30 Years of Faithfulness...and Quite Possibly Failure

This one may ruffle the feathers of some of my churchgoing and church-pastoring brethren, but it's on my mind so I'm going to address it. I'd like to hear your comments.

Today as I was eating lunch between appointments, I was reading through the latest issue of a monthly Christian newspaper. In the paper was an article about a pastor and his wife who are celebrating 30 years of ministry at the same church (I'm not going to name the church). The paper described the pastor's faithfulness in the ministry, and I have no reason to doubt that it was true.

However, something caught my eye as I read the article. The story mentioned that the church had at one time grown to about 100, but was now running about 60...after thirty years. That to me, is not the sign of a successful ministry. They may have kept the lights on and done good things for the few people that were there, but if after 30 years you still can't attract more than 60 people to your services in a county with over 3 million people, I don't think that's anything to shout about.

I don't expect every church to be a megachurch. There's room for all kinds and sizes. I just found it depressing to think that you could pastor a church for 30 years and still have such a small crowd. If they had said the church was running 200-300 I wouldn't have thought anything about it, but I just found the number 60 to be more a sign of failure than success.