The Measure of Success
By James Krieg

"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Galatians 6:14).

The Australian pastor of a large, numerically growing church recently said on national television that the problem with the 'traditional' churches is one of relevance - and that is why people are leaving them in droves. They need, he said, to take some advice from the marketing world: The Church has a product to sell - God- and the way they market this product will determine their success in 'selling' it. This is how he built his congregation from 12 to 600 in half a decade.

In today's world we are obsessed with being successful in whatever we set out to do. The worth or value of a person is often based on how successful they are, particularly in the area of their careers. More and more we see 'human potential movements' springing up to encourage us to reach our fullest and highest potential as human beings, and the promise is issued with monotonous regularity, "do this, or follow these steps, and you too can have a successful, fulfilled and prosperous life!"

Succeeding is good. There is nothing wrong with achieving great and wonderful things, and using our human creativity and ingenuity as much as possible. There is, however, a couple of problems with the 'success mentality' that we are surrounded with. Firstly, it often fails to recognise that human beings are in fact limited, imperfect and (dare I say it!) sinful. This fact throws a spanner in the works of the utopian ideals of a lot of today's philosophies. Secondly, it largely ignores the fact that all the creativity and ability human beings have, come as a gift from God; and if not used to serve and glorify him will ultimately turn out to be futile. Nevertheless, the world continues to assess success based on criteria which are essentially material, visible and superficial.

We Christians are not immune to being influenced by these values, and in fact we very often fall into the trap of thinking that the world's standards for what is successful or not should be our standards as well. In short, it means that we take a look at our own lives or at the Christian activities we see around us, and apply to them the principles of the world in our assessment of them. If we were to be asked the question, "Is God working in this situation?" we would base our answer on whether the world would see it as a success or not, such as numbers of people, levels of excitement, financial or material income, public attention, miraculous or spectacular events, etc. The Reformers called this a 'Theology of Glory' - saying that the evidence of the working of God is outward, visible signs. It means that, for example, an evangelistic event is only considered a success if there a considerable numbers of people who go forward at the end; a youth group is only successful if it is big, and is filled with lots of 'cool' people; a church is only being relevant if they have lots of 'contemporary' worship, spectacular 'signs and wonders', 'celebrity' speakers who are able to pull at people's heart strings, and people who leave each service with that nice warm fuzzy feeling.

It may seem like I'm being harsh but, do you know, all of these things can be taking place on a huge scale, with everyone all excited and fired up, and there can be one huge glaring absence of the most important and central reality of Christianity: The Cross. In fact, all of these sorts of things frequently take place at events which are not even remotely associated with Christianity. Paul tells us in the passage at the start of this article that the only thing that he could and should ever point to as any measure of success is the fact that Jesus had been crucified, that he had been crucified with Christ, and that all the principles of the world had been crucified and done away with, in that one act of the cross.

God's way of dealing with the evil and the problems of sinful humanity is considered weak and foolish in the world's eyes. Who would imagine that a lonely and weak man dying on a cross would actually be the one conclusive step of victory over all the powers of sin and darkness? Who could guess that a message proclaimed by a bunch of common, ill educated Galileans would transform the lives of millions of people and actually influence the course of human history? And if the message of Jesus had only changed a handful of lives, and had had no visible effect on history, would we consider it a success? If the thousands of people who fill today's mega-churches had actually decided to reject Christ instead of accept Him, and these churches were really struggling to keep their numbers up, would that make any difference to the validity of the message? Would it make any difference to what we thought of Christ?

The sad thing is that these days we would rather be involved in something which bears all the worldly marks of success, but which can often fail in the most important of God's marks of success - the centrality of the cross. When God looks at an group, or event, or church, His rules of assessment is, "Are these people faithfully proclaiming the message of Christ Crucified? Are they living lives which demonstrate that they have died to themselves, taken up their cross and followed Jesus? Are they persevering through times of dryness and hardship without giving in and going somewhere else where life is easier? Do they have a real confidence that the simple message of the cross is the real power of God to save people?" This is what the Reformers called a 'Theology of the Cross'. It is an attitude that recognises that our one responsibility as Christians is to communicate to people (by our word and actions) the Gospel. It acknowledges that this Gospel does not need to be made relevant - because it is already relevant and applicable to all people anywhere and at anytime. It admits that it is God's job to convert people - we are just to be faithful instruments by which He plants the seed. It rejoices that the greatest miracle of all is the inner transformation of a person's heart by God's Word - the one miracle that all of heaven gets excited over. It confesses that the message is not to be assessed by the physical appearance, persuasive skill, or charisma of the communicator, but by the content of the message itself. It judges that a church is worth going to not because of its fun filled action packed programs, but because we hear from the pulpit, week by week, the message of the cross - a message which in its weakness is the power of God, in its foolishness is the wisdom of God, and in it's humility and simplicity is the richness and depth of the endless love and grace of God.

You may not know what I've been talking about. You may not have actually grasped the full meaning of Jesus' death on the cross and why it is so central to Christianity. You may not comprehend why our faithfulness to this message should take precedence over everything else that Christians do. You may not understand how God can be working as much (or even more) through the small, the unassuming and the supposedly 'irrelevant', as He is through the large, the spectacular and the 'culturally relevant'. If so, then I invite you to come to the foot of the cross and to see for a moment the eternal Son of God who was prepared to give up His own glory by becoming a man; the King who was prepared to be beaten and spat upon and reviled by those who were meant to serve Him; the Creator who was prepared to face death at the hands of His own creatures; the Holy One who was prepared to become our sin and face the terrible wrath of God; and the Father who was prepared to lose His only Son, so that we can become His Sons and Daughters.