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Judging by Outcomes
- Thread starter Reformed
- Start date
No...we judge according to scripture regardless of outcome:
jn7:24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
jn7:24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
Christians gain discernment from studying the scriptures, then we use that discernment to make judgements.
That is not a popular position in light of hyper-contextualization, which dominates the evangelical scene.
Salty, it's nice to hear that you are very vocal with the preaching of the gospel. In response to your post I really don't think God views it like us pathetic humans do.
Does God ever command us to be successful? Or does He command us to be faithful?
He says we will have good success, but in the context of being faithful. I don't think He ever commands us to be successful. That seems to me to be a worldly conclusion.
If we ask the two who were saved would they consider the small church a success?
And why does one church have to be judged more successful and the other less successful? Wouldn't that be a violation of 2 Co 10:12? "For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise."
Which one was the better steward of what God gave him? Remember Judson and Carey. Those two could turn out to be the next Spurgeon or Judson.
I am not sure what your point is, so I will answer differently than may be expected.
Both pastors may be successful and both pastors may not be successful. There is not enough information in your post to make that call. The question asked in the OP is do we judge based on outcomes? @Squire Robertsson rightly brought up William Carey. If outcomes are the way to evaluate success, then William Carey was a failure during his lifetime. However, if we evaluate Carey's ministry through the lens of history, we see that he was faithful in preaching the Gospel and those who followed after him reaped a harvest of souls.
There is a movement in broad evangelicalism that has embraced outcome-based ministry. The ends justify the means. This is evident in those churches that have adopted the social justice warrior narrative. Instead of changing men's hearts through the work of the Holy Spirit in the preaching of the Gospel, they have adopted social action and shame as the way to affect change. In doing so, they have failed even before they have begun.
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The point being is that numbers alone does not make one successful.
As TCasidy stated (post # 7) "Or does He command us to be faithful?"
Interesting how this thread has unfolded.
In my line of work, we have the phrase "managing by metrics." The problem we've discovered with this approach, is that the boss will always get the metric that he wants, even if his subordinates have to lie to get it. Did the boss mandate a 97% operational ready rate? Then that's what the briefing slide will show, no matter what the real story in the motor pool is.
I had never realized how apt a comparison this could be with ministry metrics.
In my line of work, we have the phrase "managing by metrics." The problem we've discovered with this approach, is that the boss will always get the metric that he wants, even if his subordinates have to lie to get it. Did the boss mandate a 97% operational ready rate? Then that's what the briefing slide will show, no matter what the real story in the motor pool is.
I had never realized how apt a comparison this could be with ministry metrics.
Welcome to the American corporate church.
I had the opposite situation. At a factory job, I processed 5,000 wigits a day. Boss chewed me out, because of the number I was doing - I made the other workers look bad. So after that - I wrote down on my sheet that I did 4,700 widgets a day - though I continued to process the 5,000!
I had the same thing happen to me! My first union job at a large corporation and I was beating the assembly line hourly quota. The union rep tells me to slow down, never beat the hourly quota or else management will have an excuse to do a time study and likely raise the hourly quota. I was 21 years old and was being told to be less productive.
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And yet the bible says that ...nowhere. It says God must give the sinner a new heart.