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      • 105. Continue
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      • 138 The Unseen Message of Christmas
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      • 139. What Parents Should Teach their Children
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      • 161. How to Finish Well
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      • 164. There is no way out of this one
      • 165. Half Empty or Half Full
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      • 177. By Their Fruit
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      • 179. If Paul Harvey were the Devil
      • 180. The Principle of Practice
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      • 181. In Wrath Remember Mercy
      • 182. Choosing the Right Shepherd
      • 183. The Lord's Requirements
      • 184. Your Ear Lobe. Thumb, and Big Toe
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  • 1185. What is Your "Attitude" tiward Scripture?
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                              Church Math

  Early in my ministerial experience, I was introduced to “church math.” A pastor told me, “I count nickels and noses. If the numbers are down on Sunday, I’m down on Monday.” I was not impressed, but I soon learned, there is a numbers side to church.

It has been suggested that 90% of the counseling that a Pastor does is crisis counseling. I believe it! When most people see a Pastor for counseling, it is not for a spiritual check up; it is ER stuff. Not a few are ready for ICU.

The 80/20 rule is that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people and another version of the same adage says that 80% of the giving is done by the 20% of the people. It does not take long to figure out that most of the people in church do little and give little.

Over the years, I have concluded that there is a 30/30/30/ rule. No matter what I do or what I say, 30% of the people will agree, 30% will disagree, and 30% don’t care one way or the other (before someone informs me that 10% are missing, technically, the numbers are thirty three and a third each). If the 30% who do not care begin to side with the 30% who disagree, the Pastor is in trouble.

If you want to see how low the number can get, call a business meeting or better yet go to the prayer meeting. Back in the days when churches had three services a week, I once decided that in the average church, 50% of the morning crowd returned Sunday evening and 25% of the Sunday morning attendance went to prayer meeting on Wednesday night (also the larger the church the smaller the numbers). When I shared my calculations with Pastors, I was often told they wished their numbers were that good!

W. A Criswell, the famous Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas for fifty years, (and one of my favorite preaches), who just went to be with the Lord, use to say that those who love the Pastor attend on Sunday morning; those who love the church attend on Sunday night and those who love the Lord attend on Wednesday night.

Is it Biblical to think like this? Apparently. What Jesus taught in the parable of the Sower (Mt 13:3-9), could be called the 25/25/25/25 rule. Only 25% of the people who hear the Word produce fruit! Of those who produce fruit, not all produce a hundredfold. Jesus said, only some produced a hundredfold and the other fruit bearers produced sixty fold and thirty fold (Mt. 13:8).

Hum? If only twenty five percent produce fruit and only a third of the twenty five percent produced one hundred percent, that means that only eight and a third percent produce a hundredfold. In the words of the old spiritual, “Lord, I want to be in that number.”

                                                         © G. Michael Cocoris, 1/31/2002
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