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Only 12 Disciples? What Are We Paying You For?

During our annual review, we reported with great joy about the three youth who’d made professions of faith during the past year. We rejoiced in the transformation of their lives and their active involvement in discipleship groups.

“We’d like to see that number up next year,” the members of the board said.

Frankly, so would I, but the last time I checked, God was still the one who changed hearts, not me. Being a faithful witness is apparently not enough. I could slip into a depression over not reaching the board’s conversion goal, or I could remember that Jesus had 12 disciples. After three years of public ministry, he didn’t even have a baker’s dozen. Jesus’ idea of success is quite different from those of us living in the mega-church era.

How do we gauge success? Like a Las Vegas bookie—it’s all a numbers game.

One dear pastor friend spent every Monday going over Sunday’s attendance with a fine-toothed comb. He made sure that everyone was counted. If there were even 10 fewer people on a given week, he felt as if he’d somehow failed. Despite the lack of a Southern drawl, my friend was a member of the Texas school of ministry—Bigger is Better! More people=more ministry; it’s just that simple.

Youth ministries fall into that trap all the time. We need to have huge crowds to validate our existence. If we have 25 one week and 10 the next, tongues start wagging. Never mind that if 10 people came out to their prayer meeting on Wednesday night it would be considered a revival. Sometimes we find ourselves compromising the ministry in order to get big numbers and prove to the powers that be that they need our youth ministry. A colleague of mine is famous for having a highly attended gross-out event where kids eat chocolate pudding out of diapers. I don’t think the message was What Would Jesus Doo-Doo, but no one I know can even recall if there was a message that night. Fun? Yes. Well-attended? Yes. Impacting kids for Jesus? No.

That’s not to say that numbers are irrelevant. They can be helpful as you evaluate your ministry. If I spend months prepping a huge group outreach, investing hundreds of dollars and only four people show up, I might want to invest my energies in something different next time. Numbers can also tell me if I’m reaching people. In the past year, we’ve seen at least 60 visitors in our youth programs. The real question is how many are still with us? I’m amazed to see that we’ve retained roughly half of those kids.

Numbers are helpful, but like the new math, they’re sometimes not all they seem to be. My friend attended a seminary where they counted how many people you’d led to the Lord during the school year. Since your grade depended on it, some guys felt forced to get people “saved” several times or to count a person who took a tract and smiled as a conversion. Is that a true gauge of ministry?

I took over as the recreation director for a community center in South Jersey. During my first year there was a 1,100% increase in participation. A great statistic for padding a resume, but it spoke more of my predecessor’s failures than my successes. One of my trips this summer was a great example of deceptive numbers. The senior pastor called me aside to question why I hadn’t canceled a trip that only attracted four or five junior high boys. Couldn’t my time have been better spent elsewhere, ministering to more kids? In this case, less was more as I had great one-on-one and small group opportunities to really disciple those boys that day.

Perhaps we need to toss aside our slide rules, calculators, or laptops for a moment and consider what constitutes real ministry success.

How did Jesus gauge the success of his ministry? By how much people loved and followed God. He wanted more than crowds shouting his name; he wanted disciples living out his teachings. There are times when he seemed burdened because of the huge crowds that came out to see him more for the miracles, free food, or novelty than because of any true conviction. Yet, he seemed so comfortable chatting with small groups, in their homes, asking tough questions. He loved to challenge their preconceptions and show them the truth. By mega-church standards, he did okay—attracting thousands for potluck suppers—but Jesus saw his success in the lives of the 12 riffraff who became disciples. That number was far more important.

So how should we evaluate the success of our ministries? For me, the test is still numbers. It’s the “great three” (stolen wholeheartedly from Matthew 28:19-20):

1. Have I gone into all the world (done outreach)?

2. Have I made disciples (taken the kids on a deeper walk with Jesus)?

3. Have I taught them to obey Jesus (instilled godliness through word and deed)?

That’s the real test in our ministry.

So when I look at that number of 60 visitors this year, I consider how many of those kids came because of events, activities, and personal outreach done by our students, how many have taken advantage of our discipleship programs, and how many are seeking to live for Jesus every day. I want to care about the numbers Jesus cares about.

Three years and 12 disciples who changed the world for Jesus? Those are the kind of numbers I’d love to have.

Eric Dugan has been ministering to youth for over 17 years as a youth pastor, teacher, recreation director, social worker, and camp director. He currently serves as the youth pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Schenectady, N.Y.