I am making this point intentionally, so that no one accuse me of taking the scripture out of context. However, there is another element to this story, and that one is all about the number.
The shepherd knows how many sheep he has. He knows when one of the sheep is missing. I suspect if the story were allowed to develop, the shepherd would record all of the new sheep that were born into the flock, all of the new sheep purchased to improve the quality of the flock. The shepherd would know because the sheep are his responsibility. Healthy sheep are important too, no doubt, but knowing how many you have it vital. A good shepherd knows how many sheep they can successfully raise on their land. They carefully breed sheep to have the lambs born in specific seasons. There is one male to so many females. This is all about the numbers.
The truth of the matter is numbers tell our stories. While our stories are always much more than numbers, but you can't leave the numbers out and tell the story. It is impossible to know if you are growing or shrinking without numbers, you can't possibly know if you are making money, or losing it without numbers, and if you don't know what you had when you started, you have no idea if you have lost any. The numbers matter.
So why does the church hate to count? Why do more people than you can possibly imagine spend countless hours developing strategies that keep us from counting who comes to worship, who professes their faith, how churches spend their money? What are we afraid of, for goodness sake?!
Perhaps we are afraid we will be guilty of being a poor steward of the resources we have been given, like the man with the talents who buried them in the yard. Perhaps we are afraid we will discover that we failed to develop our own relationship with God, or encouraged others to do so. Maybe we will find we are ineffective, and not even sure we believe a relationship with God is the core of our being. Some of us might even discover we no longer believe. Those are frightful answers, but if they are even partially true, don't you think its long past time that we deal with them?
Running away from numbers will not save us from anything. They don't set our value, they frame the story we are living. They tell us where we are, where we were, and what the immediate future is shaping up to be. Since God holds all we are, all we have, and all we need, the numbers can't hurt us, they only help us identify where God is working so we can get on board.
The shepherd must have times when the numbers aren't good. He or she has too many sheep, or too few, they are making lots of lambs or none, some have gone missing. I don't think ignoring the numbers improves them, In fact, on the basis of my experience and current weight, I can testify that ignoring the scale does not make you the slightest bit thinner. Paying more attention might have made the remedial action much easier to endure.
If we spent less time fighting about counting, and more time prayerfully considering what the numbers might be telling us, we might even discover God is doing a new thing. We may not be able to do it the way we have always done it, but I believe with all my heart this dance is far from over. I see the energy and the passion building, there are new players changing the game and there is more interest and response than ever in my life time. People are listening, they are responding to mission, the numbers of adult professions of faith are growing. Maybe the numbers might even tell us a story worth sharing.
I am counting on it!
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