How Playing The Church Numbers Game Works
A Real Tension
I recently had someone send me a picture of their pastor celebrating a new coffee shop their church had built. The photo showed the pastor preparing a sermon there. He was excited. So was my friend.
But all I could think was—this is a picture of:
a senior pastor
leading a formalized church
that owns a building
offers Sunday services
and preaches sermons from a stage
And yet—not one of those things can be found anywhere in what Jesus did, called us to do, or what the New Testament Church ever did in His name.
When I pointed this out—not to rain on his parade, but to question why he invests his time, energy, and money in something Jesus never created or called for—my friend didn’t argue theology.
Because he couldn’t.
The modern understanding of church, discipleship, and leadership is found nowhere in an undiluted reading of the Bible.
So instead, my friend used numbers to defend the validity of what they’re doing. Just like I used to when I pastored a fast-growing, popular church.
Look how many people attend.
Look how many professions of faith.
Look how many students attended the leadership conference.
The response creates a tension worth sitting with—especially if you’re one of the millions quietly questioning this whole setup.
Which is why it helps to slow down, and ask a simple question:
Do The #’s Tell A Different Story?
Because if numbers equal endorsement, then God must be wildly enthusiastic about prisons, terminal cancer wards, and overdose funerals. After all, many people “find God” in those places.
But no one would say God desires incarceration, disease, or addiction.
What’s happening is simpler—and far more gracious: God meets people inside human desperation. That doesn’t mean He designed it, approved it, or wants us to build systems around it.
If that idea feels uncomfortable, welcome to the Old Testament.
Six hundred-plus laws.
A massive temple system.
Endless rituals and sacrifices.
All of it was God meeting people where they were in their delusional idea of Him—not endorsing where they thought He lived. In short: God moves because He is faithful, not because what we’re doing is right.
Which explains why Jesus shows up and says to the religious leaders: You have no idea who God actually is or what He’s really like. (John 8:19)
And that realization forced me to confront what we’ve come to call “church”—along with a couple of questions that became deeply uncomfortable when I was pastoring one.
Is your church doing what Jesus did?
Because Jesus didn’t build a stage.
He didn’t offer weekly services.
He didn’t organize a church structure.
He didn't host leadership conferences.
Sure, those ideas can draw tens of thousands, span the globe, and dominate Christian culture for decades.
But those ideas weren’t born from Jesus’ life. They were borrowed centuries later from Roman models of empire, organization, and control.
Is your church saying what Jesus said?
Because Jesus didn’t preach a distant God who must be appeased.
He didn’t preach sin as rule-breaking that threatens God’s holiness.
He didn’t preach acceptance once the right conditions were met.
He didn’t preach faith as a means for getting your act together.
The truth is, much of what we call the gospel today was shaped by Greek philosophy long after Jesus—peddling an imaginary god who keeps the books, grace with fine print, and faith as the payment plan.
Why Does This Happen?
Philosophically, false ideas about God breed insecurity in people. Insecurity breeds anxious ambition. And anxious ambition creates leaders and members that quietly feed off one another just to feel like they’re enough.
Practically, God’s unconditional grace doesn’t sell to a world in love with doing. And that creates a problem for self-sustaining institutions that rely on participation and popularity to survive.
By contrast, the Church Jesus started was not an organized institution with systems and hierarchies. It was a way of life—built on trust, friendship, and the risky freedom that faith was meant to bring.
Real faith isn’t striving to be something for Jesus. It’s trusting in who Jesus already is for us. And that kind of trust is terrifying to systems built on control.
So formalized churches offer safer substitutes. Decisions. Programs. Metrics.
People make “salvation decisions” for a god who doesn’t exist—the god of transaction, leverage, and religious performance. And these systems grow precisely because they reward our deepest addiction: self-justification.
As a result, many churches are:
Loved by people who don’t see the God Jesus revealed.
Fueled by members who were handed religion instead of faith.
Irrelevant to the world the Church actually exists for.
It’s not stubbornness so much as a blindness caused by egocentric myopia: the tendency to mistake what we’ve always seen for what’s always been.
And That Matters
Today, over 80% of society has no interest in what’s been labeled “church.” And it’s not because they hate Jesus—it’s because they don’t recognize Him there.
Here’s the uncomfortable irony:
Churches in the U.S. receive over $30 billion in donations each year. We have more buildings, more staff, and more programming than ever before. And yet belief in Jesus has been in steady decline—year after year after year after year.
Which leaves us with a question worth sitting in:
What if all that time, money, and energy were spent the way Jesus spent His life—around unbranded tables, with ordinary people, telling the gracious truth about God, trusting Him to bear fruit, and helping those in need?
Because Jesus didn’t create—or call for—what we see in the name of “church.”
He asked us to go be the friends who pass on grace without religion. To baptize those who believe. And to teach others to treasure what He revealed (Matthew 28:19–20).
That’s why Jesus did it at unbranded tables—because that’s where this way of life actually happens. It doesn’t require money; it frees people to use theirs to empower a movement grace, and meet real needs.
Which is why Lark isn’t trying to fix the church machine. We’re simply helping people get back to the Church Jesus actually started: friends, tables, grace, and freedom—no stage required.
If that sounds like life, start here.