After our annual Fall Festival, my core team started asking some good questions. While they were cleaning up after the event, the conversation went something like this:
“Well, it seemed to go well.”
“Yeah, but I think we had more people last year.”
“You know, we do this every year. Do we know if anyone has actually started coming to the church because of this?”
“Well, I talked to a family who wanted to know when Sunday service begins.”
“I don’t think you do this type of event to gain members. I think it’s about serving the community.”
As their pastor, I hear those conversations. I have the same questions. But my answer to them has changed over the years. As I grow older, I realize that it is important to assess everything we do and to encourage excellence and intention in every event, ministry and program. But we have to think far beyond the event itself in assessing its impact.
A harvest we don’t always see
Generations Church is a gathering of 100+ folks with many different stories. We are located in Guthrie, Oklahoma, a bedroom community of around ten thousand people. Guthrie sits just north of the Oklahoma City metro area. As with every church, we always want to believe that we are using our resources in the best ways.
God has entrusted a lot of children to our care. They come from many different backgrounds. Few have both biological parents at home. They are our most important area of ministry, our harvest field. And the true harvest will take place long after I’m gone.
I’m always thrilled to hear of one of our children accepting Christ. My favorite things about being a pastor are baby dedications and baptizing our children. But those are steps in the harvest; they are not the harvest. Just as the farmer rejoices to see the sprouts appear and is pleased to see rain fall on the tender shoots, he knows that his job has only begun. Careful fertilizing and weeding are necessary if those plants are to reach maturity and produce a bountiful harvest. Pests and predators have to be shooed away. And it happens over a long season.
The harvest of the children God has entrusted to our “Gkids” ministry will occur when they have grown and they still follow Christ, when they make sound choices with their minds and bodies, and when they carry on the work of sharing the Gospel with their own children and with the children God entrusts to the local churches they belong to. And it’s very likely I won’t be there to see it, but that’s okay. Many of the teachers and pastors who planted God’s Word in me aren’t around today to see the harvest that their work has produced.
Faithfully planting seeds
When I hear the conversations about the immediate impact of the most recent big event, I’m glad it’s taking place. I’m pleased that we’re not doing ministry on autopilot. I want us always to consider if our resources are being used in the best way to further the mission of our local church. I’m happy that the good folks who take time out of their busy lives to devote to these events want to have some notion that they are making a difference. Because they are.
But the difference may or may not be seen in next Sunday’s attendance.
We don’t know the impact of smiling while handing a hotdog to a child in a hand-me-down Spiderman costume.
We don’t know who will read the tract given along with a bag of Skittles.
We have no idea if the songs we sing, the crafts we make, or the stories we tell in Gkids on Sunday mornings are having a spiritual impact, but we faithfully plant the seeds.
We know the seed is good. We trust that some of it will find fertile soil. Most likely, someone who comes after us will harvest the crop. And that’s okay.
4 questions that reach beyond your event
I have come to understand that the event is just that—an event. I spend some time assessing the event: Did we deliver what we promised? Did we give full effort with the resources we had available? Did I make sure to thank everyone who gave of their time and talent?
And then I think beyond the event and ask these four questions:
- Did families who don’t have a church see the church as a friendly, safe place that they might think of if they were ever to decide they needed a church?
- Did the kids who came see the church as a place they would like to come to, and not a place they might be made to come to?
- Did they see adults working together to represent Jesus to them in a positive way?
- Did they have the opportunity to hear about Jesus while they were with us?
If I can answer these questions with a “yes”, then I trust that some of the seed we have sown will eventually result in a harvest.
“This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”
Mark 4:26–29 (NIV)
