Making Ministry Count: Avoiding the Trap of Numbers

As we continue our series on the ins and outs of ministry, I want to talk about an area of ministry that has the potential to trip up even most spiritual of us.   This is an area where I have to constantly remind myself that my human wisdom is severely lacking in comparison to God’s heavenly wisdom.  The issue that I am talking about pertains to allowing numbers to drive our ministries.

Ministry requires at least two people; the person doing the ministering and the person or people to whom we are ministering.  For most of us who are in speaking, writing, teaching or music ministry, we typically serve groups of people rather than doing individual ministry. The size of our audience can easily become more important to us than the ministry we are doing.   Friends.  Followers.  Registration numbers.  Comments.  Tweets and re-tweets. It all has the potential to trip us up and cause us to sin. May I share an example from my own life with you?

Several months after I began blogging, I discovered a cool program called SiteMeter. This nifty little application would track the number of visitors that came to my blog each day and tell me all sorts of wonderful information, such as where the person lived, how long they stayed on my blog, what post they came into and left from and how they got to my blog.  Awesome, huh!!

Well, yes……….and no.  It was fun to see those statistics and be able to track the topics on my blog that seemed to appeal to the audience.   The problem arose when I began logging onto Sitemeter multiple times each day to see how many people had visited my blog.  Oh yes, I do have an obsessive-compulsive personality.  On the days when there were numerous visitors, my happiness factor was high, but on the days when the number of visitors plummeted, my happiness factor plummeted right along with the numbers.   I realized that on the days I posted, the numbers went up; while the numbers declined on the days that I did not post.  Before long I was posting something every day just to assure increased traffic to my blog.  What had happened?  I made the number of visitors to my blog a false god. What began as a lovely avenue to write and share the words the Lord gave me, turned into a dirt road of idolatry.

When the realization of my idolatry hit me, my heart was grieved. I never intended for my blog to become an idol.  Never!!  The Holy Spirit instructed me to remove SiteMeter from my blog for a season, until I could get a grip on His purpose for blogging in my life.  That is precisely what I did.  For several months I was SiteMeter-less and in that time the Lord reminded me, once again, that the ministry He has entrusted to me is His ministry.  I am to write only what He gives me and He will bring the people He desires for me to touch.  On my own I have no words that will touch anyone.  Anything on my blog or in a message I give that is worthwhile is totally from the Lord.

The same is true for any avenue of ministry to which we are assigned.  Ministry is about Jesus.    When human affirmation becomes more important to us than allowing God to grow the ministry He has entrusted to us, we are in trouble and we need to step away and allow the Lord to re-focus our eyes.

I hope that I am the only one who has struggled with this, but my guess is that it is quite a common problem.  It is my constant prayer that Jesus will remind me daily that IT IS ALL ABOUT HIM!!

Leah Adams

Although I asked Jesus to come into my heart at the age of 15, I describe myself as the “prodigal son’s sister” after spending several years walking far from the Lord in my twenties. Helping others understand the grace that is offered by Jesus to anyone who will accept it is the passion of my heart. In a works-based and failure-prone society, grace is a concept that many people have difficulty grasping and my speaking and writing ministry, called The Point Ministries, seeks to point others straight to Jesus and his amazing grace. I live in northern Georgia with my husband, Greg, who is also my dentist. We have one son, Charlie, a sophmore in college who is planning a career in ministry. I hold a Doctor of Pharmacy Degree from Mercer University School of Pharmacy. I am a regular contributer at Internet Cafe’ Devotions Ministry Counter, CBN.com, and JournEzine. I am also a CLASS certified speaker and the author of a six week Bible study entitled, From the Trash Pile to the Treasure Chest: Creating a Godly Legacy.

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