I've been thinking about Jesus' ministry lately, and I've come to an uncomfortable conclusion.

The man would be absolutely terrible at church growth.

I'm not talking theology here. I'm talking numbers. Strategy. Branding. Leadership development. Donor cultivation. All the stuff churches are told they need to think about if they want to grow, or survive, or thrive, or whatever word we're using this year.

By almost any institutional standard, Jesus was a disaster.

Which is a little awkward considering how many institutions we've built around following him.

At one point, Jesus has thousands of people showing up.

Thousands.

Do you know what most churches would do if 5,000 people showed up?
There would be pictures.
So many pictures.

They'd be on Facebook before the crowd had made it home. The newsletter would mention it. The annual report would mention it. The stewardship campaign would absolutely mention it.
"We welcomed more than 5,000 people..."

So, you know the drill.
Jesus feeds them.
Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

No connection cards. No QR code. No "Text BREAD to 77977 to stay connected." Nobody gets an email Monday morning thanking them for joining Jesus on the hillside and inviting them to take their next step.

He feeds them because they're hungry.

Then, when large crowds continue following him, Jesus tries an even stranger growth strategy.
He starts saying harder things.

This is not what consultants recommend.

And when people start leaving, he lets them leave. According to John, enough of them walk away that Jesus finally turns to the twelve and basically says, "Y'all leaving too?"

Sir. You are doing retention wrong.

Then there's staffing.

If Jesus had hired a church consultant before selecting the disciples, there would've been assessments. Spiritual gifts inventories. Personality profiles. Background checks. Probably a retreat.

Instead, he ends up with fishermen, a tax collector, political troublemakers, and Judas.

Judas!

Peter isn't exactly helping matters. He speaks before thinking, misunderstands what Jesus is doing, argues with him, and eventually swears he doesn't even know the man.

Three times.

Jesus keeps him around anyway.

Thomas wants evidence. James and John are angling for promotions. At one point the disciples get into an argument about which one of them is the greatest, which means Jesus has somehow assembled a leadership team that includes middle-school boys.

And these are the people he's going to trust with the movement.

There isn't a single MBA among them.

Honestly, I'm not convinced they could've made it through a church committee meeting without somebody getting their feelings hurt.

This may be his biggest institutional weakness.

A wealthy man approaches Jesus.

Perfect.

He's interested. He's asking questions. He's got money.

Somebody get this man a pledge card.

And what does Jesus tell him?

Sell everything you own and give the money to the poor.

Oh, come on, Jesus!
Not, "Have you considered including the ministry in your estate planning?"
Not, "We have a wonderful naming opportunity available."
Not even, "Let's grab coffee."
Sell it.
Give it away.
To poor people.

The man leaves.

And Jesus, apparently deciding the situation isn't already bad enough, starts talking about camels, needles, and how difficult wealth can make entering the kingdom of God.

You can practically hear the finance committee hyperventilating.

Just let the stewardship chair talk to him, Jesus. Five minutes.

That's all we're asking.

Jesus also has a habit of irritating exactly the people you're supposed to cultivate. Religious leaders. Political authorities. Wealthy people. People with connections. People who could open doors.

He keeps pissing them off. (You almost have to admire the consistency, though).

Meanwhile, look who he's spending time with. Poor people. Sick people. Children. Women. People considered morally questionable. People considered religiously questionable. People considered ethnically questionable.

Basically, a whole bunch of people who aren't going to help the quarterly numbers. Some of them actually hurt his reputation.

Jesus doesn't seem particularly bothered.

If I had to summarize his networking strategy, it would probably be:
Find the person nobody important wants to sit beside. Sit there.

I'm pretty sure that's not in the church-growth handbook.

Church branding people would lose their minds with Jesus.

What's the mission statement?
Who's the target audience?
What are the three words we want people to associate with the Jesus brand?

Good luck.

One minute Jesus is talking about sheep. Then it's seeds. Then mustard. Then vineyards. Bread. Fish. Coins. Children.

For Jesus’ sake! Pick a lane, Jesus.

And just when you think you've got "Kingdom of God" figured out, he tells another strange little story that makes you rethink the whole thing.

You can't put that on a coffee mug.

Well, you can. Christians can put anything on a coffee mug.

But you know what I mean.

Jesus seems almost determined not to give people an easy slogan.

Marketing is going to need another meeting.

Jesus attracts thousands of people and never once launches a building campaign. Not once.

No sanctuary. No education wing. No family life center. Not even the Jesus of Nazareth Memorial Fellowship Hall.

He teaches on hillsides. He eats in people's homes. He gets in boats. He walks around.

This is a man who has 5,000 people show up for an event and apparently never thinks, "You know what we need? A campus."

