There is one question that comes up every time Pastors gather around, “How big is your church?”

We might as well start asking, “So how successful are you?” You know, if you have a large church it must mean you got what it takes, you’re good at what you do, you are indeed successful. Hey, God really likes you! Especially if the story goes like this, “When we began this church we were only 10 people, but the Lord is good and we now have 2,000 in our congregation!”

That’s pretty amazing. I want to see God move like that in our church too. A little church with 30 people who want to do life together: the messy, the hard, the good.

How did they get there? The answer is usually something like this, “We listened to the Holy Spirit, we believed that God would move, and He did. God was with us!”

And that is where I can get stuck and feel discouraged, because according to that line of thinking, either we are not listening to God, or he is not with us (in which case, it would appear that our church is dead).

In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead.

2 Corinthians 1:9 NIV

We know the expectations: take this church and grow it!

And we know about the great outreach campaigns that will bring people in, and the great worship teams to lead the songs, and the awesome youth and children’s programs that will get families to want to be there. But most important, we are listening to the Holy spirit and we believe that God will move. We know that God is with us. So what does that say then about our success leading this little church? We’re not growing, some might say this church is dead, that perhaps we need to move on.

And it’s not just about the church. How many times have I prayed and felt as if God is not moving? Have you ever felt that way? Like you are being faithful yet you don’t see the good?

Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like we’re failing. Maybe it’s hard not to look from the outside and think that we have indeed failed to achieve success.

And sometimes when you need it most, a response to your husband’s email from your father-in-law reminds you where to find success. I asked him if I could share his message with you, because I know perhaps in life you’ve felt failure in your Spiritual life and walk with God. Maybe you need to hear his words too:

Here’s how I read your situation: you put your complete trust in God to do something and nothing seems to be happening. You took your leadership to the Scripture, II Cor. 1:9 and said, “We aren’t going to rely on ourselves, but on God who raises dead things to life”.  I applaud you in your stance. The only problem is that dead things don’t seem to be coming to life. I think this is a common experience to those who determine to wait upon and walk with God.

I wish I had kept a journal of the times I, personally, or in stories of others, heard this same kind of experience. You take a new step of faith and immediately things get worse. I’m going to tithe, and car breaks down. I’m going to trust more for healing, and kids get sick. I’m going to forgive someone, and they increase their attack on me. We trust God to build our church and immediately the attendance drops.

This isn’t how the guys selling the books tell us it will happen.

But it happens so frequently, I would call it a pattern.

The time in your high school years when I began to take this stance of prayer and dependence upon God, our church nearly imploded. People left for all sorts of reasons. I thought walking in the Spirit was the missing dimension that would cause our church to explode in growth not fall apart.  We lost nearly 30% of our congregation and I was confused. We had years with 0 or 1 baptisms.

How does one interpret this?  My best answer is to say that God allows life and the devil to test our resolve. We do have an enemy who doesn’t want us to live by faith, but I don’t think we should give him so much credit.  Maybe God allows faith-living to not work temporarily to see the resolve of our determination. Or to bring us to a point that we do it (trust God) even if it doesn’t work, because it is right.  It is dishonest and dishonoring to God to think that we can depend upon ourselves and make things happen on our own. It honors God when we take the stance that we will completely depend upon Him no matter what the church attendance is. God finds pleasure in our obedience and faithfulness.

In the process, God is always doing something beautiful in us.  I watched my hidden arrogance erode away, I watched my demanding spirit towards Ronda soften, I watched you kids embrace serving God. I couldn’t say God wasn’t at work, just not where I so wanted it…in the attendance numbers.

The response that I chose was that living in dependence upon God was the right way to live.  So, I just began to get up every day and do the right thing, and to find my joy in obeying God, not in having success.  I commend that to you.  This is often my guiding principle, “It is enough to exist for the pleasure of God”.

Jim Stumbo

Here is my success, and yours too: to exist for the pleasure of God.

And that is what I want to do, I want to exist for the pleasure of God!

More to read:

Confessions of a pastor’s wife: When I killed my church with a rock

I’m living the contradiction