Jesus Don't Get What's Important to Churches

We was having our Wednesday night meal at Unity First. The ladies had put together a great dinner of spaghetti, garlic bread and seven-layer salad with your choice of ice tea or lemonade. It's not a meal at Riley's Diner but it was still awful good. Anyways, I was sitting with Tab Summers. He's our church clerk. Keeps track of who's here, who's left us, who's just joined and who's left us. He was picking at the mayo-drenched peas in his salad, so I asked what was on his mind. He pulls out this folder with charts and graphs that showed how attendance was going at Unity First over the years. Seems we lost quite a few members the last couple of years, and he was fretting about it.

"Reminds me of a story I saw on some guy's blog," I told him. "Seems these archaeologists found this ancient manuscript about a conversation between Jesus and a few of his disciples."

"You found this on a blog? How do you know it's true?"

"Well, what kind of person would make up stuff like that and lead people to think it was true?"

"Carl, just because it's on the inter--"

"Do you wanna hear this story or don't you?"

"Go ahead."

"Good. See, this conversation takes place right after John 6:66. That's where it says, 'From this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him.' "

Now here's how the story goes that I told Tab about:

It seems Jesus was praying under a tree in the heat of the day when this familiar voice greeted Him.

"Jesus, we need to talk."

Jesus looks up and sees Peter strutting over, with Matthew and John not far behind. "Sure, Pete, what's up?"

"It's about the people."

Jesus smiles. "What about them?"

"You haven't noticed?"

"Noticed what?" He opens this pouch with a few dried figs and offers it to Peter.

"Our numbers are down," Peter says, waving his hand to decline the morsels. "Way down."

"And this worries you?" Jesus inspects one of the figs and holds the pouch out to the other men, shaking it. "Matt, John. They're really good."

Matthew shakes his head, but John quietly steps forward to fish out a couple figs.

"Something's gotta be done," Peter says, trying to regain control. "Judas says our cash flow is really tight. We'll be lucky if we can afford to buy a single fish from the market to feed all of us."

Jesus sighs. "You do know," He tells him, "I only need one."

"Yeah, right, but You haven't done that in a while. You need to do more of that fish-and-bread multiplying stuff. The crowds ate that up."

"They were hungry."

"I mean, they liked it. They thought it rocked. You do more of that flashy stuff to pull in the crowds, and our numbers are bound to go back up. Raise somebody else from the dead. That kind of thing."

"Numbers are important to you?" Jesus asks.

"How else can we tell how effective we are? Not long ago we had 5,000 men listening to us, but lately they've been dropping like locusts. What I'm saying here is someone's gotta take responsibility for this loss, and since You're at the top and all ..."

"Perhaps it's the ones who left you should talk to."

"Oh, we have. And we found out some disturbing news."

"Really? What was that?"

"Some of them are saying your messages, well, they've gotten kinda dry."

Matthew chimes in. "Depressing, too ... I mean, they say that. Not me. I wouldn't, y'know, I wouldn't say that. ... Can I still have a fig?"

"Sure thing, Matt," Jesus says, holding out the pouch as He turns to John. "And what do you think?"

John boy's been staring at the ground all this time, shuffling his feet in the dirt and tucking his hands in the pockets of his outer garment. "I just want us all to get along. Can't things be the way they were when we were all so happy?"

Peter frowns. John's always been kind of a wimp as far as he was concerned. "We have to look forward. You can't dwell on the past. This ministry's in jeopardy if we don't make a course correction. Matt, tell Jesus what you've learned."

"Yes, certainly." Matthew pulls this abacus from beneath his tunic. "I've been running the beads. It seems that giving is already down 54 percent. And the crowds are down by 64 percent compared to this time last month. My calculations indicate that we could well lose some of our biggest contributors if something doesn't change."

Jesus studies Matthew's abacus. "So what kind of course correction did you have in mind, Pete?"

Peter kneels beside Jesus, glad that He was finally starting to listen to reason. "You gotta do more stuff that gets people talking. They'll spread the word through the villages. That water to wine thing? Great stuff. Oh, and remember that time You walked on water?"

"That was the first time I ever did it. I was just getting My feet wet." Jesus laughs, but Peter don't find this funny.

"Picture this. We organize this big lakeside revival. Get some press releases out to all the scrolls. Prepare some direct marketing papyruses."

John interrupts here. "Don't you mean papyri?"

"Whatever," Peter says, clearly ticked off. "The thing is, on the big day, we send You out on a boat, like a hundred yards out. Then with the crowds gathered around the shoreline, You get out of the boat, walk straight to the shore on top of the water and start preaching. What an entrance!"

"So let me get this straight. You prefer that I have thousands of shallow followers, instead of a handful who are willing to follow Me wherever I send them?"

"Exactly!" Peter says. "Now we're getting somewhere!"

Jesus sighs again and places His hand on Peter's shoulder. "I know you mean well, but I have a different path to travel. And when it's all done, even more people are going to leave Me."

"But," Peter's struggling to find the right words here, "that's not -- It doesn't make any sense."

"It never has," Jesus assures him. "And it never will."