Numbers

What strikes me having lived here for the last ten years (after being in the suburbs and then in a small town) is the sheer number of people (99 people per hectare where we live compared with suburban London’s 50 per hectare). Whatever we do seems small (it is). After church planting again we could just about fill the top deck of one London bus with our numbers on Sunday. A mere snip, a smidgen. It’s not that there are a lot of people in the world, it’s that there are a lot of people in my world. I hardly ever pass the same person twice and 90% are younger than me! Everyone on my estate I think feels the same because although we stop to say hello and chat (it took 18 months for people to bother to do that because my theory is they wait to see if you’re sticking around and worth the investment!) if we bump into each other off the estate it’s like meeting a long lost relative. It still overwhelms me 10 years on.

But – Jesus thrived on multitudes. It’s what moved and motivated Him (Matthew 9:36) to delegate and encourage prayer from His disciples. His mission appeared to be inspired and refreshed by the multitudes – He was not overwhelmed nor did he feel helpless, insignificant or like giving up; He was motivated to move forward. I think that for any church movement to have great impact and keep motivated it must move into and out from the inner city multitudes. It will be driven to delegate quickly, pray intensely and its motivation will shift. That is the key I think for leaders. Motivation will be out of compassion rather than driven by a need for significance and influence. The desire for the Gospel to transform lives one at a time rather than build a name that is known. Having seen a church of 800+ mostly South Africans gathering in a local cinema that none of the other local pastors even knew existed (the church that is, not the cinema) let alone the unbelievers on my estate illustrates the point.

Let’s just go start lots of local churches for Jesus’ sake in inner cities across the world to make disciples of Jesus, rather than going out to make a name and garner influence for ourselves.