It was one of the most depressing summers I had gone through. I was a college student at a respected university, home for the summer, but I had ended the school year with a low (and I mean low) GPA in a school where there’s sometimes pressure to “excel for God.” A good colleague had just died from a cliff-hiking accident. I had gotten fired from my first summer job, and I was having a lot of heated arguments with my parents, who continually encouraged me to get a job, continually reading the classifieds and looking to take almost any job.
Including this one. I sat in a motel’s conference room with a very mixed group from all sorts of qualifications and income levels as we listened to a suave and witty man in a suit attempted to give motivational speeches about how your life could change if you join the team that sells air filters. Whenever someone from the class ever admitted any self-doubt to the task, the aforementioned sales trainer would then tell an inspirational “little-engine-that-could” story. The topper of these stories was about how a blind man used his salesmanship and diligence to climb the ladder of so-called success, best described by the opulence of his new house, which apparently featured motion-sensor water fountains along the front sidewalk. It was a flamboyant, almost kitsch-like, example of a textbook “rags-to-riches” story.
The first day and 8 hours of training left me with a jittering headache and a little bit of nausea as I drove my little brother to junior high youth group that night. I resigned from the job training the next day.
I’m not meaning to put salesman down (I worked as a telemarketer for 2 years), and I don’t want to discourage anyone’s perseverance in their career. It’s just that I can’t help notice the tendency of inspirational stories to lean toward financial blessing as the goal, and it’s spilled into churches‘ stories.
From the southeast coast to the northern California, I’ve heard some pretty cool stories about how churches grow from a a fistful of families in a Bible study into a resourced megachurch. Willow Creek, for example, is named after the movie theater its founders first rented to hold their church services in 1975. Now they are a multi-campus church (their home facility has about 24,000 weekly attendants) and an association with worldwide influence and resource. Harvest Bible Chapel went from 18 people meeting in a high school to nationwide church planting.
I’m not putting down these ministries. I have friends in the leadership of both of them and my wife and I have regularly attended their worship services in the past. My main question is to ask, when one reads a story like that, how do you define the “success”? Is it the financial stability or even overflow? Is it the attendance numbers? The recognition?
It shouldn’t be.
The pre-Constantine church in Rome had its members (not merely idle “attendants”) grow like wildfire. They didn’t have the money or political stake for a larger facility, so they delegated more leadership and found more houses volunteered to hold their gatherings. To the outside world, there were countless misconceptions floating around, as biblical teaching was being confused with Jewish sects, Gnosticism and even cannibalism. But to those who knew the church’s people, it was a community of loving, sharing and joy, a voice for the oppressed women, the unwanted unborn, the sick and the poor, and individuals willing to die for the Truth they proclaim. They had no opportunity to rely on political stake, an overflow of wealth or a respectable reputation. Nonetheless, lives where changed, and the family grew.
So, it wasn’t so much rags to riches, but to flourishing.
As a church in the West, we’re challenged to look beyond our culture’s views of success as defined by reputation, popularity and wealth to a different kind of prosperity. God loves small beginnings (Job 8:7, Zechariah 4:10) but looks for a different type of ending. In the Christian’s mind, King David should not be remembered for his wealth (Solomon was richer, but considered it meaningless) or his military aggression (Saul was arguably more violent, but he disregarded God), but instead for his heart: a heart that sincerely followed after God and His will.
As we daily review our checkbooks, let’s continue to keep’s God’s will at heart, and see what He can make flourish.
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