because it’s supposed to have more people… It sounded like I thought the night was unsuccessful and that the wonderful things God had done that evening as we fellowshipped together counted for nothing.

That’s not how I felt, but the success-driven need for numbers is obviously floating around in my heart somewhere. I still feel a knot in my stomach when a small crowd shows on a Sunday. My ego is tied into our production. I’m not believing that God is gracious. I feel I need to prove myself and my ministry, not that God has already approved me. I’m not trusting His sovereignty and I’m depending on myself…building a ministry upon myself instead of His gospel.

How many hurt feelings and destroyed relationships will lie in the wake of my pride… tossed to the side by my unrealistic expectations of what the church is and what Christ has called me to do?

This small instance is a microcosm of Christian maturity…discipling. We do this in a thousand places everyday, every time we fall short. We know what is true, yet our heart does not believe it for a moment. In a moment we stop believing that God is good and that His plan is best for us. Instead we seek pleasure outside His plan. We decide that God is not great and in control, and we choose to take situations into our own hands, manipulating, controlling and wracking our brains with anxiety.

There are thousands of these examples of the actions that flow from a misaligned heart. Our head may know all the right things, but our unbelieving hearts choose not to accept these truths for a moment. Out of this unbelief flows lies, fornications, addictions, negative emotions and on and on the list goes. Out of this unbelief flows statements like, “Yeah! Come! It will be good! There will actually be people there besides just us three.”

I’m repenting. So centered on self. So focused on success. I need Christ to give me a new heart so I may, by His grace, ‘both will and do His good pleasure.’