The Numbers Game

Tim Phillips

Some of you may know that before I went to seminary and became a pastor, I was a mathematics teacher. I taught high school math (mainly algebra and geometry) for 11 years. I also have three math degrees. You might say I’m a numbers guy (or, you might instead say along with my good friend Benjamin Glaser that “Math is sorcery”). I even earned the nickname “Math Man” when I was in college.

As part of my education, I had to take a class in statistics three different times.  While statistics can be manipulated and misleading (the Mark Twain quote about statistics comes to mind), it is still interesting (and somewhat informative) to look at the results of statistical surveys. Sometimes the numbers presented in religious surveys can give disheartening results. For example, I recently saw the results of a Ligonier Ministries survey that was posted on Facebook. Among so-called (or self-identifying) evangelicals in the United States, these were the results:

·      31% say science disproves the Bible

·      33% say gender is a choice

·      38% say Jesus was not God

·      62% say God accepts all religions

·      62% say the Holy Spirit is a force

·      66% say people are good by nature

·      75% say God first created Jesus

Granted, the term “evangelical” may be ill-defined in such a survey. But even if those numbers are off, they are still quite alarming. Much of the modern church in the U.S. has either bought into the philosophical notions of the culture (contra Paul’s warning in Romans 12:1-2 and Colossians 2:8) or is repeating the talking points of ancient heretics (e.g., Pelagianism and Arianism). Our churches, when people even attend, appear to be in bad shape. My friend Andy Webb recently lamented that in his native country of England only 5% of the people attend church. It’s not much better in the U.S. Even in the state of Tennessee (one of the highest states for church attendance rate, and the state where I currently pastor), only about 21% attend church on a weekly basis. These things should not be.

It's one thing to complain, but what is the solution? I’m currently preaching through Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and we’ve just come to chapter 4, the “practical section” of the book. Just in time for Valentine’s Day (I did not plan it that way), we came to the section where Paul explains the gift which Christ gives to His bride (and body), the church. In Ephesians 4:7, Paul mentions a gift which Christ gives, and then in verses 11-13 he states what that “gift” actually is (and why He gives it):

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

The gift is actually the gift of persons, or we might summarize it as the gift of the ministry of the word. The gift is given so that we would be united in what we believe and in Whom we believe (“the unity of the faith”), in what we know and Who we know (“the knowledge of the Son of God”), and so that we would grow in spiritual maturity (see verses 14-16). According to Paul’s illustration in v. 14, we are not to be like children in a boat at sea tossed around by wave after wave of false doctrine. But judging from the survey results, that is what many in our churches have become, if they ever even bother to get in the boat in the first place.

But Ephesians is one of Paul’s prison epistles, and if Paul is anything, he is a praying prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 3:1, 4:1). Twice in the first half of this letter he offers up prayer on behalf of his readers. As part of his prayers, he asks that they would be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation of the knowledge of God and that they would know the hope of His calling (1:17-18). Later he prays that they would know and comprehend the greatness of the love of Christ (3:17-19). Knowing who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what He has done for the salvation of sinners is absolutely fundamental to the Christian life, so much so that it would be difficult to reasonably claim that we are truly Christians apart from it.

When I taught school, I was the sponsor/coach of the academic team (think “quiz bowl team”) for a few years. Once, when we were headed to a competition, I went over current events with the students. This was in the late 1990’s and the New York Yankees had just won the World Series, so one of the students stated, very proudly, that his favorite baseball team was the recent champs. So I asked him to name five players on the Yankees team. I think he managed to name one, maybe two. It is difficult to see how he was truly a Yankees fan if he knew so little about the team. Yet many people claim to be “Christian” and “Evangelical” in name only, without truly knowing who Jesus Christ is.

Part of Paul’s practical solution in Ephesians is to pray for the gift of the ministry of the word to be realized in the lives of believers. Too often our own prayers (and those at prayer meetings, if those things still exist in our churches) devolves into prayers for physical things (health and wealth) and little else. I still remember a sermon Sinclair Ferguson preached at Synod a number of years ago, where he lamented that too often our prayer meetings are for broken bones and due mortgages, rather than the salvation of souls and the advancement of the gospel. Knowing the Lord Jesus Christ and growing in the knowledge of Him is of far greater concern than our physical wellbeing. We can be in perfect physical health and yet have heretical hearts. “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). Believers are called to know the truth about Jesus Christ (a truth that is rooted in love), to grow in that knowledge, to do so in the body of Christ (of which they are members), so that they become mature in their faith (Ephesians 4:14-16). “We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ” (Colossians 1:28).

Those of us who have been called as ministers and elders must make this a priority in our ministry. Other things may also be important, but the teaching ministry (along with a ministry of prayer) is absolutely vital for our churches. In an age when so many people get so much information from the unbelieving world (be in secular news sources, social media, or the imaginations of Hollywood screen writers), and in an age where the temptation is to dumb-down doctrine and preach lighter sermonettes, our people deserve to hear the full counsel of God and to know Jesus Christ and Him crucified (Acts 20:27; 1 Corinthians 2:2). You may not be a numbers guy, but the people whom God has called are counting on you.