A friend of mine that works at a church was in a staff meeting a few months ago. During the meeting, one of his coworkers proclaimed how many people had attended a particular event. I imagine the room was quiet for a few seconds, but then he said what was on everyone's mind, "Is that a real number or a church number?"
What he meant was, "Is that an accurate, concrete number of people that attended that church event or is that an Evangelical Estimate?" I don't think that's an issue that's all that unique to Christians. Lots of events suffer from O.N.E. or "Outrageous Numerical Exaggeration." I understand that. I mean if you're hosting an iguana and speckled belly finch pet owners social mixer and 270 iguana and speckled belly finch pet owners show up, it's pretty tempting to say, "We had about 300 people there." Rounding down might make your event look small and silly.
But why do we do it? Why do Christians round up? I have three theories:
1. Reverse Fish & Loaves Syndrome
Jesus once miraculously used two fish and five loaves of bread to feed more than 5,000 people. He multiplied something very small, to do something very large. We do the same thing. Sort of. We hold an event with a few hundred people and then when it comes time to tally the attendance we "fish & loaf" the number to around a thousand.
2. We count the Trinity.
If you count each person, plus the trinity for each person, (God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit) your numbers will skyrocket pretty quickly. Think about it. Instead of one guy coming to your event, you've got four right off the bat. Ten people show up, you've got a count of 40. One hundred people show up, you're already at 400. And if someone complains about this method you can always say, "What God doesn't count for you? You don't want to count Jesus? Is that what you're saying? Sweet baby Jesus doesn't count?"
3. Small Attendance = Small God
We all want God to show up in a "big way." We want him to do "big things," which is cool, but doesn’t automatically translate into big attendance. Maybe your entire event is for one person. I know that the reality is that a single life change is a pretty huge thing. But I struggle sometimes with the idea that unless I do something massive and have a gigantic event or a wildly big ministry, it's going to make God look small to people that are watching. That outsiders will see my lack of numerical success and think, "Wow that dude's God is really small. Look how tiny his ministry is." The idea that God needs my attendance number or web traffic to appear big is ridiculous, but there you have it. I am ridiculous.
Those are my three theories about why we Christians round up attendance for God. I would love to write more, but around 6 billion people emailed me today, so I better go check those.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
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50 comments:
The best part was, "We count the Trinity." That was hilarious!
Wow, your third point was dead on! It's so true that we think this way.
or you count eyes, legs or any other body part a person normally has 2 or more of
Wow, like 6 people commenting already, fantastic
;)
Oh, yeah. And if you were there and know that the number is a bit, shall we say exaggerated, we don't point it out. After all, YOU don't want to feel silly for having been there. :oP
Hey, Jon, heard you on the "Ear Reverent" podcast. Excellent!
What about the children, Jon? They're people too...they count to Jesus! He said, "Let the little children come."
When I read your title, I thought this was going to be about Sunday School Round-ups, where you try to increase attendance on one day of the year.
"fish & loaf" the number - awesome!!
You should do an article about unusual biblical verbs:
"fish & loaf: verb - to expand numbers to something more impressive or appropriate to the situation"
You also could attempt a Huckabee - "I didn't major in math, I majored in miracles." That's where you acknowledge that your number has no chance of being correct, but you go with it anyway and hope for the best.
Michael
http://acriticalspirit.blogspot.com
ha! At our church we had a retired senior pastor say at first, "when I retired, the church had 2,000 in attendance" a few months later it was "around 2,500" and now he's saying "almost 3,000"
I find this sort of thing to be very disturbing. I understand the concept, but it boils down to pride. We want to look good so our numbers need to be bigger.
The reason I find it disturbing is because we justify so many sins in the church and to make ourselves feel better we like to jump all over the "bad" sins. "We had a hundred teens show up to the event ... actually 50 but let me start yelling about gays or drugs or something to distract you from my lie." This is the sort of fake Christian stuff that burns people.
Let me step up and say, this weekend we had a youth party that our workers outnumbered the youth that showed up. Then I went to the High School football game and ran into half my Youth. I had a great time with them and I am ok that they didn't show up for our pre-game party. They know I care and that is what is important.
