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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Phil Colgan: A theology of statistics
It is an uncomfortable but important question: What place should numbers have in our thinking about ministry success?
We all want to be faithful. But what happens when the numbers are down? Do we need to change something? Or should we just be faithful?
And should we be counting at all?
This is the tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. A tension between preaching the word and evaluating what’s actually working.
Phil Colgan has been the long term senior pastor of St George North Anglican in Sydney and presented on a Theology of Numbers at the recent Nexus Conference.
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A theology of statistics. What place for numbers in ministry evaluation? It is the Pastor's Heart, with Dominic Steele, and Phil Colgan, is with us. Today we're talking about the appropriateness of setting a target, setting a goal, setting a number that we're working towards in our church and then, at the end of the year, evaluating what happened. It is an uncomfortable but important question. What place should numbers have in our thinking about ministry success?
Speaker 1:We all say we want to be faithful, but what happens when the numbers are down? Do we need to change something or do we just keep being faithful? Should we be counting at all? It's the tension between, well, divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We want a calm trust in God's work and yet a real urgency to see people saved. A calm urgency, a tension between both preaching the word and evaluating what's actually working. Phil Colgan has been long-term senior pastor at St George North Anglican in Sydney. He presented on a theology of numbers at a recent Nexus conference. Phil, thanks for coming in. Can we start with your pastor's heart? And you do feel this tension, don't you? Between slow down and be calm I'm a Calvinist and the process of counting and measuring.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think everyone in ministry feels that tension, don't they? I think it's inherent At one point. It's a theological question, isn't it? It's how do we hold together those two truths of Scripture the wonderful sovereignty of God over all things, but on the other side, our responsibility as human beings and as ministers? That's a theological question, but it's also a question that gets into our heart as pastors. There's something wrong with us if we don't want our church to be bigger in number. Isn't there because we want more people?
Speaker 1:to come into the kingdom of God. More glory to the Lord Jesus, that's right.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, there's nothing more dangerous than numbers, because counting numbers can lead to pride and we can start to think that we are the ones who are solely responsible for the growth of that church. We can start to sometimes believe our own press responsible for the growth of that church. We can start to sometimes believe our own press. And isn't it sad when you see great ones fall because of pride.
Speaker 1:Well, let's just chase down those two arms of the tension and give me the classic Calvinist answer.
Speaker 2:Yes. Well, the classic Calvinist answer is that we hold the tension, isn't it? And it's the heart of lots of is that we hold the tension, isn't it? And it's the heart of lots of good theology is holding the tensions of scripture. God is sovereign. God decided before the creation of the world who would be his children. God will save, who he will save and yet the scriptures tell us we are responsible for our decision. That's true in terms of our personal salvation I have been chosen by God, and yet I repent and believe and it's true of every situation in ministry. God is sovereign, and yet we are responsible for how we use the good gifts God has given us for his glory.
Speaker 1:And that tension bites on both sides.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, when we understand it correctly, it bites on both sides, and I think this is really important. I think sometimes we fall into the trap of taking a truth of Scripture and then running with it without letting the other side of the tension, or in fact sometimes many different competing tensions, bite on it. So, you know, the classic example is some of us would sort of say numbers schmumbers. Who cares about numbers? As long as I'm faithful, god will do what he will do, and so forth, and that's a wonderful truth in a sense. Then the other side of that coin would be the person who's an activist, who says look, oh, these numbers aren't good enough. We long to see more people in. And it's interesting that the two would criticise one another, and you see this sometimes in our circles. So on the one hand, the activist says to that person who rests in the sovereignty of God haven't you read the book of Acts, don't you?
Speaker 2:see that God cares about numbers, luke tells us how many are saved, et cetera, et cetera. The other person says oh, don't you understand what Paul tells the Corinthians, that it's God who brings the growth, and so on and so forth. But I think actually, when we get it right, we let both sides of the tension bite. And there's never in the scriptures is the sovereignty of God used as a reason not to feel an urgency to proclaim Christ, to care for God's people, to pastor, to disciple. Never is it used as a reason to rest on your laurels. And in the same way, that urgency of the gospel never in the Scriptures undercuts that confidence that God is working his purposes out. And you see that at points. You see it in Acts 13, where Paul and Barnabas are there preaching in the face of awful opposition, and at that point they don't say oh well, clearly God has no one in this town.
Speaker 2:The door's closed the door's closed, we better pack up. No, they persevere, they push into it, they face opposition. It's struggle. It's closed, the door's closed, we better pack up. No, they persevere, they push into it, they face opposition. It's struggle, it's hard and then, in the end, those God has chosen believed. It's both and it's holding the tension. But it's not just saying I hold both sides. It's then letting it bite and push into you and make you feel uncomfortable from both sides.
