Last night, I had a good talk with a close friend. We talked about church. We talked about church growth. At one point, I asked him, “If Jesus were alive today, will he be leading a megachurch?” His immediate reply was this: “I am not Jesus”.
After that, he thought for a while and said that it is quite unlikely. I asked why, and he said, “Will a person who often walk away from a crowd lead a megachurch?”
Well, he does have a point. Jesus was no doubt popular. People came to him because he performed miracles during that time. He was also a good speaker. He spoke with authority. He spoke simply, straight to the heart. He dealt with the issue, not the person, unless of course, you happen to be a pharisee - then he can be up close and personal with you.
Jesus had crowds following him, a throng of thousands, especially after he performed the miracle of five loaves and two fishes. I believe Jesus was not looking for a crowd to spread his message. He just saw a need, and he filled it. It was not a planned evangelistic meeting beforehand. As far as the scripture is concerned, Jesus kept a low profile.
There are many reasons for it. It could be that he didn’t want that kind of attention because his work with the disciples was not done. Such attention drawn prematurely might very well undermine his three years of ministry before he faced Calvary. So, keeping a low profile was the way to go.
Or, it could be that Jesus knew the madness or the myopia of the crowd. The mob often gets deindividuated. They lose their sense of critical thinking. In other words, they tend to follow blindly. And Jesus wanted none of that. He was therefore not going for mass conversion for the sake of conversion. He was not looking for numbers for the sake of numbers. It was not about filling the pews, or meeting a target.
It could also be that he saw their hearts and knew that they were following for the wrong reasons. In other words, they were doing the right thing (”following Jesus”) for the wrong reasons (“Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself” - John 6:15).
Making Jesus a king by force would definitely draw too much attention. The Roman authorities would have come down hard on him. But it could also be that Jesus was trying to tell them that going after signs and wonders will not lead to enduring changes. They were missing the forest for the tree. They were pursuing the gift instead of the giver.
That is why Jesus said in John 6:26-27: “You come looking for me, not because you saw God in my actions but because I fed you, filled your stomach, and for free. Don’t waste your energy striving for perishable food like that. Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides. He and what he does are guaranteed by God the Father to last.”
This brings me back to megachurches. I think we live in different times. The context is different. While Jesus was starting a revolution, faithfully planting seeds in the hearts of His twelve disciples, and avoiding the attention in an intolerant and highly inflammatory environment, today’s megachurches thrive in a world largely governs by the rule of law and a government that allows for freedom of expression.
As such, Jesus’ teaching about giving to God and giving to Caesar would be the logical balance needed for prosecution-free evangelism.
So, there is no reason why one should avoid crowd. In fact, the opposite is true. Churches want to be known. Every evangelistic meeting aims to draw in the people to spread the gospel. Part of the aim is also to fill the seats.
So, in a way, a good service would be one where there is standing room only, amongst other benchmarks. This is reminiscent of the overflowing crowd in Capernaum which gathered to hear Jesus teach and they had to lower the paralytic man down the opening in the roof. And isn’t it said that the harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few?
So, going back to my question, “if Jesus were alive today, will he be leading a megachurch?”, I guess my friend was right the first time, “He is not Jesus.” That is the instinctive response, and I take it to mean that we will never know for sure.
Yet, one thing will not change. If Jesus would to walk with us today, he will be immensely popular. He will have millions of followers on social media. People will queue to hear him speak. He will have many who would want to seek his advice. Publishers would even ask him to write book, do podcasts, appear on tvs or netflix, even do a documentary.
And I know what you are thinking - the thought alone is not just surreal, but bordering on heretical. Thanks for indulging me anyway.
I guess after all’s said, behind the intention of that question is to ask, “how would Jesus expect us to handle fame? Or will he still shun the crowd today as he did during his time? In other words, operating in different times, will Jesus lead megachurches?”
After giving it much thought, I feel that asking that question misses the point. For by asking that, I am guilty of putting the carriage before the horses, that is, prioritising the structure over lives, form over substance.
For if Jesus is the same, today, yesterday and tomorrow, then the church He leads will be the same church He had led when the Word first became flesh. It would thus be a church about the body of Christ and not about the church, full stop. In other words, it is not about the building, the budget and the bodies, as in numbers. It is about the people, each individual.
And let me just add that I believe it is esentially about a church without walls, that is, a church that fills the hearts, not the pews, and a church that is as vibrant a community of four or five as it is a community of hundreds or thousands.
To put it another way, there is just no distinction in numbers, only distinction in lives changed, hope empowered and love personified, without which there is no church to speak of anyway; only organised religion.
No doubt the head of the church is, and has always been Christ, so that there is no risk of misattribution, but the body of the leadership is every single life truly transformed for his glory. In that context, it is about each life leading another in a bond of unbreakable unity, resilient hope.
More importantly, as my friend last night shared with me openly, it is a church that cares, one that genuinely puts others before himself/herself, because the heart is forever grateful. It is therefore not a church that is dying to be known, but a church dying to self.
And it is a church not concerned about how many walks into her doorway so that the offering bag would be full, but about what one can offer to journey with another who decides to give his or her life for his loving Saviour.
Let me end with what comes closest to such a church led by Jesus, whether then and now. It would look something like what the biblical scholar N.T. Wright once described it.
“It’s a place of welcome and laughter, of healing and hope, of friends and family and justice and new life. It’s where the homeless drop in for a bowl of soup and the elderly stop for a chat. It’s where one group is working to help the drug addicts and another is campaigning for global justice. It’s where you’ll find people learning to pray, coming to faith, struggling with temptations, finding new purpose, and getting in touch with a new power to carry that purpose out. It’s where people bring their own small faith and discover, in getting together with others to worship, the one true God, that the whole becomes greater than the sum of its part.”
And I believe that is how Jesus expects us to deal with fame. For it is not about being known by the tens of thousands, but about being known just by Him that matters, even if it means being prosecuted for His sake.
In any event, there is no guarantee that had Jesus been alive today, however heretical that thought, he would be embraced with open arms by the world as we know it today. We are forgetting that the world is not our home, and the things of the world is antithetical to the things of God. That reality or truth sadly is timeless.
I would therefore not be surprised should the world end up persecuting Jesus for the second time after the “honeymoon period” is over because his teachings have always stood in the way of the world being religious for self-profiting reasons.
(Ps: Thanks Ken and Addy for a wonderful time. yesterday).
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