See how I didn't have to lie about our numbers. I didn't have to take the 10 or so kids that showed up from 6 churches that worked together on the event and round it up by counting all the people that walked by and grabbed a hot dog on their way through. The number isn't important enough to sacrifice my integrity.
I think Sally and I attended the same church...
My dh wasn't the "official counter", but he filled in when the other guy was out of town.
I'm not quite sure how the final numbers (which were published in the bulletin) were figured, but I'm pretty sure complex mathematical equations where 1 + 1 = 7 were figured in somewhere...
It cracks me up every time I read "Sweet baby Jesus".
Radio talk show host Phil Hendrie used to (and maybe still does) use the phrase "sweet feathery Jesus". Hilarious.
Surely there must be a way to rig the comment counter for this post.
As a pastor, I have seen this sort of "optimistic" counting. Our bishop started basing assessments on attendance; you wouldn't believe how many sheep strayed away after that!
My question is: Who are we trying to impress by doing this?
...
I have more thoughts on this, but I have to go pretend we had more people at youth group this week than we did...
did your churches ever have 'high attendance sunday?' mine did. i was tempted to not go every year just to be a rebel and spoil everyone's fun.
but i didn't, my mother would never have let me do that. and now i recognize that as a symptom of my flesh. ;) more church talk there for ya.
Hilarious. I'm one of the pastors at a small church, and one of the things we've always joked about is counting all the people (adults, kids, infants) and then going outside to see how many people or stray animals were passing by...
I will also propose another theory you may not have considered...
Maybe it's a small congregation and there aren't many leaders, so the pastor asks the worship leader to count the people.
You realize that worship leaders can only count to four easily. After that it gets hazy. We are also known for our pride issues, so we just make up a good number so no one will know we can't count.
The worship leader counted your attendees today, and this is how he/she did it:
1. We love the number 4 and the number 8. The number will always start with one of those unless we're into jazz or blues. Then it will start with a 6 or an 8. So, if it looks like it's more than one hundred and less than 500, it is 400 something. If it is more than 500 and less than a thousand, it is 800 something. And so on...
2. The number always ends in 9. (If we end it with a four, people might suspect. Very Clever of us, don't you think?
3. If we are really smart and the previous method is beneath us, we count the members of the band and put a 9 after it for a small church and a 39 for a larger church.
Wow. And I thought preachers were the only ones who did that, "ministerially speaking."
by my count stacy from louisville hasn't commented in a few days. if she's not back by post 400! i'm leaving!
The sad thing is that everyone knows the Pastor or whoever is lying and so that affects his credibility. If he cannot tell the truth in that area, how can we trust anything he says? It is an integrity issue.
So sad.
I church building is small enough that any exaggeration would immediately be met with incredulous stares. I'm loving the trinity theory though. Made me smile.
Anon at 7:36: Stacy . . . is that you???? :)
We count the trinity! HAHAHA! Awesome!
I worked with a youth minister once who always added a handful, which he said were for those who were probably in the bathroom. :) Although in student ministry... that is a probably a good assumption...
lol!
as pastors of SMALL churches, there's a very good reason for "rounding up".
for some systems, a church has to have a certain amount of people in it to keep its sovereignty
...otherwise, the pastor loses his job...which brings up other issues as to why he can't grow the church...which brings up why he's in charge in the first place...which brings up why he rounds up the numbers...unless the church is a revitalization church and then all the numbers are wrong!
clear as mud?? lol so in the long run, it's just easier to round up.
Loving this post, Jon.
King David couldn't hold up a light to how our churches can perform a census these days!!
As for those 6 billion emails you have to check, you may have a little "fish and loaf" thing going there too!
Love ya bro!
My dad always counted the pregnant women twice.
I particularly love it when we round up the Scripture. Invariably anytime a preacher speaks of the feeding of the 5000, they always want to add that that was just the men and if you add women and children it was more like 15000 people...I mean is 5000 chump change and in need of pumping up, come on 5000 is alot!
