Measuring Success?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what will constitute “success” for this mission trip.  How will we know if the trip was successful?  The answer to that question is bound up in what we mean by the word “success.”  For those of us in the West, and especially here in the United States, success tends to be measurable; we are successful if we make a certain amount of money, if we own a certain number of desirable things (or the right desirable things), if we accomplish a lot of tasks at work (or a few really important tasks), etc.  It’s hard for us here in America to claim success if we can’t measure it somehow or if we can’t point to some specific tangible accomplishment; otherwise we’ve just been wasting time according to how our culture looks at things.

So, in terms of this trip we could count the number of glasses we give out to people who like me have a really hard time seeing without help.  We could count the number of people who attend the evening worship services in the two villages.  If anyone “accepts” Christ we could count that, or anyone who might ask to be baptized.  But what if a lot of people don’t come to worship?  What if nobody commits their life to Christ?  What if there are no baptisms?  Would that mean the trip was a failure?

It’s interesting when you are working on two different things and they end up intersecting in unexpected ways.  Right now besides planning for this trip I’m in my final semester of seminary.  The last academic class I’m taking right now is John Wesley’s Theology for Today.  This week I’ve been reading on Wesley’s days as a missionary in Georgia.  Wesley sailed with high hopes for his mission to America but when he left he looked like a failure.  Personally he went with nothing less than the “hope of saving my own soul.”  He also looked forward to preaching to and converting the Native Americans.  But after arriving in Savannah, Wesley had one bad experience after another.  His pastoral style wasn’t appreciated by the colonists, he made a mess of a romantic relationship with Sophia Hopkey (she married another man and Wesley refused her communion leading to her family taking Wesley to court), and his mission to the Native Americans didn’t bear much fruit.  Wesley left Georgia a year and nine months after arriving, looking to all like he had been run out of town.  Wesley and his ministry seemed a failure.

Wesley’s example got me thinking about Jesus and his mission to the Decapolis (Mark 5:1-20).  Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee and comes to “the country of the Gerasenes.”  When he steps out of the boat he is immediately met by a man who lived among the tombs, a man “with an unclean spirit”, a man who couldn’t be restrained even by chains and who was possessed by a Legion of demons.  Jesus casts the demons out of the man and sends them into a nearby herd of pigs causing them to run into the sea and drown.  What happens next is interesting though.  The people from the local town hear what happened and rush out to meet Jesus.  Instead of being overjoyed at the deliverance of the man by the tombs they were afraid.  Instead of inviting Jesus into their village they told him to leave.  Jesus turns around, gets in the boat and heads back the way he came, having never preached to the people, and only healing one person.  By our standards in the church today Jesus would be considered a failure.  I’ll let that sink in a moment…by our usual measurement of success Jesus would have failed in his missionary endeavor to the Gerasenes (much less if he were planting a church!)

So perhaps we should reconsider what success really entails.  Is success measured in quick measurements of people in worship, baptisms and confessions for Christ?  I say no.  One of the problems we face today is that we “measure” success instead of thinking of it in terms of relationship.  What if we thought of success in mission in terms of building relationships, not the number of people we led down the Roman Road? 

Let’s take another look at Jesus and that man from the tombs.  When Jesus was run out of town he paused a moment to speak with the man he had healed and told him to go and tell his friends what the Lord had done for him.  Skip ahead now to Mark 7:31-37 and you’ll see that after some time Jesus goes back to the Decapolis and now the people are no longer afraid.  Now they are bringing people to Jesus to be healed, and the more Jesus tries to get them to keep quiet the more they spread the news.  Jesus formed a relationship with just one man and that relationship bore fruit that was not harvested until a later date.

Now let’s reconsider John Wesley.  After being run out of Georgia he returned to England and eventually had his “heartwarming experience” in London.  Before long there were Methodist societies popping up all across England, people who were discounted by the established church were invited by Wesley and the Methodists to become part of the body of Christ.  Soon those societies made their way across the Atlantic to America.  Here, in what would become the United States, Methodism spread like wildfire and for a time became the largest denomination in the nation.  Methodism spread in part because relationships were formed in the Methodist societies, relationships which fostered a true and living faith, not nominal Christianity. 

Relationships.  For Christ and for Wesley relationships were essential.  Don’t get me wrong, relationships are not the only thing we need, for without grace, without the cross, without Christ we are lost.  But when we build strong relationships – relationships with Christ and with each other – then the church and our missionary endeavors will be “successful.” 

So how will we know if this trip is successful?  We’ll know if we’ve been able to establish a relationship with the people we meet in Ghana.  It’s that simple.  Through the relationships we develop the church will grow and God will be glorified.  We may not see the fruit of those relationships until subsequent trips, but if we are patient and if we discard some of our own cultural baggage that falsely tells us the criteria for success and failure, if we take the time to sow the seeds of friendship we will one day be able to feast together on the bounty of the harvest.