Speaker 1:I think push into you and make you feel uncomfortable from both sides. I think what's your personal journey been on this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, no, no I naturally… Are you a numbers person?
Speaker 1:I am, I am.
Speaker 2:I'm a sceptic of numbers. I think we might talk about that in a little while the dangers of numbers.
Speaker 2:I'm a sceptic of people taking credit for the work of God. So my natural tendency is I get on with being faithful and God will work through that how he will work. But over time I've slightly repented. I've slightly repented of that cynicism towards caring about numbers and so forth. Partially. I think it comes down to a lot hangs on that word faithful. And so sometimes we say, oh, just be faithful, that's all God calls us to do, right? And I would say, yeah, but faithful includes working as hard as I possibly can.
Speaker 1:That's part of faithfulness. The outcomes are as hard as that.
Speaker 2:Being faithful involves not being lazy. It involves using this brain that God has given me and the gifts of all the people in my church to see as many people as possible hear the gospel and working towards that wonderful goal, under God, of seeing lots of people presented mature in Christ on the last day.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll come back and ask you in a couple of minutes about well then, how have you changed your practice, as you've changed your thinking there? But what about urgency? Well, the end not justifying the means.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's where you're getting into the danger of numbers.
Speaker 1:So when we say, oh well, all that matters is how many people are in our church, Are coming to our church, coming to our denomination, and we do want to see more people come and that's the danger of. Oh, we want to see 10% more people in Sydney Anglican churches or we want to see St George North grow by X percentage, x percentage in conversion, growth or whatever.
Speaker 2:Sometimes what that can lead to is forgetting the danger of numbers. In the end, the number that matters is not how many people are at St George North Anglican Church. The number that matters is how many people are presented, mature in Christ on the last day, and you'll actually do different things if you focus on the wrong numbers. So I often say if I was just on about the size of St George North, I would do no evangelism. We would do no evangelism because evangelism is a really ineffective way of growing your church. Best way to grow your church is have the best youth group and the best children's ministry. Suck the life out of all the other churches in your area and before you know it, you're the only viable church. And I'm being a bit silly, but you get my point is if you want to grow a church focus on transfer growth.
Speaker 1:I mean it is interesting. Our friend Pete Stedman, up at Norwest Church told me the story of they were growing like crazy because they were on the cusp of the new housing development spaces there and yet he said we had a consultation, we hadn't been doing any evangelism, Nobody had been. I mean I'll be getting the details wrong, but people hadn't been coming to Christ and it was a rocket for them and they changed their practice, they changed their strategy and the last 12 months they've baptised 45 adults.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wonderful, and it's been an incredible transformation as a result, and yet he was coasting along. Well, he's working hard, but he wasn't asking that hard question about evangelism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think this is the thing, isn't it is. That's the danger of looking at the wrong numbers and in the end, there is always a sense to which any of our thinking about numbers is tentative, because we don't know people's hearts and we don't know whether people will persevere, and so on and so forth. We don't know whether someone is that first or second soil in Jesus' parable. So there's always a tentativeness to numbers and we need to remember that and we need to say no. What we're working towards is seeing as many people. I keep going back to Colossians 128 without referencing it are presented mature in Christ.
Speaker 2:Presented mature in Christ. That's the number we care about, but sometimes we can say that and we can then make it act like all the other numbers don't matter.
Speaker 1:Because, in the end, the short-term numbers do matter.
Speaker 2:Because then I think there's another side to that coin, which is, yes, but with our limited knowledge, with our limited understanding, recognising our finiteness and that we're not the sovereign Lord. One of the best indicators of whether people are going to be presented mature in Christ is well, are they joining a good church now, Hearing the word of God? Are they hearing the word of God? Are they regularly attending that church? Community group.
Speaker 1:Bible study Are they?
Speaker 2:a part of a, whatever you call your gospel teams, as we call them, small groups. All those questions are worth measuring, recognising the tentativeness of them, recognising that, no, they're not an answer. They don't tell you the final number. Yes, you don't know that. And the reality is on both sides of that coin. On one side, there will be some very large churches. We know this.
Speaker 2:Who we will be surprised at how few are presented maturing Christ at the end, and there will be other smaller churches where there will be crowns of glory for those who've laboured there, because numbers now are not the be-all and end-all, but they're not irrelevant either, and unless you take them into account and work thinking about them, you can't evaluate. Well, are we doing the best job we can do of seeing people come under the saving sound of the gospel, of seeing people grow as disciples of Jesus, and so on and so forth?