My dh is a preacher...his friends always joke, "We had 200 last Sunday, or 650-evangelistically speaking."
This is SO true!
Wow, nearly every person on the planet emailed you today? You must be popular!
So where is Stacy from L?
a) practicing riffs on guitar praise?
b) rehearsing an interpretive dance to another Wham song?
c) attending a fish funeral?
d) learning how to leg drop?
I think we should be told...
What about preachers that tell the story you know you heard from the last traveling evangelist that passed through or the worship leader that claims to have written the song you recently heard in another city? I only say these examples because I have experienced them... Honesty IS the best policy!!!
Haha, I would LOVE to go up to someone and say "what? You don't want to count the little baby Jesus?"
Jon, your posts cut to core of Christian insecurities like little hilarious arrows. I appreciate how you can laugh at the Christian collective with love and not malice. I love the levity too. It really exemplifies the freedom in your heart in God's grace. Rock on brother.
David
I think O.N.E. comes from the desire of pastors to feel successful. We are human beings and we all have an innate need to feel that we are successful at something, especially if you are a leader. If you are a sales manager, you measure success in the amount of sales you have. If you are a factory manager, you measure success in the number of widgets you made. And so on. How does a pastor measure success? Spiritual growth isn't something you can really measure. So, the only thing we have are the numbers, whether it's how many baptized or how many attend. It stinks when people exaggerate. But, before you get the BBQ sauce to roast your pastor, ask yourself how have you let him know that he is making a difference in your life? Are you supporting and encouraging him?
We like to use percentages. 75% of the male congregansts showed up. Or the place was filled to 85% capacity.
For us small churches, it sounds better than 10 men were there. Or 90 people were there.
I served on a church for seventeen years and pastor math always intrigued me. Mostly in that it isn't consistent in its application. For pastor reported numbers regarding attendance expand whereas numbers related to time contract. In other words, "I bet there were 600 people there" means there were probably 300-350, but "I spoke for a few minutes" means the people in the audience listened for 45 minutes. I suspect it is some kind of synchronization problem with the space/time/spiritual continuum.
I think Stacy from L deleted her comment at 1:40 PM....hoping to get some more love. I heart Stacy ...spoken while casting 100,000 Skittles in all directions.... Please come back! Razzle Dazzle!
Awesome! I feel so much better about my blog with ONE follower now. ; )
I kid although it is tempting to compair the number of comments here to the number I get. We have a saying at our church, 'change the world by serving one'.
I always looked at it as either/or serve Jesus (THE One)and that is good enough, or serve even one person and whatever you do to the least of these, you do to Me kinda thing.
Razzel Dazzel Jon!!
I always estimate because counting requires I take off my shoes unless there is more than a handful of people.
Also, estimate comes from the word esteem. You care about my self-esteem, don't you?
Here is an interesting note on numbers from Captain America's blog:
http://www.edyoungblog.com/2008/05/the-numbers-don.html
@busynogin,
I'm pretty sure that was addressed in an episode of Star Trek, possibly Voyager or DS9. I didn't watch those so much but it sounds like something 7 of 9 might have said. "I suspect it is some kind of synchronization problem with the space/time/spiritual continuum."
Anonymous @ 12:39 PM:
We call that "evangELASTIC" numbers. Foreign missions are the worst at that - 10,000 people came and 10,000 were saved! Really? All of them? Are you sure they understood the question?
"What God doesn't count for you? You don't want to count Jesus? Is that what you're saying? Sweet baby Jesus doesn't count?"
That right there nearly made me spit up some almonds. Hilarious!
So true.
Why does it matter so much? I could never figure that out.
Reminds me of that rhyme about Elizabeth, Elsbeth, Betsie and Beth...
So I've been reading this blog for a couple weeks and I started it at number one. At first I laughed out loud at these posts. Now I don't find it as funny. Its not because its gotten worse. Its because I'm addicted. Its like heroine (not that I would know). Its such a rush at first but now I'm reading it cause I NEED it! Maybe I should slow down. But if I do that I may never catch up! You write like a mad man!
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