The Numbers Game

There is such an impetus in our context to keep busy. We feel that our worth, value, and place are completely dependent on what we do. Even if we have nothing to do, we will create the air of being busy, so no one thinks we are no longer useful, important, or needed. 

We see this drive in nearly every aspect of our lives. At work, no one wants to be caught just sitting. When I worked at Burger King as a kid, our supervisor’s mantra was “Time to lean; time to clean!” At Starbucks, everybody has their laptop or smartphone out, busily typing, texting, checking email—DOING STUFF—so, I guess, no thinks any of us are there “just to drink coffee”—even though it is a coffee shop, after all. Sadly, I see it as a I visit in retirement communities and nursing homes, places that are supposed to be havens of rest and comfort, where the residents feel compelled (if not organized by staff) to keep busy with the unspoken message that if anyone can no longer keep busy, they will be recategorized as more feeble with the implication that they are less valid (we do name them “invalids”—in-valids—after all). 

It even happens within our faith communities. A congregation’s viability is determined by how active they are—i.e., the breadth and depth of their programming, the number of staff necessary to keep all those programs running, and the collection of monies to fund all this liveliness. Fevered activity is equated with success.

Yet to anyone who serves on a Presbytery’s committee charged with evaluating the life of the congregations, a strange irony often rises. A congregation dwindles, becoming a hard nut of twelve or so members. Presbytery begins the deathwatch. But the church keeps going. People keep coming to worship. They gather for prayers and funerals. They keep paying their bills, including the necessary fees to keep someone in the pulpit to preach. In many cases, years go by, decades pass, and the church is still there, caring for a collected gathering of souls. Outwardly, they are doing nothing in the eyes of the overseers—no program, no capital campaign, no nothing, except a consistent, stubborn gathering together. 

Jesus was a terrible church administrator.

After three years, he only had a core of twelve actual joined-up members of his congregation. Sure, there was a fluctuating mass of “regular visitors,” but none of them were there when the moment of crisis came. The Twelve sure didn’t look like a viable church—no program at all, no Wednesday yoga, no music program, very little education except for Jesus-led Bible study, very little mission—the Twelve rarely ventured forth on care missions—most of the time they were content to watch Jesus do all the preaching, teaching, and healing. When the crisis came, Jesus found himself completely abandoned and was murdered after a called meeting of the Presbytery to intervene in his dysfunctional effort!

And he changed the world.

Forever.

Because “doing” was secondary to “being.”

What does that mean?

It means recapturing an essential tenet of faith that immediately draws a sharp line between faith and religion—sitting with God. 

Faith is a lot of waiting, watching, and listening. Faith is realizing God is God, and we are not. Things with God unfold as God unfolds them. That can happen in an instant, but it can also happen over centuries and millennia. Yes, a blind man can suddenly find his sight, but a community of faith becomes what it will be centuries after a frightened woman told her equally frightened friends that their dead leader lived again. 

The East Bumfiddle Presbyterian Church, current census 8 members, was given a death sentence twenty years ago. Its Presbytery shows every sign of drying up and blowing away, but the Bumfiddles keep meeting, keep worshipping, and keep realizing the promises revealed when Mary fled the tomb and told Peter what she saw. The Bumfiddles keep sitting with God, allowing God to do and to be what God will be, and then they respond.

And there is the key.

Religion is all about action. It is all about doing. In religion, we do something godly. In religion, we create the air of what being believers is all about. In religion, we create codes, rules, laws, and standards to be sure everybody knows what it is to be godly—who is in, who is out; what is right, what is wrong; and what is good, what is bad. It is all there in black and white.

And God is left out, left behind, and left alongside, supposedly admiring all of this good work.

Faith is about God, first and last. Before doing anything, faith listens, for as long as it take to hear the message, and then sits and contemplates what response best fits the message, again, for as long as it takes. 

And tiny churches outlive their governing bodies. 

Now, before anyone rises up and claims this is a total disparagement of large churches—no, not so. Faith communities come in all shapes and sizes. What binds them together, though, is the stance of being with God first, then acting, shaping their actions, and engaging the world with what they know of God. 

That is our hope, and that is our vocation. We are to be people of faith, following God. Action only matters if it reflects the embodiment of God. That liberates us from the tyranny of statistics. Numbers mean nothing—look again, statistically, at Jesus’ “success!” We are to meet with God, helping others join the meeting, and helping others find the fullness of God in their lives, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.