Which is better?
Why is 1 better than 1,000? It depends on the context and situation. In the context of money, $1,000 income seems better than $1, especially if you need that to pay rent, mortgage, or for food unless you are being paid to do something evil! In the context of friendship, 1,000 friends seems better than just 1, unless those are 1,000 enemies who are imposter friends!
For Christian pastors, they need to process the question in the context of a local church. Is it better to have 1 or 1,000 people attending and participating together? It seems 1,000 would be, but what if that’s a false premise to even begin asking? Maybe Christian pastors need to think differently, where God is the 1 to value the most. Something or someone will be the director to the pastor. He will either gain his guidance, instruction, and value from God or somewhere else. And to a Christian pastor, God is to always be the most important one they serve, receive instruction, and be guided by.
If not, then what or who do Christian pastors follow in leading a local church among an area of people? It has been proven, even over the recent history of 100 years, that local churches and pastors can be misguided and misguiding people. When pastors begin to make church life and their life about the numbers of attendees to a church service (or anything else for that matter), they then misalign the tasks associated to pastoring and reveal their underlying motivations lack God and make themselves or others a god.
The question of “Is 1 better than 1,000?” is not meant to compare pastors and people to God but rather provide distinction for Christian pastors to discern motivations, methods, message, and mission. The important distinction helps determine and decide what direction they will go in serving among local churches and areas. Christian pastors will be tempted and trained in all various ways (goods, bads, and uglies), and more often than not, Christian pastors are trained or intrinsically concerned for the numbers of people attending church services on a regular basis.
Attendance, in countless Christian pastors’ minds and memory, has a direct impact on them, their schedule, the church organization, income, and overall influence (i.e. more the better). Numbers then become ‘a’ or ‘the’ goal for Christian pastoral leadership and exponentially multiples into priority while sinking into the mind and motivations for Christian pastors, influencing conversations, counsel, teaching, preaching, visits, relationships, ‘ministry jobs,’ and any other pastoral tasks and opportunities.
Wrong Goal?
Strategies, systems, and servant-hood become aligned (or fought over) to the primary goal, and though many of these things can be good, they more often become bad as they are misaligned and misguided. Inevitably, pastors train people in what is ‘caught’ as well as what is ‘taught.’ Therefore, a church no longer is Christian people but rather a small or massive organizational entity programmed as a system for people to fill a role in designated times and services providing care to the attendees filled with assurances their attendance reveals a spiritual comfort and relationship with God.
Is attendance bad? No. Is creating an organizational entity evil? No. Is the concept of programs always unhelpful? No. There’s more questions to ask like this, but if one is asking these questions, it tends to be a defensive reaction to their current or historical efforts versus learning (or re-learning) what it means to pastor as a Christian among an area and local church and actually changing.
Change, even good change, can be hard, but it is to never be limiting. Even one of the greatest aspects at the root and core of Christianity is God ‘chang’ing hearts and lives. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks!” Well, I didn’t know we are dogs, but if we are, then we are to be Christian dogs that learn and change as needed! Somehow the message and training changes after we come to trust God with our lives? May it never be!
1 or 1,000?
Why? Because Christians take instruction from no one else except from God and God alone. Does this mean that every pastor has a direct line of communication to God and are better than others since they are closer to God than others? No. It means that God works in people throughout history and time to influence and impact the world that then impact and influence one another. Therefore, pastors can learn from others, especially those in history, but they are never God and only can identity it’s God’s work in people because of his word that makes it clear.
Christians are merely people who re-direct and reveal who is at work in them and their lives — God himself. Hence why the word ‘telos’ is so helpful to remind and train people from beginning to end of their life, especially in beginning to learn of and trust in Jesus the Christ — God in flesh. There may be people in history and contemporary situations that seem to influence and affect more people than others, but still yet, that is not them but God at work. We are to be more astonished and in awe of God at work in the world than we are at the response of people to his work.
