Mustard Seed

Small things lead to big impact. Mustard seeds become trees. We think that this means that each of us will end up with big churches, but that is not the promise. God’s promise is to reward everything that we do. Paul went backwards in the ministry, in the eyes of the world. He went from being one of the leaders of the Jewish religion, to finding himself never fully fitting into the New Testament leadership. His path took him from beginning small churches to prison cells. Yet, it was there that he wrote letters that became most of the Bible. Only God knows the impact of each of our lives.

A Sunday School teacher named Kimball, in 1858, led a Boston shoe clerk to Christ. The clerk, Dwight L. Moody, became an evangelist. In England, in 1879, he awakened evangelistic zeal in the heart of Frederick B. Meyer—the pastor of a small church. F. B. Meyer, preaching to an American college campus, brought to Christ a student named J. Wilbur Chapman. Chapman, engaged in YMCA work, employed a former baseball player, Billy Sunday, to do evangelistic work. Billy Sunday held a revival in Charlotte, North Carolina. A group of local men were so enthusiastic afterward that they planned another evangelistic campaign, bringing Mordecai Hamm to town to preach. During Hamm’s revival, a young man named Billy Graham heard the gospel and yielded his life to Christ. Only eternity will reveal the tremendous impact of that one Sunday School teacher, Mr Kimball. A man who invested his life in the lives of others.

Too many pastors judge their ministry on how many come to church, when it is probably the least important factor in how God sees us. Yes, our attendance will determine whether we speak at conferences, it effects our pay check and the way other pastors see us, but not God. David was David as a shepherd or a king, and I would guess God liked him better as a shepherd at times. I agree with him when he said in Psalm 84:10, “For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.”