Success In Ministry

John 6:60,66-67: "On hearing it, many of his disciples said, 'This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?' . . . . From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. (Jesus said) 'You do not want to leave too, do you?'"

More than any other passage in Scripture, this section of John 6 reinforces to me that ministry is not always easy. In fact, ministry can be filled with headache and heartache; for when God's truth of submission is shared to a self-centered world, the hearers will leave in droves.

It has always pained me to hear ministers talk about "success in ministry" based primarily upon attendance in their church buildings. Occasionally when I participate in a regional minister's conference, I will overhear conversations like "So how many are you running now? . . . . Well, we're running (x) in our worship services, so God is blessing." At one particular conference, I had the opportunity of sitting with a pastor of a fairly large congregation. As a number of pastors came to speak with this pastor, invariably two questions surfaced: "How's the construction going?" and "How many are you running now?" Although I know that many of these pastors were well-intentioned in making small talk with their fellow ministerial leader, the redundancy of these same two questions caused me to ponder what we in Christendom are ascribing as successful ministry. If we think that effectiveness is only found in numerical responses, we are not teaching God's Word.



This ideology reminds me of Christ's words about the way to eternal life (Matthew 7:13-14). He suggested that very few will find the narrow road to salvation. I believe that this is not for the lack of attendees in our church buildings; rather, it is the lack of understanding that salvation necessitates submission to Jesus Christ as Lord (Romans 10:9). Many will enter the doors of the church for a variety of needs (e.g. seeking spiritual significance, business contacts, familial expectations, relationships, children's programming, experiential worship, positions of power/influence, et al), but these reasons are not the same as seeking first the Kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33). When people use the church to satisfy their own selfish needs, they craft an idol of themselves within the doors of the church and use the church to propagate their pagan worship. This type of idolatry is not unlike what the 70 elders of the house of Israel were doing just before God's declarative judgment upon them (see Ezekiel 8). Whereas they were great at going through the motions of worship at the temple, these elders were worshipping their own idols in secluded places. They had crafted images of crawling things and detestable animals . . . inanimate objects that could not tell them what to do. In effect, these wicked leaders crafted their lifeless idols so that they could speak their own will into the image and say that their god justified their own licentious behavior. God's holiness would not be mocked, however, and He communicated to Ezekiel that He would turn His ear away from the wickedness of the people when calamity would later befall them. God also said that He would remove Himself from the presence of the Temple, thus revealing that God was not going to bless such rebellion against Him. Whereas this religion was very popular at the time, it nonetheless was not equivalent to following the Will of God as communicated through His Word. God would avenge His Holiness through judgment so that the Israelites would know that He alone was the True LORD (Ezekiel 7:4).

If we fast forward nearly 600 years from the time of Ezekiel to Jesus Christ in John 6, we find again the struggle of humanity between its own quest for lordship and the True Lordship of the One True Christ. Jesus had fed the 5000 near the Sea of Galilee and the people followed Him passionately. I can just see the throngs of stomach-filled people crying out with hands lifted, "Go Jesus . . . Go Jesus." Numerically, Jesus was having quite the success in getting people to follow Him, because He was satisfying their fleshly needs. Still, Jesus knew the hearts of many who followed Him. He knew that they wanted Jesus for what they could get from Him; they weren't interested in submitting to Him as their Lord.

Jesus then began to weed out the false disciples when He began to teach the people that He alone was the Bread of Life who had come from heaven to provide eternal nourishment to those who would feast upon Him through faith (John 6:32-40). The Jews who had been following Jesus, now were grumbling about Him, for they knew Jesus to be the son of Joseph and Mary from Nazareth, not the Divine Savior. If Jesus were looking for success in ministry numerically at this point, He would have stopped talking about His Divinity in this way; He would have toned down the teaching so as not to offend all of His supporters. But this is not what happened. Jesus would stir the controversy even more by telling the followers that unless they would feast upon His flesh and drink His blood (i.e. receive His crucifixion and resurrection as the source of God's eternal life through submission to Him as Lord), they would have no life within them.

The people who heard Jesus' words at the synagogue in Capernaum said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" (John 6:60). They refused to trust by faith that Jesus was the Messiah come into the world to provide redemption for man, and their response was demonstrative. Scripture records that many of His disciples turned away and refused to follow Him anymore (6:66). Jesus no longer was satisfying their selfish desires; now, He was calling them to capitulate to His Rightful place as Lord and Savior of their lives.

With the hoards of people walking away from Jesus, He turned toward the twelve disciples and asked them "You do not want to leave too, do you?" Of course, Simon Peter gave an appropriate response, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that YOU (emphatic) are the Holy One of God."



If the city of Capernaum had a local newspaper during those days, I could see them posting the event on the front pages: "Noted Rabbi Loses Most of His Followers . . . Looks Like His Ministry Is Washed Up." Still, this massive response of unbelief did not take Jesus by surprise, for He "had known from the beginning which to them did not believe and who would betray him" (John 6:64).



Christendom needs to understand that the message of the Gospel is offensive and foolishness to those who walk in darkness (I Cor. 1:18). Churches need to love all, but they need to communicate that salvation is not merely associating oneself with a church congregation while continuing to promote oneself above all others, including God Himself. Ministers need to reinforce that the way to adoption by God into the Royal Family of the Lord is to kick oneself off the throne of his life and surrender to God as the Lord. This surrender is counter to what the sinful flesh desires, its sole supremacy. When the Church sifts out those who would use the Church for their own self-aggrandizement, it will find that the cancer of wickedness will be removed and the true body of Christ will flourish in obedience to the Sovereign King of Kings.