The other day, I was reading about a Christian woman who was given an opportunity to lead a start-up tech company in Silicon Valley as its Chief Operating Officer (CEO). She entered her new role with dedication, hope, and prayer. She asked God to guide her and to give her success in stewarding the company faithfully.
With great diligence, she did everything in her power to care for the interests of the company, its shareholders, employees, partners, and clients. However, after eighteen months, the company failed, filed for bankruptcy, and shut down.
Questions began to gnaw at her: What do I make of this? Did God not hear my prayers? How is it that he hears everyone else, but not me?
As I read her story, those questions struck me more deeply than I expected. I realised I was not far from her experience.
Earlier that same day, I had attended a gathering where pastors were invited for lunch. A guest speaker had been invited to testify about the remarkable work God is doing in his ministry. He was a young church planter who, just eight months earlier, had planted a church in the southern part of Johannesburg.
The testimony was striking. God had granted that church unusually rapid numerical growth, and everyone listened in awe. The church had grown by 150% in eight months, with Sunday attendance reaching around five hundred people. It was a testimony of great encouragement, and we all celebrated God’s grace and power over the work.
And yet, as I drove home, something inside me was unsettled. Reflecting on the planter’s testimony, I could not help but compare and measure two stories against one another.
Sixteen years ago, I planted a church in Mamelodi, a township east of Pretoria. And for all those years, numerical growth has eluded us. No matter how much we labour, pray, evangelise, and hope, we have struggled to grow numerically.
So, when I later read the testimony of the Christian woman, I could deeply relate to her.
In a moment of honest protest, I found myself praying, “God, for sixteen years we have been faithfully asking, working, trusting, hoping for you to add to our numbers, yet you have not answered our prayers. But you have granted an eight-month church plant to grow to five hundred people?”
As I wrestled with that thought, I realised what was happening in my heart. I was interpreting God’s work through the lens of comparison. To me, his faithfulness to one work implied unfaithfulness to another.
While I was still passionately protesting what I perceived to be God’s injustice and unfairness towards me and my sixteen-year-old church plant, Scripture came, gently but firmly, to my mind. The attitude I was displaying was the same attitude displayed by the elder brother in the parable Jesus told in Luke 15:11–32.
In that parable, the elder brother felt that an injustice had been committed against him by his father. He had worked and done what was required and therefore, because of his faithfulness, he felt entitled to his father’s blessings. To paraphrase Luke 15:29–30, I was, in my protest, essentially saying:
As I was reminded of the parable, my heavenly Father rebuked me and ministered to my heart. I saw the error of my ways and repented.
The second Scripture that I was reminded of was Isaiah 42:3:
and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
As I reflected on this verse, I realised that, for the past sixteen years, the church I planted had been a bruised reed and a faintly burning wick. The church had struggled in many respects. We struggled for many years to establish sound doctrine. We struggled with leadership. We struggled to disciple the few members we had. We struggled for resources. We never fully understood our purpose and existence as a church. It was one struggle after another. Yet Jesus Christ did not break us off. He did not quench the imperfect work we were doing. I understood at that moment that, for sixteen years, God had been faithful to a work done poorly in his name, and he continues to be faithful to this day.
I saw that, even though we had struggled to grow numerically, God had still caused great growth within the church. People grew in knowledge, understanding, faith, trust, and fellowship with Jesus Christ. I have seen God regenerate and transform people in our congregation. For sixteen years, God has faithfully provided for the work and for us.
That became the quiet correction I had missed for years: The absence of numerical success does not mean the absence of divine faithfulness.
To the pastor who finds themselves relating to what I have shared, I want to encourage you with the words of Paul in Romans 12:3:
Faithfulness on our part is serving God and using his gifts according to the measure that he has assigned. To some, he gives five talents. To others, two. And to others, one. And each is accountable not for what others were given, but for what was placed in their hands. My task is not to measure my field against another person’s field, but to be faithful in the one God has given uniquely to me.
About the author
Tshepo Laka is a pastor at Glorious Gospel Christian Fellowship in Jan Niemand Park in South Africa. He is husband to Lerato and father to two children.