Speaker 1:So talk to me about your use of short-term numbers now, yeah yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 2:This in many ways reflects something of a journey like you referred to before I used to quite adamantly say hey, the number you should count, thinking evangelism, the number you should count is how many people came to hear the gospel and perhaps how many people were invited to hear the gospel. And I still think they are wonderful numbers, because if you've got a church of 100 and 10 people come to the evangelistic course you run, isn't that wonderful, because that suggests maybe 50 have been invited.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a great thing. But I used to, almost as a badge of honour, say but it doesn't matter how many people became Christians, because in the end that's up to God. But then I realised, no, no, it's worth asking that question, not because we regenerate people, that's the work of God, by his spirit, but it's worth asking that question to evaluate. Are we doing as good a job as possible of actually helping these people hear the gospel, have the opportunity to respond in faith and repentance and be saved?
Speaker 1:So if you have 30 people come to your evangelistic course over the year, say, and none become Christians, now that might be… Even as you say that I remember when I was writing an evangelistic course introducing God and looking at all the other courses and talking to people running all the other courses. One of people talk to me about don't have the truth debate on night one. Don't have is it true on night one, because actually if you have it when you get to the resurrection week, you've actually had four or five weeks of setting out the truth of the gospel, the Spirit's had a chance to work for four or five weeks of setting out the truth of the gospel.
Speaker 1:The spirits had a chance to work for four or five weeks, and so just how you structure the course? And all these people said to me we've had all these people come and they asserted truth so strongly on the first night and, as convicted post-moderns, they didn't come back, and so their analysis of the numbers led me to evaluate not the content of the gospel but the order of the presentation.
Speaker 2:I think that's a great example If you have all these people come, but none are being saved. Now it might just be that under God's sovereign hand, the gospel is the stench of death to all those people and you have faithfully presented Jesus and that is not wonderful, but it's the outcome God desired. But it might be that you need to think. Hang on, I'm not very clear in my gospel presentation or we're using the wrong course for this setting.
Speaker 1:Or we're using the wrong course for this setting, or we're using the wrong course for the setting.
Speaker 2:Or we're not taking into account that many people in our area come from a different ethnic background.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 2:Caring about the numbers will mean you re-evaluate how you do things Now. Sometimes you'll do it and you'll say, no, I don't think we can do anything different, and in God's sovereign hands this is the outcome. But it's worth asking, isn't it? And that's where I've had that slight journey of repentance. If you like to say it's not going to change the fact that we're going to preach Christ and him crucified, that the content is not going to be any different, but it might be that we decide. Actually, as an example, I think many of us have been on this journey over recent years where we just realised one-off evangelistic events are not the best way to connect to people at this time, and the fact that we were seeing lots of people come and very few converted made us rethink and, like you, with introducing God think, is there a better way to actually have people deep in the word over a longer period of time in the context of Christian fellowship? Is there a better way to do that? Oh, let's think about courses. That's an example of learning from numbers.
Speaker 1:So you now are counting people saved?
Speaker 2:Yes, we will. I must admit I struggle still. There's a part of me that because I feel this tension, and a good brother joked to me recently that for someone to count as saved at Phil's church they've got to have been a Christian for five years and gone to more college, sort of idea, whereas other churches count the number of people who were hanging around the back of church one week.
Speaker 1:No well, I think if they've come for eight weeks, they've properly understood the content of the course. And that's my point, that's my point.
Speaker 2:I think my natural tendency is that, yeah, but over recent times, as I look at Acts say, and I see Luke say, and that day, 3,000 were added to their number, got to believe that's true.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But he knew the parable of the soils. He knew that some of those people were going to be that second soil when the Apostle Paul in Acts baptised the Philippian jailer and his whole family. He knew that some of them might not prove, but that didn't stop him rejoicing in what had happened that day. And in the same way we, I think, have grown at our church in working out. No, we want to delight in people coming to Christ, share those stories and expect that that happens through the faithful preaching of the gospel, not in some triumphalistic way, but just in a way that says no, that's what we're longing to see. Yes, we long to see every person hear the gospel, but we long to see people saved and that's what we aim to see happen. But we don't want to manipulate that and so forth. We recognise that is under God's sovereign hand, but in the way God has set it up we play a part in that and so let's care about it.