Therefore, Christian pastors are not primarily concerned with gaining, attracting, keeping, and compromising numbers of people. Christian pastors are not to be concerned for the type or style of church they want to create or be part of. Christian pastors are not be focused on how to become a better organization. Christian pastors are to be concerned for God.
Some think that is ‘pie in the sky’ or ‘idealistic.’ Others interpret that to mean they must not be like those churches whose goal is off and turn from entertainment-like church services to historical, liturgical, and dead-like church services. Some are just clueless. Some misconstrue it to mean it’s a ‘do whatever you want, hippy-like Christianity.’
If Christian pastors are concerned more about God than life itself, then they are going to the eternal and rejuvenating source of the fountain of wisdom for real life — including pastoring! It means pastors learn and are trained in real life to trust God and steward well of time, resources, and people — personal as well as the local church. And as one comes to know God the Creator, they come to know his creation and how to live. If one does not know how to live, then they are struggling to understand who God is.
Train people to?
Christian pastors are to teach people in a way that trains them to trust in God with the entirety of their lives. This kind of training focuses primarily on what God wants for pastors and people and leads people to follow God in real life. This kind of training allows pastors to not live or program life for people and leads them to know the Creator of life. This kind of training trains is content to train 1 that can exponentially grow into a thousand. This kind of training does not compromise to gain a thousand attendees by making them comfortable, humored, and happy; but, it also is not fooled to think it needs to be the opposite of dreadful, dreary liturgical funeral. This kind of training trains people that it has nothing to do with a church service and all to do with God (which then the culture of the church service will be that of humble, loving, repentant people who have also invited neighbors in their life that they have engaged with throughout their life). This kind of training sees 1 person at a time, even in the midst of crowds of thousands. This kind of training preaches not to the audience of 1 (God) but rather to any audience because of 1 — God.
Therefore, what becomes the most important thing for a Christian pastor? The same thing that he began with in becoming a Christian — God. Pastors then need to be proficient in God’s word as well as God’s world. They learn his nurture as well as his nature. They learn his principles in practive as well as his people.
Pastors are relational to God and others. Pastors are men characterized by God’s work within their hearts like he has with others in history. Pastors are passionate and steadied. Pastors are shepherds who oversee a landscape of people both within a local area as well as a church. Pastors prioritize, perform, and manage tasks that come from being loved by God and motivated to love others with words, relationship, resources, skills, and time. Pastors endure loss of people, money, and time because they have gained God. Pastors take joy in people changing because they were first changed. Pastors learn to navigate people’s beliefs and behavior in a way that reveals the wrong and redirects them to the right (even if people don’t like that and leave). Pastors are not actors but sincere. Pastors learn to avoid being worshipped as a stage personality or performer and preach to people’s ears and hearts so they are redirected to worship only 1 — God.
Why does this matter?
Therefore, what does God want for pastors and people? Does he want them to only train 1 or 1,000? The point is that it doesn’t matter since the only thing that matters is God. Each person then matters to God. When this takes place, pastors learn that having 1 trained person to trust God with the entirety of one’s life is better than 1,000 continually misguided, untrained, and godless church attenders.
Does God want a lot of people to trust him? Of course! God created and loves the world, which means he determines how pastors are to operate. 1 person can have much of a Christ-centered difference in the world than 1,000 mere church service attenders. A church attender is different than a Christian, though Christians will certainly gather together in church services and much more since they don’t follow a program — they follow God.
If a pastors has an opportunity to preach to 1,000, then so be it — great! But his message should not change whether he was preaching to 1 or 1,000, and he certainly must understand that he’s task is not merely preaching but also relating, interacting, communicating (listening, counseling, teaching), and so on.
Train 1 as you would a 1,000, and train 1,000 as you would 1.
The result?
Pastors would see less people dependent on programmatic church services for their gain and the pastor’s glory and more people trained to be mature, responsible, respectful, faithful, committed, educated, wise, and overall — “inspired by truth and love to make life, disciples, and churches all about Jesus.”
Hence: TelosChurches.org and TelosChurch.org in Sacramento, CA region.
