The Church Down the Road Is Growing

It was a good lunch. That is the annoying thing.

Four of them, once a term, a pub halfway between, and it has been going for nine years and it is genuinely one of the better things in his diary. They talk properly. Nobody performs.

And Rob mentioned the second building. Not boasting. He was actually worried about it, about the money and about whether it splits the congregation, and he asked for advice, and he meant it.

And he gave good advice. He can hear himself giving it. It was sensible and warm and he was pleased with two of the things he said.

Then he got in the car.

And by the junction he was doing sums. Forty one on a good Sunday, thirty three in February. Two families moved in the spring for reasons that were completely fine and had nothing to do with him and which he has explained to himself about two hundred times. Eleven years in that room. The boiler. The schedule that is four people who are all tired.

He got home and his wife asked how it was and he said it was good, and it had been, and he went and sat in the car for another minute after she had gone in, which he has started doing.

He is not a bitter man. He would be the first to say Rob deserves it. He prays for Rob's church by name on a Tuesday and always has.

If you carry something small and faithful and have driven home doing sums about it, you know that junction. And you know the particular self disgust of it, which is worse than the envy: I have just spent forty minutes measuring the Lord's work with a ruler I would take off anybody else in the county.

The word, and then the question Peter asked

Let me get in the passenger seat and say the plain thing before you go in.

The problem is not the second building. You would help Rob move chairs into it tomorrow and you would mean it. The problem is that a number appeared in your head at a junction, and once a number is in your head about the Lord's work you cannot get it out by disapproving of it, and you have been trying to disapprove of it since about the A road.

So let me put the word straight first, because it has been quietly attached to attendance.

Blessed does not mean the room fills. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is about where He is looking, and there is no version of it in the New Testament that is counted.

Now, John 21, and I want you to notice who asks the question and when.

Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, What is that to thee? follow thou me.John 21:21-22

Look at when this happens. Peter has just been restored. Three questions, three answers, and Jesus has just told him plainly what his own end is going to be, and it is not a comfortable prophecy.

And then Peter turns round, sees John, and says: what about him.

That is not a wicked man. That is the man who has just been given his own commission, in the same conversation, and whose very next instinct is comparison.

So comparison is not the mark of a small soul. It is the mark of a human being, and it turns up in the best minute of the best man's life on the beach.

You are in the exact position Peter was in when he asked that, which is immediately after being given something of your own. John 21:21 puts the comparison right after the commission, and it is the Holy Spirit who is able to show a man his own instinct without condemning him for having it.

What is that to thee

Now the answer, and it is worth being careful with because it can be read as a slap and it is not one.

What is that to thee? Follow thou me.

In the Greek the pronoun in follow thou me is emphatic. It is: YOU follow me. There is a stress on the word you, and the stress is the whole content of the sentence.

It is not: mind your own business. It is: your assignment is between you and me, and it is not measured against his, and I am not going to explain his to you because it would not help you.

And notice what Jesus does not do. He does not tell Peter that John's road is easier. He does not say Peter's is better. He does not compare them at all, in either direction, which is the thing a person always wants Him to do and He never does.

You have an assignment that is not being scored against anybody's, and the refusal to compare came from Him rather than from good manners. John 21:22 answers a comparison with a redirection rather than with a ranking, and it is the Holy Spirit who is described as dividing to every man severally as He will, which is a phrase about distinctness rather than about equality of size.

And here is the piece that goes with it for a man in a small room. In the same conversation, three times, Jesus gives Peter an instruction, and the instruction is not build, and it is not grow, and it is not reach.

Feed my sheep.

That is a job with a number in it, and the number is however many sheep are actually in front of you. It is not a target. You cannot feed a sheep you do not have.

You have been given a job whose whole measure is the sheep actually in the room, and you have thirty three of them in February. John 21:17 says feed my sheep without attaching a quantity, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the one who makes the feeding effective rather than the size of the flock making it worthwhile.

What I will not tell you about the room

Now let me be honest with you, pastor to a man who has heard everything.

I am not going to tell you the room fills. I do not know. Eleven years is eleven years and it may go to sixty and it may go to twenty two, and I am not going to dress a hope as a word, because you would spot it in about a second and you have had enough of it at conferences.

And I am not going to tell you small is secretly better. That is the comfortable ditch for men in your position and it is a lie with a sweeter aftertaste. Rob's second building is a good thing and more people hearing is a good thing and you know that better than anybody because you pray for it on Tuesdays.

And I am not going to tell you the two families leaving in the spring was providence. It was two families with two sets of reasons and you have explained it to yourself two hundred times because it does not resolve, and it may never resolve, and that is allowed.

Both halves. Forty one on a good Sunday is not the withdrawal of His favor and it is not His favor in a smaller package.

You are favored and the room holds forty one, and neither of those is evidence about the other. Scripture puts the commission and the comparison side by side and refuses to rank them, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a man able to hold his own assignment without a ruler in his hand.