Worse, when his disciples point out how impressive the Temple is, Jesus starts talking about it being torn down.

Again? Jesus, Jesus! Work with us! Read the room.

I mean, there are people whose grandparents paid for those windows.

This would've eventually become a denominational problem.

You see, Jesus has this annoying habit of running into rules, traditions, and religious expectations that get in the way of helping somebody. And when that happens, he tends to help the person. Then the religious folks explain why he's not supposed to do that and instead he should follow rules, traditions, and religious expectations. 

And Jesus essentially says, "Yeah, we're not doing that.” The Sabbath exists for people, not people for the Sabbath.

That's a lovely idea until somebody tries applying it to church policy.

Then there'll need to be a committee.
The committee will appoint a task force.
The task force will spend six months producing a report.
The report will go back to the committee.

By then Jesus will be three towns over helping somebody else.

Here's where I think all of this stops being just a joke.

Jesus seems to have a completely different idea of what counts.

We notice crowds.
Jesus has this maddening habit of noticing the person in the crowd everybody else missed.

He notices a poor widow whose offering wouldn't keep the church lights on for five minutes. He stops for children when his own disciples think he has more important things to do. He pays attention to people who bring absolutely nothing to the institution except themselves.

Churches aren't particularly good at counting that.

We know how to count attendance.
We know how to count giving.
We can count members, volunteers, programs, subscribers, views, clicks, and pretty much anything else somebody can squeeze into a spreadsheet.

Give us enough data and we can tell you exactly how God is doing this quarter. And lest anybody think I'm just taking a cheap shot at megachurches here, progressive churches do it too.

Small churches do it.
Struggling churches really do it.
I've done it.

If twenty people show up one Sunday and thirty show up the next, something exciting is happening. If thirty show up one Sunday and twenty show up the next, we need to talk about outreach.

I've sat in those meetings.

The numbers do matter. That's the irritating part.

Staff deserve to be paid. Buildings cost money. Ministries cost money. If you're responsible for keeping a church functioning, you can't pay the electric bill with good intentions.

The problem isn't counting. The problem is when keeping the church alive quietly becomes the reason the church exists. And churches are remarkably good at confusing "God needs us to keep doing this" with "we really don't want this thing we've spent our lives building to end."

Those aren't necessarily the same thing.

God, historically speaking, has survived an impressive number of church closings. 

It's harder to remember that when it's your church.

We talk about protecting the ministry. Preserving the legacy. Securing the future. Being good stewards.

Sometimes that's exactly what we're doing.
Sometimes we're scared because the numbers are going down.
Probably a little of both, if we're being truthful.

The church-growth industry has spent decades teaching churches how to get people through the doors, keep them there, turn visitors into members, members into volunteers, and volunteers into givers.

Some of that advice is useful. Of course it is. Some of it is basically marketing with a praise band. Jesus doesn't seem terribly interested in that kind of thing.

Here's the part that would've given the consultant heart palpitations.

Three years of ministry. Thousands of people have heard Jesus. Crowds have followed him from town to town.

Then things get dangerous.

And almost everybody disappears.

Judas betrays him. Peter denies knowing him. Most of the others scatter. Jesus is arrested and executed by the state.

So let's check the numbers.
Attendance: basically zero.
Building: none.
Staff retention: catastrophic.
Founder: dead.

I don't know what the budget looked like at that point, but I'm guessing they weren't planning a fall stewardship campaign.

If you're the consultant brought in to evaluate the Jesus movement right then, you're probably not recommending a second location. You're recommending everybody update their résumés.

And still, the movement survives.

Not because Jesus had built an institution sturdy enough to keep itself going. There barely was an institution. What remained was a bunch of people who couldn't quite shake what they'd experienced.

They'd eaten with people they weren't supposed to eat with. Watched Jesus touch people nobody was supposed to touch. Seen people welcomed who weren't supposed to be welcomed. Watched religious boundaries get crossed and powerful people get challenged.

They'd seen people who were used to being invisible get noticed.

That's hard to put on a spreadsheet.

So, yes, Jesus would've been terrible at church growth. The consultant would've had notes. Lots of notes. Improve donor relations. Work on the branding. Stop antagonizing community leaders. Establish a permanent location. Focus on retention.

Get Peter some media training.

And, for the love of God, Jesus, quit telling wealthy people to give away their money. I mean, Jesus!

I imagine Jesus would've listened politely for a while. Maybe nodded. Then, somewhere around slide 37, he'd notice somebody standing off to the side that everybody else had managed not to see.

And off he'd go.

Leaving the consultant standing there with the PowerPoint.

Come to think of it, maybe that's the metric.