I was reading recently the blog Cottonheadconfessions.blogspot.com and Jan Cartledge had written in response to the question: “Do You Love Church?” at the recent CBF convention. Her response was very good and eye opening. But one of the “reasons” she listed as why she did not love the church caught my attention.
“I don’t love church when people ask me how many people attend the church I pastor. Why is the success of a church based on the number of members the church can claim? I’ve taken to responding to such questions by saying, “we don’t base our success on numbers – we base our success on loving God and others.” In the minds of many today, if a church doesn’t include a large campus, mega-sanctuary, family life center, free coffee and a thousand in membership, it’s not a success.”
I too get really irritated with the question of numbers that attend my church. Really what is going on in peoples minds when they ask the question, “How many members ya got?”, is “Is my church bigger and better than that one?”. We can easily get caught up in the numbers game. As soon as the associational report comes out, we jump to the page that list numbers for the past year. We start comparing our church to others and try to justify our existence. “Why at least we are doing better than half a dozen of those sad, pitiful, ungodly churches.” Or we may even compare percentages. “My church gives more to missions that the huge downtown church, on a percentage basis.”
Let’s admit it, at the very least in Baptist circles we measure success on numbers. Why we even reward churches for having “good” numbers. In many associations we give out awards for most baptisms, most in Sunday School etc. So we are saying that numbers are important. The reality is that we live in a numbers driven denomination. We measure the worth of a church in numbers. As a matter of fact, numbers determine participation in many levels. Such as amount of money given or number of members, determines number of “delegates” or voting members to local associations, state and national levels of Baptist work.
The larger the number, the more “votes” you can have and the greater influence at said Baptist meetings. So the smaller churches are pushed to the bottom rung of Baptist life. And yet the majority of churches in the USA are small churches with an attendance of less than 200. Is it any wonder small churches feel left out?
Maybe we ought to ask a different question when we wanna know about a particular church. Anything but numbers, it is hard I admit, but how about asking, “How can I pray for your church today?”. I would love for someone to ask me that. I buckle up when someone asks me “How many members ya got?”. I have been tempted to respond with a smart remark such as, “How many times have you farted today?”. I know that sounds rude, but that is about how rude I feel the question of membership is.
It’s just my opinion.
Tags: baptist, membership, numbers
