I’m finally feeling like I am over this Spanish Flu bug. So I have another Lesson from Spain. We have to redefine success.
One of the things that I heard while sitting around the coffee/cola table with these missionaries is that we have to understand that how success is viewed needs to be redefined. When these missionaries from Western Europe look around at their work, they are not seeing 10,000 churches a month being planted like those in Asia. They are seeing 2-3 people per year coming into a relationship with Christ. Do you know how disheartening that is to tell people back home? When you come home on furlough and people ask how many churches were planted or how many people came to Christ this past year, or something like that, and you know you have worked your hardest, been obedient to God and yet you are not seeing the astounding numbers or the expected numbers that other missionaries are seeing in in other parts of the world, there is part of you that feels like you are a failure. That is because we in the States are intrigued and in love with numbers as the defining aspect of success. Sadly, if that was the case, Jesus and Paul could be described as failures.
The reality is that Western Europe needs people who are willing to do the hard work of preparing the soil. They need people to understand that in a land where the gospel seed has not been planted, you can’t reap huge numbers. You cannot and will not for some time see huge explosions of churches and hundreds of thousands of people being saved – except for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit which can and does happen. The soil hasn’t been freed of the rocks and thorns and hard ground.
Sadly, in a world where success is defined by largeness and not obedience, many don’t really understand the context in which those wonderful men and women who spend their lives in Western Europe are working. People in the states don’t see “success”, and the missionaries struggle themselves to feel like they are accomplishing God’s work.
So church in America, we need to rethink success. Because it’s become this way here.
Let me share a note from Bob Roberts new book, Multiplying Churches (page 25):
I have a vision and a dream. Let’s start a thousand churches over the next ten years, each one running a minimum of two thousand members, and in just ten years we will turn America upside down with the gospel! That would work, right? Wrong – that scenario just happened over the past ten years, and there are fewer people in the church today than ever before…Thom Rainer, author and columnist, wrote:
I am by nature an optimist. I have seen the hand of God too often in my life to live in a state of despair and defeatism. However, the state of evangelism in the American Church is such that I do have my moments when I wonder if the Church is headed down the path of many European congregations: decline and death. The facts of a 2004 research project I led are sobering.
In Delaware, we are seeing much of the same responses as those in Western Europe. I was having a discussion last week with our state Church Multiplication missionary, and he noted to me that Delaware was more like the Northeast than Maryland. Delaware takes time to be able to engage people in a discussion about them considering Christ – at least a discussion where they will continue to talk with you and not just ignore you after the conversation. The work is hard and success is seen in small ways, not large numbers. We don’t have 1000′s coming to Christ every year. People are not open to talking about the gospel. People don’t have a lot of interest in Christianity. It’s ok if you embrace it, but they have other issues to worry about other than the church.
We are going to have to wake up to the post-Christendom that is moving in on the US, and to transition our thoughts and feelings about the largeness of Christianity and the rules of success.
At our church, we use this measure for determining success: Have a I made another person’s life better today. Did the person I met on the street or in the restaurant or wherever, is their life better after I met them?
What is success to you? You define success by what you measure…
