Small Crowd/Large Crowd

Have you ever noticed that when attendance is up at church, the leaders spirits are up? And when attendance is down, the leaders spirits are down. The same thing is true for us, not just pastors. Sadly, this is even true for me when it comes to music. As I look back at this year and contemplate the different concerts that we have done, it seems that our better concerts have been with larger crowds and that leads me to ask the question "why"? Why are the concerts with larger crowds better than the ones with smaller crowds? We have had our share of both. There were a few concerts that if we hadn't brought our families, we wouldn't have been singing but to a handful of people. Other concerts had people scanning the room for a place to sit because it was so full. The big shows were better than the small ones. Why? I think this is true for everyone no matter what the venue. I am not necessarily talking about attendance but whatever it is that brings this kind of behavior. I hope this doesn't get too long but I am going to elaborate on that for a second. I am a youth pastor as well as the lead singer of the Josh Martin Band. When a lot of kids are coming to youth, I'm excited. When attendance is small, I get depressed. Most pastors are the same way. I once worked as a manager at a Winn-Dixie Marketplace. When sales where up, everyone was in a good mood. When sales where averagre or a little below..........not so much. I hope you can apply this to whatever it is that you do. Whether you are a factory worker, pastor, blue collar, white collar, career woman, or stay at home mom. All of us go to the end of our day with something that we fall back on. We all have something that, even if everything else falls through the floor, we rest confident in it every night when we lay down our head. It could be the way you manage your family. You may say, "Whatever else happens in my day, it doesn't matter, I am still a good parent." We all have something that we are using to justify ourselves everyday. Tim Keller calls these "functional saviors". We all have something that at the end of the day will be our savior. A little confession of my own here......I have found that one of my functional saviors has become knowledge. I am very eager to learn anything that i can to grow closer to God. My top ten books of the year can be seen at my other blog www.reformationundergoud.blogspot.com . I love learning things. I traveled as a missionary after high school and was not able to go to college or seminary. I would love to do both but I am finding that reading has been almost a supplement for those things. But as I began to grow in knowledge, so did my pride. Knowledge had become my functional savior. This is how you can see your functional savoir. Functional saviors are really idols. You may think that you don't have any idols in your life, but trust me, you do. You say, "I am a Christian and Christ is my idol. I am obediently following him and not looking to anything else." Well, that's a nice thought but it's not completely true. All of us have idols but the problem is that we can't see them until we learn how to spot them. This is true of everyone, believers and non-believers. Here is how you spot them; I will borrow a little from Tim Keller here. Idols are simply good things that have become ultimate things. This can be anything from knowledge, family, food, your job, your social class, etc. Even ministry can become and idol. You know that these things are idols by seeing your reactions when they are tampered with. If a good thing is lost, you get upset and cry. If an ultimate thing is lost, you want to jump off a bridge. If a good thing is blocked from you, you get mad or angry. When an ultimate thing is blocked, you get bitter, you can't sleep. Do you see why you act the way you do? The things that you overreact to tend to be the idols in your life. If knowledge is my idol, and you disagree with what I think, I get bitter at you because you are questioning my funcitonal savoir. You are drawing into question the thing that I am banking on. If my family is my idol, when they die, I am devastated at the loss and I sink into deep depression. I have lost what I am banking on. This is how you spot them. How do you get rid of them? Your heart can never go without an idol. So idols are not removed, they are replaced. God has designed your heart to hold something dear. To have an object of affection. That object of affection is to be Christ. So now that you know Christ is to be your idol, you will fix it, right? It will never happen if you are planning on just changing it. You have this idol because you find something glorious about it. There is something about it that you feel you cannot do without. When something else becomes more glorious than your idol, you exchange it for that new thing. May I present a solution? The Gospel is the center of the Christian life. The gospel is not just what we preach to non-believers, it is something we must preach to other christians. We need to hear the gospel continually. Why? The gospel changes us. It continually reminds us of the ultimately glorious thing and that is Christ. Look at the examples in the bible that Paul has given us. In Ephesians 5 he tells husbands and wives how they are to treat each other but he doesn't just say, "Wives, submit to your husbands because I say so!" or "Husbands don't you dare cheat on your wives!" Keep reading what Paul says. He takes them to the gospel so that they can see the glorious truth of Christ and that is what changes them. Seeing Christ changes us (2 Corinthians 3:15-18). Christ will be our idol when we see him as glorious. This is getting really long. I will stop for now. If you anyone has any interest in me expounding more of this please leave a comment saying so and I will do it. But I hope that you see this truth so that attendance and sales are not what are justifying you at the end of the day. I hope you will be identified with Christ and not any lesser thing.