Defining Success

I have a friend who pastored a church about a decade ago.  Likely, people would have said he did an okay job.  Progress was made, but it was nothing really outstanding.  He went on to several other ministry assignments.  The church then called another pastor and time continued to pass.

Today the church is double the size!  How did that happen?  Church development is always a synergy of factors.  Sometimes those factors can seem incidental in the moment, but movemental in retrospect.  This pastor invited a man to go with him to pass out water.  The man sat in the back of the church each week and was always late to arrive and early to leave.  This invited man ended up going to pass out water.  One invite to pass out water led to a men’s group invite, and eventually the man becomes a passionate follower of Christ.  Today he leads a men’s ministry that is laced with spiritual passion; a ministry that has also expanded into a prayer ministry.  That one invitation, given strategically, eventually gave birth to a leader who leads a discipling ministry for men that shapes families and now shapes a church more than twice the size.

Was my friend successful?  Could it be that we measure success too narrowly?  Maybe instead of measuring in a week or a month success is more readily understood over a decade or more.  One truth stands out, success is always one leader investing in another, who invests in another, who invests in…