Comments on: What Is A Successful Christian?

By: Jim Brown

Jim Brown — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:41:43 +0000

Amen.

There are so many that get caught up in numbers and loose their way, how many churches go through an expansion or building project and then experience a major backslide?

I heard a sermon, I believe it was Alistair Begg (Truth for Life), where the question was asked who is the more successful evangelist, Billy Graham or a man who thoroughly disciples one new believer per year. Many would say the answer is obvious, Billy Graham preaches to thousands, even hundreds of thousands, at a time and gets many new professions of faith every time he preaches. Here’s the catch, if the other man creates just one new disciple the first year and in the second year the new disciple and that man each disciple just one man each year, this pattern can only repeat for sixty three years before the entire world population would be disciples of Jesus. Of course this ignores those who profess faith and then fall away but when you consider that the answer leans even more to the man with a single disciple as those who hear the word once and profess faith with thousands are certainly more likely to fall away than one who is taught the truth one on one for an entire year.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:41:24 +0000

Excellent and convicting post!
I feel that John Piper would say something along the lines of “Don’t waste your unemployment!”

By: Stephen Altrogge

Stephen Altrogge — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:24:25 +0000

Lee – Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

However, I would disagree with the thoughts of David Henson. Henson seems to be promoting a type of liberation theology, which I don’t believe is scriptural. I don’t believe Jesus’ original audience would have interpreted the word “talent” as related to freedom, injustice, etc. The surrounding context of the parable is speaking about the final coming of Christ and the rewards we will receive on that day.

By: Lee Shaver

Lee Shaver — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:43:49 +0000

While I certainly agree that the “success” of what it means to be a Christian is not a matter of numbers, a blog entry I read a while back does make me question your interpretation of the parable of the talents. While we have often seen the “talents” to refer to something much broader than just “money,” would Jesus’ original audience have interpreted it that way? Probably not, suggests David Henson from unorthodoxology: http://unorthodoxology.blogspot.com/2008/11/parable-of-talents-slave-narrative_15.html

By: Stephen Altrogge

Stephen Altrogge — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:56:00 +0000

Ahhh, good point matthew!

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:44:27 +0000

Part of the success is correctly spelling “success” in being a “successful” (not “sucessful”) Christian

By: Ron Reffett

Ron Reffett — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:43:29 +0000

Hey Stephen,
Great post, I have always loved and been extremely convicted by that verse of Scripture. There is great comfort in knowing that the talents were given according to their abilities. As you said in your post, success is not defined by numbers or if we are playing music before 1000′s of people every week, while those things are nice we should never define our success by them. If we are faithful in the little He has given us, He will set us over much. Very encouraging post, as always!
Blessings
Ron Reffett

By: Stephen Altrogge

Stephen Altrogge — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:05:05 +0000

Matt – That’s a great question, and thought. I don’t want to move away from the statement “be faithful” because that statement originates with Jesus, not me. He commends the servants for their faithfulness, not for the amount of success they had. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that we should strive to great things for God. I think the trouble comes when we define great in terms of a number or a definite outcome. Rather, from this passage it would appear that God is ultimately concerned with our faithfulness. Does that make sense?

NP – Yes, I agree. In Christ we are “successful” in God’s eyes. I was speaking more of the spiritual efforts we put forth. I think it becomes dangerous when we define the success of our spiritual efforts (evangelism, preaching, care group leading, etc.) based on a specific outcome.

Art – I totally agree. But am I missing something here? It seems like in this passage God does give us a definition of success, namely faithfulness. At the judgment the master commends the servants for their faithfulness and rebukes the one servant for his unfaithfulness. And it seems like Psalm 1 would fit under this definition of success. Just my thoughts.

Thanks for all the helpful comments!

By: Arthur Costigan

Arthur Costigan — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:39:26 +0000

Stephen,

I would think the term success should be defined by God. I think of Psalm 1.

By: NP

NP — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:19:36 +0000

hmmm I would think that any Christian is inherently successful. I mean what could be more sucess defining than eternal life with a holy God.
I would be careful assigning sucess to the Christian Life based on your definition – even though its a great thing to apply and do. Sucess for the Christian has already been acheived now let us all just act like it. – thats where yoiur definition comes in.