Of course they do!
It astonishes me when I hear people talk bad about larger churches by saying, “All they care about is numbers” or some other nonsense like that.
Let me ask you:
- How many years have you been married? Ten, fifteen, twenty-five, forty? Do those numbers matter?
- How many children do you have? Do all of them matter?
- Over six million Jews were murdered by Adolph Hitler. Do they matter?
- At least 200,000 people have been killed and another 500,000 have been displaced in Darfur, Sudan by the Janjaweed militia and a corrupt government run by religious extremists. Do they matter?
- In the next 24 hours, over 30,000 human beings on this earth will die because they did not have sufficient food to eat or clean water to drink. Do they matter?
- 50,000 people (plus) were killed in China by the recent earthquake. Do all of them matter?
The same people who say the numbers don’t mean anything when it comes to evangelism and missions, (which results in church growth), are often the very same people who DO NOT HAVE any substantial NUMBERS to rejoice about.
- A church I know of in South Carolina just baptized 400 people? Do they matter?
- There are two billion people on the planet who have never heard the gospel? Do they matter?
Yes they matter. Every last one of them!
Please stop saying that numbers don’t matter - because they do. People are made in the image of God, and God so loved everyone of them that He sent His only begotten Son so that they might have eternal life.