Why years of a Christianity obsessed with numbers has missed the point entirely: you don’t count leaven, you look at the bread.

You know Chicken Little, right? 

“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

Everyone used to laugh at the naïve little bird and then went on their way. Not anymore. Now, it seems, we’re all Chicken Little. Or Ducky Lucky. Or Turkey Lurkey. 

“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

I am not qualified to analyze the truth of that statement when it refers to the climate, the economy, or technology.

But it is increasingly disturbing for me to hear that fowlish refrain coming from the lips of my fellow Christ-followers. 

You can see it in our social media posts, read it in blog posts, and hear it in our hallways on Sunday mornings. In addition to all the fallout from the “unprecedented” past three years, it seems the church in America is rapidly declining. We aren’t reaching new people; the ones we had before have left and don’t seem to be returning. Attendance, baptisms, congregations: all the numbers are trending down. 

Well, that’s not exactly true. Within my chosen brand of Christianity (THE Southern Baptist Convention®), it seems like the numbers are going up. At least, the number of things we are counting, the voices calling for us to count better, and the pushes for more and more data to be entered are increasing. 

But the actual lives changed by the timeless good news of Jesus Christ? Yeah, that’s hard to count, but it’s going down. 

It seems we’ve stopped being the Church that counts (because it’s making a difference in the world) in favor of being the Church that counts (because of numbers).

Politically, we are counting Supreme Court Justices and votes. Socially, we are counting lawsuits and editorials that go against us. Ecclesiastically, we are counting worship attendance and seeing more gray hair. In each area, the numbers frighten us. But they shouldn’t. We need to remember that the church counts best when it doesn’t. 

Politically, we need to remember that God is not unaware of what is going on. We must remember that, as citizens of a democratic nation, we can and should vote our conscience in the election. But fear, hand-wringing, and anger leading up to, during, and after the voting should have no place amongst us. Whoever is elected president gets four years, maybe eight. Supreme Court justices get a little longer, with the average tenure being about twenty years. The church has survived centuries. It has survived brutal persecution. It can handle anything this country or any other throws against it. The next four, eight, twenty, or even one hundred years are not going to be the stone that sinks the ship of the church. Let’s not try to count votes, justices, or anything else politically as essential to the church’s future. Instead, let’s rejoice in the surety of Jesus’ faithfulness to fulfill his promise…

“…I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Matthew 16:18, ESV

Socially, the proverbial handwriting is on the wall. Christian morality, formerly an assumption for many, has been rejected. This reality has led some to propose that the church exercise “The Benedict Option,” which means to concede the public square and focus on creating communities of faith similar to monastic orders. Others have doubled down against the decline of influence with pugilistic defiance. Still others seem paralyzed by the reality of a secular culture supplanting the “Christian” one they grew up with. Whether this is due to the church’s frustratingly inconsistent practice of biblical ethics or the rise of the cult of the self doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it will be increasingly clear where the church stops, and culture starts. And that’s only ever a good thing for the people of God. And not in a throwaway, making the best of a lousy situation. Consider Jesus’ words in Luke 6…

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets…Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.”

Luke 6:22-26, ESV

We get it backward when, as the people of God, we count societal approval as a blessing and persecution as woe. Jesus says strike that; reverse it. Now live it. 

Ecclesiastically, we tally up the number of people attending our worship services each week and compare that to demographics data, and we freak out. The standard narrative is that young people are not coming, or if they did, they’re not coming back again. The church’s situation seems remarkably like that of Elijah:

There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He said, “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”

1 Kings 19:9-10, ESV

Many in the church, particularly the older generations, feel like they have nothing to do but crawl back into their stone edifices and glower out at the pagan youth.

God asks, “What are you doing here, Church?”

“Lord, we have been so faithful. We have studied your Word in Sunday School, we have made sure we maintained our buildings, we have dressed respectfully, we have kept our music wholesome, and even more! But Lord, this new generation doesn’t seem interested. They don’t want to meet in our fluorescent cubicles to study the quarterly, they don’t seem to care about preserving our buildings that get used twice a week, they come to church dressed just like they are every other day, and they don’t even know the words to ‘In the Garden’. We are all that you have left.”

Perhaps God’s response is similar to the one he gave Elijah:

“Go, return on your way…I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”

1 Kings 19:15-18 ESV

In other words, “Church, go back to the beginning. Go back to what I actually told you to do: love me, love people, and make disciples. You’ve confused how you do church with being the church. The methods have to change in order for the message to be received. And don’t worry about the numbers: I’ve got more to save in the coming generations than you can shake a stick at.” 

A Picture

One of the images that Jesus used to help us wrap our heads around the Kingdom He is building is that of leaven in flour. He said,

 “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and mixed into fifty pounds of flour until all of it was leavened.”

Matthew 13:33

That’s it. It’s a short parable. But, oh, the implications, one of which is this: you don’t count leaven; you look to see if the bread is rising. Jesus counts the culture but not the Church. He measures the flour but not the leaven. But the Church changes the culture; the leaven changes the flour. That’s how this thing is designed to work. It’s not intended to be counted; it’s designed to change things from the inside out. The amount of leaven doesn’t matter, but its impact should be undeniable. 

Perhaps if we stop counting, we will see the bread start rising. We’ve gotten so concerned with counting heads that we’ve forgotten about reaching hearts. If we stop emphasizing counting politically, socially, and ecclesiastically, we may start counting where it matters: obedience, faithfulness, and Christ-likeness.