I grew up in a denomination where numbers gauged success. As a pastor in Texas, our regional pastors would meet each month and the primary question with each brother you met was, “How many did you have Sunday”? and “How many people were ‘saved’”? Our group boasted that in Sunday School we had at least five of the top twenty SS attendance in the nation. Even today, in Kenya, where I served for fourteen years, I regularly receive pictures from churches showing how many people were baptized any given week. I sometimes hear pastors and churches talk about supporting people where they can get more “bang for the buck.” Numbers are important, but it is not always how large the number is.
Last month I was visiting with a former student who works on the coast of Kenya. He was telling me about the village where he and his colleague work. It’s a small village, a little over 3,000 people, but in the area the population is probably 30,000. “There are four churches, but about twenty mosques in the town and, at least thirty mosques in the area,” he told me.
As he continued telling me his story, he became more excited, “We now have NINE people we are meeting with, telling them about Christ Jesus. Of course, we don’t meet in one
place together, that would be too dangerous. We visit them in their homes or in some discreet place.”
These two guys have only been working and living in the village for eight months…but have NINE people learning about Isa! In a population dominated by cultural and religious Muslims, that’s a big deal. The people of that village will never go to any of the churches as that would be a betrayal of family and culture. Even learning about Jesus from a Christian would bring persecution. But they bravely meet secretly to hear the Gospel.
I walked away from that visit reaffirmed that IT IS all about numbers. Not the hundreds or thousands, but about the twos, threes, and nines and, like our Master, the twelves. The occasion to work with men and women who take the Gospel to those who have no opportunity to hear the Gospel except through secret meetings is an immense privilege. NINE, not yet believers but learning about Him. IT IS about the numbers, even if they are few.
