"Success is..."

If you haven't read it yet, click on the title link to read a previous post, and read also the comments to it.

Much of what passes for the definition of "ministry success" (no offense to those who find value in it) stands in opposition to the methods Jesus Himself engaged in to "build" His ministry. Success is defined in terms of how many people have attended a particular event, the size of our budget, or the square footage of our building. By these terms Jesus was an utter failure. He had no operating budget, or a building; and as for body count, the man kept sending everyone away!!!!

Those who answered the previous post by pointing to obedience to Jesus, and love for God and neighbor, are certainly correct...

...however, I had better rephrase the question:

Granting that success is defined by our obedience to Jesus, and that 'obedience to Jesus' is defined by our love for God and our love for people, what is an accurate measure of that success?

What is the fruit that will show that the tree is healthy?
Matthew 7:15-20


The answer Jesus gives is that we would leave something behind us (John 15:16); if we look to Jesus we can see in His life a model for us to follow. If we would judge our lives a success by the standard Jesus set then we must first begin by stating that 'success' is to be measured by the people who follow after us...

...it has been said:

"Success is defined by our successors!"

Jesus made many baffling decisions if His ministry is to be evaluated by much of what passes for 'church growth' today. He sent people away without even a basic understanding of the gospel, He refused to let people follow Him, ran away and hid from them when they wanted to give Him a place of prominence and authority in their community, was constantly avoiding the influential people in society in favor of people who had nothing to offer, would consistently tell people things that were phrased in such a way that they either plotted to kill Him or simply left His ministry altogether; in fact, Jesus seems to have been more interested in 'Church Growth Governors' than in conventional and contemporary 'Church Growth' wisdom.

Why did Jesus do things the way He did them? Because He measured success by the lives of the disciples He left behind Him. He knew that no matter how large His Church became, there was not the possibility of 'success' if He was the only one to take responsibility for what God wants to do upon the earth. In fact, the whole goal of Jesus ministry was not to 'reach people with the gospel' (as we often think of this term) but rather to help a small group of people to learn how to live in God's presence so fully that they would be able to teach others how to do the same thing. (Which is what Jesus meant when He used the term gospel...)

God is not concerned with externals...

...He is truly concerned that each person would become the woman or man that they were intended to be (a unique reflection of the Son of God and Son of Man, Jesus), and so would rather spend three years teaching twelve men how to 'be' then lead 10,000 people in a 'sinner's prayer,' or gather 20,000 into a group, or oversee the construction of a giant community center/meeting hall, or raise 1,000,000 dollars.