Jesus Doesn't Care about Numbers

     So this past week a medical team came to work with us here in Uganda. The team was great. They spent two days in Kampala seeing people, and then came up to Gulu for their last three days of ministry to see people. It was great having them here and I loved watching the way that they served Jesus through their short time here. But there was one thing that they did that got under my skin- at the end of the day they would talk about what was done and everything, but the thing they would focus on was numbers. “_____ people were saved, _____ people were seen by the doctors and given medicine, and _____ people were seen at the eye clinic.” Even though I didn’t really like that, I am still confident that this team’s hearts were in the right place. But I feel like this team, as well as many other people out there need to know one thing- Jesus doesn’t care about numbers.

     At the beginning of this week I began to really dive into one of the parables of Jesus called “The Parable of the Lost Sheep” (Luke 15:1-7). It stresses that if one sheep runs away from a group of one hundred a good shepherd (John 10) would leave the ninety-nine that are safe in the open country to pursue the one that is lost. I feel like most of us would just say, “Oh well, I still have ninety-nine. That isn’t too bad.” But Jesus does the opposite. He goes after the one.

     I have also been meditating on “The Cost of Being a Disciple” (Luke 14:25-35). I realized that in this passage, Jesus says a lot of things that would make people not want to follow him: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters- yes, even his own life- he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple…. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26, 27, 33).

     It is the same case in John 6. In the beginning of the chapter Jesus feeds the five thousand. The next day Jesus and His disciples went somewhere else, but the crowd from the day before followed them because they ate the bread until they were full (v. 26). And in verse 35 Jesus began to teach them: “Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.’” He then elaborates on that statement. Then right after he gets done teaching them it says, “On hearing it many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’ From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (John 6:60, 66). Jesus taught things that made people stop following Him! He told them THE TRUTH! *gasp*

     I feel like so often people just preach “Hey, Jesus loves you and came to die for you so that you could live in heaven”, and that is all true. But they forget to tell them what Jesus says in Matthew 16:24-25: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’”

     Jesus doesn’t care about numbers, He cares about genuine followers. So instead of preaching the stuff that will make the crowd bigger and bigger, why don’t we try preaching the radical message that Jesus did- the message that made some people stop following him? After all, we are called to Christ-likeness, aren’t we?