Speaker 1:It's really that take responsibility, but remember God's grace is sufficient.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting, isn't it? And this comes back to the danger of numbers. Why are numbers dangerous? It's because, and why is caring about numbers dangerous? It's because the human heart is sinful, and especially of pastors, and pride is our chief sin, I think. And so numbers when they go.
Speaker 1:well, why do you think that?
Speaker 2:just as a digression I think, because we are put up on a pedestal by the very nature of our role. We are put in authority. Very few people in the world have the opportunity to preach to hundreds of people, to speak to hundreds of people week in, week out, and they trust your word and be trusted, and so forth, and with that comes great responsibility. But so that sin of pride means numbers are dangerous, because we can start I think I joked before we can believe our own press, we can think I'm the reason this church is what it is and so forth, not realising no, this is God's work. But then on the other side, it's funny how pride works both ways. Pride can mean we're not interested in numbers, but then, on the other side, it's funny how pride works both ways. Pride can mean we're not interested in numbers. See, sometimes one of the reasons we say no, no, no, it's not right to count numbers is because we're too proud to be able to be honest and say, oh, maybe some things aren't working here, maybe I need to think about my preaching and whether it's clear enough or we're focusing on the right things as a church, or so forth. So it's funny how pride works like that.
Speaker 2:And that's where, in the end, the thing that liberates a person to really use numbers well is understanding the grace of God, is knowing that my standing before my Heavenly Father does not change if St George North shrinks by 20%.
Speaker 2:My standing before my Heavenly Father does not change if our church stops being the youth group young people want to go to in our area. No, no, god loves me. I am a justified sinner by his grace. Irrespective of the success, however, you work that out of my ministry. If I truly believe that and if I truly understand and grasp the grace of God, that liberates me to care about numbers, because I then say, well, actually I'm open to seeing is there a better way of doing things? I'm open to see if my decisions are contributing to why this ministry doesn't seem to be growing. And, as I say, that's not saying that's always the case, but it's asking the questions and that's where I think numbers are helpful and why I've gone on that slight journey, if you like, from perhaps a hyper-Calvinist I'm certainly not an Arminian but somewhere along that trajectory.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah somewhere along that trajectory, yeah yeah, deal with me on that Old Testament verse where it's Satan incites the counting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's a good question, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think. And so I mean, I was at lunch with somebody and I said I'm having this discussion with you today and we just talked about that. Yeah, we've got to ask you that question. Yeah, yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 2:What I always find interesting is in 1 Corinthians 21,. It's Satan. I think it's in 1 Chronicles, sorry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 1 Chronicles 1 Chronicles 21.
Speaker 2:I think it's Satan that inspires David to count. And then in 2 Samuel, 22, or 24.
Speaker 1:It's the Lord. It's the Lord that does it, which is a wonderful, full thing of the sovereignty of God.
Speaker 2:Sovereignty of God there, yeah, but when people say oh, david counted numbers, therefore counting numbers is bad, I think that's or.
Speaker 1:Satan caused the number counting, therefore counting numbers.
Speaker 2:I think that's not great biblical theology. What was the issue back in? What was David counting? He was counting his armies. He was counting to work out oh, are we going to be able to win these battles against the Ammonites and whoever else? In a way, it was him expressing a lack of trust, a lack of faith in the God who had already given him such great victories.
Speaker 1:It's interesting.
Speaker 2:It's right at the end of the story that he does it as he's getting old. If I remember rightly, so it's in fact. I think it's the final chapter in 2 Samuel, or close to it. So what's the actual issue there? The issue is not trusting God. Now how do I apply that to us as pastors?
Speaker 2:and ministers in the New Testament. It's not don't count. Because I don't think I'm counting how many people are at St George North every week because I don't trust God. I think where that would apply is if I think God's given us these means of the word prayer, fellowship but they're not working. I'm going to take things into my own hands and come up with some new way to grow God's church. I think that would be the same problem that David was expressing in 1 Chronicles 21. But if I am counting numbers because I care about the sheep and I want to make sure no sheep are going missing, and if I'm counting numbers so that I can, under God's sovereign hand, knowing his grace, assess are we doing the best? We're doing the best we can with what God's given us? I don't think that's the sin that Satan was inciting and the trap that David was falling into in those Old Testament settings.
Speaker 1:So helpful yeah. Thanks very much for coming in and talking to us my pleasure. Thanks, Dominic, my guest on the Pastor's Heart Phil Colgan, the Senior Pastor of St George North Anglican Church. You've been with us on the Pastor's Heart, Phil Colgan, the Senior Pastor of St George North Anglican Church. You've been with us on the Pastor's Heart. My name is Dominic Steele. We'll look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
