Jonah the Super-prophet?

Yesterday I sat through the first lecture in my "Principles of Church Growth" class. A good chunk of the class (and of many books that focus on the same subject matter) was dedicated to convincing us that it is not shallow or carnal to look at numerical church growth as the primary indicator of a healthy church. In other words, all healthy churches should grow dramatically (with very few exceptions) . . . the only churches that should remain "small" (150 +/-50 seems to be the definition of "small" used in this class) are those in small communities, and pastors of slowly-growing or small churches need to repent and change their ways. I remain unconvinced.

Let's just look at the Old Testament prophets for a minute, shall we? Now, I realize that there are differences between the ministries of the OT prophets and churches, but that certainly doesn't mean that we cannot learn from them about God's character and those he chooses to be his ministers. By the standards of the people holding the above philosophy of church growth, God's pre-exhilic prophets were dismal failures. For hundreds of years these men had ministries that called on Israel and Judah to repent or face expulsion from the land. Apparenty they didn't make too much of a lasting impression because God was forced to follow through on the threatened punishment: in 720 BC the Northern Kingdom was captured and most of its people deported by the Assyrians and in 586 BC Babylon did the same thing to the Southern Kingdom (those dates are from memory so they may or may not be exactly right).

Did the pre-exhilic prophets fail God? NO! They did exactly what God told them to do. They faithfully proclaimed God's message to a people who did not want to listen and did not respond, yet we can be challenged and blessed today by reading their words which became a part of Scripture! Everyone loves Isaiah chapter 6 where God commissions Isaiah, but they tend to stop after verse 8 with Isaiah's dramatic declaration of "Here am I. Send me." For the rest of the chapter God basically tells him that Israel is going to be judged anyway . . . hardly anyone will repent and there will be punishment. It was God's plan that Isaiah not see massive numbers of conversions, and apparently the same goes for the other pre-exhilic prophets. The writing prophets who was the biggest "success" in terms of numbers was Jonah. Now, I think there's something wrong with an approach that would glorify the most spiritually flawed prophet and declare the likes of Isaiah and Jeremiah to be failures.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that churches with small numbers are inherantly more holy or that large growing churches are necessarily unhealthy compromisers. What I am saying is that numbers, one way or the other, are NOT necessarily a good indicator of how healthy a church is or how well its pastor is performing his ministry. I would go so far as to say that a strategy geared primarily toward increasing numbers very well may be shallow and carnal.

No church in the New Testamen is condemned for not growing or being sufficiently large. Churches are reprimanded for other things, including: allowing members to live in open sin (I Cor. 5), creating factions within the local church (I Cor. 1:10-17), disrespecting the Lord's Supper (I Cor. 11:17ff), speaking in tongues without interpreters present (I Cor 14), forsaking their first love (Rev. 2:4-5), allowing people to teach things contrary to Scripture (Rev. 2:15), allowing members to lead others into sin (Rev. 2:20-23), spiritual deadness despite good deeds (Rev. 3:1-3), and spiritual apathy (Rev. 3:15-19). Any of these things (or other spiritual problems) could very well result in a lack of church growth, but that is not the same as saying that a lack of church growth indicates that there is some spiritual problem . . . or that phenomenal church growth indicates spiritual health.

Some churches use all the latest business techniques and/or a watered down "gospel" and see human-generated numerical growth without true disciple-making. Other churches God blesses with phenomenal growth as they faithfully share the gospel in ways that people can understand and seek to help Believers mature in their faith.

Some churches are so inward focused that they slowly shrivel up and die through lack of outreach or outreach with language and programs that are stuck back in the 50's (or earlier). Other churches God blesses with few visible results even as they faithfully share the Gospel in ways that people can understand and seek to help Believers mature in their faith.

That God calls some churches and idividuals to be primarily a steady witness in a resistant community is no excuse for shoddy ministry. We must faithfully plant and water, but remember that it is God who gives the increase!

The Ghosts of Gettysburg

I'm back . . . this no-internet-at-work thing sure makes it hard to keep up on this blog. Anyway, here's the second part of what I wanted to post about Gettysburg. As I've noted before, the battlefield is well-preserved and not commercialized. (Ironically, it was preserved due to legislation introduced by congressman Daniel Sickles who, when he was a corp commander at the battle of Gettysburg, made an idiotic blunder that nearly cost the North the battle and caused III Corp to sustain terrible losses.)


The town of Gettysburg, however, is amazingly glitzy and commercialized. While I found it all a bit tacky (though we did go into some of the gift shops and an art gallery) it was pretty much what you would expect at most major tourist sites. What really bugged me was the obsession with ghosts. I saw three or four places that you could pick up a battlefield guide and probably a couple dozen places where you could sign up to go on a "ghost tour." One of them even told you what day of the week you could see which ghost . . . apparently they work on a schedule. I found it rather sick that apparently a lot more people go to Gettysburg to see "ghosts" than to see the place where thousands of men gave their lives in the turning point of the war that preserved the Union and freed the slaves.


The B&B we stayed at was no exception. While there was some focus on all the history of the place (at various points in its past it had been a bank robber's hideout, an underground railroad stop, and a Confederate field hospital among other things), most of the "bragging rights" had to do with the place being "haunted." In fact, the room we stayed in was supposed to be one of the "most haunted".


In the room was a little notebook for you to leave comments about your stay. About every third comment told about a "ghostly encounter," and all but one or two of them were completely absurd. You'd think people had never stayed in a creaky old house before (this place dated from the very early 1800's). My favorite one (and I think this guy was being sarcastic . . . at least I hope so) was a guy who said that when he reached down for the last cookie on the plate he and his wife had been sharing it was gone [insert ominous pipe organ music].


Karen and I had a great time blaming everything on the ghosts (e.g. when I stubbed my toe getting out of the hot tub or spilled something). One of the common "ghostly encounter" stories was of "someone rattling the doorknob" so I wanted to rig up some kind of live wire that I could touch to the doorknob when it rattled and see if we could hear some un-ghostlike cursing by the employee whose job it was to go around and rattle the occasional doorknob. Our doorknob actually did rattle, but it was because the door right next to ours swung into our door when somebody (it must've been the ghost!) opened it a bit too vigorously.


I think if I lived in Gettysburg I would be tempted to buy a Civil War reenactor's costume and go around scaring the daylights out of people on their stupid "ghost walks." You know, come screaming out of a clump of trees with a fixed bayonet straight at some group of people who have already worked themselves up into a state of fear because they're on a "ghost walk."


Seriously though, it really is sad that people are so willing and even eager to believe in ghosts. I won't deny that there are such a thing as "paranormal" occurrences, but according to the Bible those aren't the souls/spirits of dead people! Numerous passages (e.g. Luke 16:19-31, II Corinthians 5:6-8, Hebrews 9:27) indicate that once a person dies they go immediately to one of two places . . . heaven or hell (I suppose that "uncomfortable" fact is what people are trying to avoid by believing in ghosts). There's no hanging around because of "unfinished business," popping in to say "hi" at a seance, moving a shuttle around a ouija board or some such rot. The only spirit beings that can interact with humans are angels (e.g. Hebrews 1:14) and demons (e.g. Ephesians 6:12) . . . guess which one of those two groups would be okay with impersonating dead people in contradiction of what that the Bible teaches. I wonder if there would be quite as many people interested if they started calling them "demon walks". . .