{"id":49743,"date":"2026-08-11T14:51:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T19:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pts.edu\/blog\/?p=49743"},"modified":"2026-08-11T15:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T20:01:08","slug":"success-and-failure-in-ministry-owens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pts.edu\/blog\/success-and-failure-in-ministry-owens\/","title":{"rendered":"Few, Many: Success and Failure in Ministry"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Above: Painting by Alex Levin: “Welcoming Messiah” https:\/\/artlevin.com\/<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.\u00a0<\/span>On the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, \u201cWhere did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! <\/span>Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?\u201d And they took offense at him. <\/span>Then Jesus said to them, \u201cProphets are not without honor, except in their hometown and among their own kin and in their own house.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. <\/span>And he was amazed at their unbelief.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Then he went about among the villages teaching. <\/span>He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.\u00a0<\/span>He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff: no bread, no bag, no money in their belts,\u00a0<\/span>but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.\u00a0<\/span>He said to them, \u201cWherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.\u00a0<\/span>If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.\u201d <\/span>So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. <\/span>They cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

-Mark 6:1-13 (NRSVUE)<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Few, Many; Failure, Success<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This passage might not seem immediately relevant to ordinary life on a quiet Wednesday.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

But here\u2019s something I noticed when I was reading the passage: there\u2019s a summary at the end of each section of the reading. After Jesus\u2019s visit to his hometown, Scripture says:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\u201cAnd he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

But after the disciples\u2019 mission, it reports:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\u201cThey cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Parallel descriptions of their ministries with one major difference: Jesus impacted few<\/em>; the disciples, many<\/em>. Here\u2019s the Roger Owens version: \u201cJesus went back home, and his ministry there was a massive failure, but the disciples\u2019 mission was a roaring success.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Few. Many. Failure. Success. Those might be words we can relate to.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Allure of Measurable Outcomes<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\"a<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n

When I was in graduate school, I served on a re-entry care team for Michael, a man who\u2019d just gotten out of prison. Those who\u2019ve been incarcerated face enormous obstacles when they get out. So as Michael\u2019s care team, we hoped to get him reestablished, help him make it on his own. One woman in our group, Ann, began to feel like a mother to Michael. She started tutoring him. She shopped for him and baked for him; she visited him, she loved him. So when Michael stole a four-wheeler to buy drugs and got sent to a state prison too far away for us to visit, it hit Ann especially hard. At our next meeting, Ann wept. \u201cWe failed,\u201d she cried. \u201cWe failed.\u201d And by the numbers, she was right\u2014our batting average was zero. What did we have to show for our work?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Few. Many. Failure. Success.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I started pastoring in 2005, and I\u2019ve really struggled through the years to shake my obsession with statistics. At that first, small church, Clay sat in the back pew with a clipboard and counted those in attendance\u201465 was a good Sunday! Each Sunday, after everyone left, I\u2019d sneak to the pew where he left the clipboard and check the numbers. Later, it was little green cards that the ushers would fill out that I\u2019d check\u2014and sometimes correct\u2014on my way out every Sunday. Because, as they say: numbers don\u2019t lie. And so we bow to phrases like \u201cquantitative data,\u201d \u201cmeasurable outcomes,\u201d \u201ckey performance indicators\u201d\u2014anything that can help us know if we\u2019ve failed or succeeded.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

A Deeper Measure of Success<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In Mark chapter 6, if the disciples had been applying for a grant, they would have gotten one\u2014the numbers showed their effectiveness. And Jesus would have been invited to apply again in the next round.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

But look again at the passage, and we might see a more meaningful measure. Earlier in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus woke early one morning to pray. People were wondering where he was, so when the disciples found him, they said, \u201cEveryone is looking for you, what\u2019s up?\u201d And he replied, \u201cLet\u2019s go into the neighboring towns, where I can proclaim the Kingdom of God, for that<\/em> is what I came to do.\u201d Then he shows up in his hometown, and teaches in the synagogue, for that is what he came to do. You see, he\u2019s doing precisely what God sent him to do, regardless of how the message is received.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

You see it, right? The deeper measure of success this gestures to? Success isn’t indicated by outcomes alone, but by our faithfulness to the work, the call.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Years after my participation on Michael\u2019s re-entry care team, I started to ask: Did we really<\/em> fail? Was that our one goal\u2014keep him off drugs and out of prison? Then maybe. But we didn\u2019t fail if our call was to be with him, love him, learn from him, see Jesus in him, become community with him. So much was out of our hands, but not that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This passage invites those kinds of questions: Are we using the gifts we were given by God? Are we discerning God\u2019s call on our lives and living it out\u2014as individuals and with our communities? If so, then we can look at the \u201cfews\u201d and the \u201cmanys\u201d, the so-called failures and the successes, and know that, while those things matter on one level, on a deeper level\u2014at the God\u2019s-call, life-direction, living-our-vocation-to-love level\u2014such quantitative metrics don\u2019t come close.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

