Numbers define us. They shouldn’t, but they do.
- “She has 5,000 social media followers.”
- “He makes $20,000 a year more than I do.”
- “That church runs 3,300 people on five campuses.”
- “Our church only has 40 members.”
Numbers aren’t bad, of course. Tracking my 10,000 steps-per-day count has motivated me to stay healthier. But numbers are meant to inform us, not define us.
This is an excerpt from the Introduction to my new book, De-Sizing the Church: How Church Growth Became a Science, Then an Obsession, and What’s Next, available now.
So, why do we define ourselves by numbers so regularly? And how have numbers become the default way that so many pastors and churches perceive our value in the kingdom of God?
Followers of Jesus should not perceive their value or identity in terms of numbers. In Christ’s upside-down kingdom, the first will be last and the humble will be exalted. Yet, for my entire four-plus decades in ministry, the answer to the question “what’s your church running?” has been the primary way pastors have defined themselves, their congregation, other churches, our sense of identity, and our value.
And it’s killing us. Literally and metaphorically.
Our obsession, not just with numbers, but with big numbers, may be the major—but least-acknowledged—contributing factor in pastoral burnout, church scandals, divisiveness, misallocation of resources, and many other church dysfunctions.
As Darvin Wallis sadly, but accurately notes, “the moral failures of church leadership are not anomalies. They are the norm because they are baked right into the corporate leadership paradigms the church has embraced.”
Church size matters to us far more than it should. From the pride it brings when the numbers are up to the shame and frustration it causes when the numbers are static or down, none of this provides a healthy foundation on which to build a healthy church body.
We need to de-size the church.
Church growth is not the problem. Big churches are not the problem.
Bigness is the problem.
Bigness is an obsessive mindset. Bigness convinces us that more is always better. Bigness hides character flaws beneath numerical success. Bigness is a disease that creates dis-ease in everything it touches and everyone within its orbit.
We have an unhealthy relationship with bigness in the church, especially in the American evangelical church and in countries that have been heavily influenced by it. This book is not anti-American or anti-evangelical. I am an American and an evangelical, but I am a follower of Jesus first. That is what forms my identity and my ideas ahead of everything else.
I have yet to meet a highly driven, spotlight chasing, crowd pleasing church leader who doesn’t believe they are keeping that drive alive in order to truly reach people for Jesus. No doubt there are scam artists who use Christian language and imagery to squeeze money out of people. They get the headlines, but they aren’t nearly as common as cynics think.
Most of us are fighting a Romans 7 battle with varying degrees of success, trying to reach people for Jesus while the constant gravitational pull toward pride, fame, and compromise tugs at our weakest points.
But how did we get here? How did bigness become such an obsession that many good pastors constantly feel overwhelmed by the pressure to get the numbers up?
The drive to succeed has always been there, of course. The desire to work, to build, and to create is hardwired into us as carriers of the image of our creator-God. But ever since Eve’s conversation with a pesky little serpent, that innate, God-given yearning has become twisted.
It’s no longer enough to build and create as a reflection of the glory of God. Our fallen humanity demands that the glory reflects on us. And there’s no quicker way to feel the warm glow of that reflected glory than seeing the numbers go up on attendance charts and financial reports.
The idea of a church constantly getting bigger began as an outlier. Then it became a goal. Now it is the standard by which the performance of all churches are measured.
Our obsession with numerical success is overwhelming pastors, stifling churches, and ruining our witness. Size comes at a price. There’s a price to get to it, a price to maintain it, and a huge price when it doesn’t work out as expected.
This is why we need to de-size the church.
(This is an excerpt from the Introduction to my new book, De-Sizing the Church: How Church Growth Became a Science, Then an Obsession, and What’s Next, available now.)