What Counts in God’s Kingdom<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\"\"\r\n
“Jesus and Mary”; \u00a9 Ally Barrett (www.reverendally.org), used by permission<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n

In her memoir Breathing Space<\/em>, Heidi Neumark recounts her 20 years as a Lutheran pastor of a church in the Bronx. Early on, she met a woman named Ruby who had come to the food pantry, so Neumark went to visit her. She climbed the stairs to sixth floor of the apartment complex\u2014the elevator didn\u2019t work\u2014and knocked on Ruby\u2019s door. She could tell Ruby was inside, deciding whether to open the door. When she did, she apologized for the condition of the apartment, and invited Neumark in. The living room was windowless, dark\u2014the electricity had been cut off, but Neumark could see the accumulated garbage in the room, and there was a small boy sitting on the floor in his underwear, picking soggy pieces of cereal out of a bowl. Ruby invited her to sit, and after a pause, as Neumark puts it, Ruby opened another door, and out spilled her story: depression, a battle with crack, an ex-husband\u2019s abuse, her mother\u2019s rejection. Rats chewing her kid\u2019s mattress in the night. A recent HIV diagnosis. \u201cYou know what I want?\u201d Ruby said, \u201cI want my children to have a photo album of happy memories of their life with me to look at after I die . . . I want to start making some happy memories.\u201d And any pastor would look around that room and listen to this story and start thinking of ways to help, ways to make this women\u2019s life better, help her dream come true. And then, Ruby grabbed Neumark\u2019s hands with her own strong trembling hands\u2014and began to pray\u2014a radiant prayer in a dingy room.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Neumark never saw any outcome from her visit. Couldn\u2019t put that one in the \u201cwin\u201d column. She writes, \u201cI never saw Ruby again. A few weeks later, the apartment was empty, boarded up.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Few; many. Success; failure.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

What counts? What really matters? How do we know? Remember Jesus and the disciples preaching and embodying God\u2019s kingdom. Think of Neumark and Ruby sharing with one another the love and mercy of Jesus. What counts? What really matters? I think we know.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n
\"\"<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Rev. Dr. L. Roger Owens is Hugh Thomson Kerr Professor of Pastoral Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He is the author of numerous works on Christian spirituality, including Praying Their Way: 24 Prayer Practices for Kids and the Adults Who Love Them<\/em>\u00a0(Upper Room, 2026; co-authord with his daughter Mary Clare Owens),\u00a0Everyday Contemplative: The Way of Prayerful Living<\/em> (Upper Room Books, 2022),\u00a0and\u00a0The Shape of Participation: A Theology of Church Practices<\/em> (Cascade Press, 2010), which was called \u201cthis decade\u2019s best work in ecclesiology\u201d by The Christian Century<\/em>. Dr. Owens serves on the faculty of the Upper Room\u2019s Academy for Spiritual Formation, where he lectures on the history and practice of Christian spirituality. Before coming to PTS, he served both urban and rural churches in North Carolina for eight years as co-pastor with his wife, the Rev. Ginger Thomas. He holds degrees from Anderson University (B.A., Bible\/religion and philosophy), Duke Divinity School (M.Div.), and Duke University (Ph.D., theology), where he was awarded a Lilly Fellowship for the Formation of a Learned Clergy.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Read Next<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\"\"<\/a>\r\n
Telling Stories to Reach a Post-Christian Society<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\"\"<\/a>\r\n
An Open Hand for Our Unhoused Neighbors<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Above: Painting by Alex Levin: “Welcoming Messiah” https:\/\/artlevin.com\/ He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.\u00a0On the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, \u201cWhere did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4,7],"tags":[1173,1171,1172,576,1086,1175,1170,1174,1169,1168],"series":[],"class_list":["post-49743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-planting","category-ministry","category-theological-reflection","tag-church-attendance","tag-church-by-number","tag-church-by-numbers","tag-church-growth","tag-church-outreach","tag-mark-6","tag-measuring-success","tag-ministry-success","tag-quantitative-metrics","tag-success-in-ministry"],"yoast_head":"\r\nFew, Many: Success and Failure in Ministry - Pittsburgh Theological Seminary<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Professor L. 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