I have long believed that quality is more important than quantity. This is especially true of my understanding of faith. I am not driven to be a part of the largest or most popular congregation. I find some of the practices of mega churches to be so distant from the teachings of Jesus as to make the title “Christian” a poor fit. Jesus wasn’t the founder of a mass movement. He gathered a few dedicated disciples. When crowds did occur they were in the thousands, not the tens of thousands. They quickly dispersed. At the core of our faith are the events of Holy Week, when Jesus was abandoned and nearly alone. The heart of our faith is painful sacrifice and few choose to act out their discipleship in complete obedience.

The church, when it is at is most faithful moments, is never popular. Each time the church moves towards the mainstream it makes compromises with its values and beliefs.

But we cannot make history turn backwards. We have become mainstream. We do act out our religion in the midst of established institutions. Small, isolated communities of faith still exist, and new communities are emerging, but most of us find ourselves in some relationship to the structures of organized religion, imperfect as they may be.

And, within those structures, there are lots of pressures to measure faith by the numbers. We fill out statistical reports each year. We count the number of names on or rolls. We count the number of children in our classrooms. We count the number of dollars invested in mission. We count the size of the total budget. And we are judged by those numbers. There are a few members of our congregation who open our annual reports to the statistical report each year and go to the bottom line of membership. If the number is larger than the previous year they are happy. If it is smaller, they seem to be convinced that our church is dying and that its dying is the result of poor pastoral leadership. In the eyes of some, whether or not I am doing a good job is judged by the number of members on the roll. These are not the people who invite others to come to church. They are often not ones with good records of church attendance. They are often not the leaders who give of their time to seek solutions. They want simple measurements and simple solutions. And they know that blaming someone else is always easier than examining one’s own life.

If your view of religion is that the most numbers means the most success, you might want to consider Hinduism. I’m not an expert on the Hindu faith. I barely know the story, but I do know that every three years a Kumbh Mela festival is held in one of four locations. The rotation of locations is set, so each 12th year the festival is held at Allahabad, and it is considered to be the most holy. The Allahabad festival is known as the Maha Kumbh Mela, or Grand Pitcher Festival. Held at the location where the Ganges and Yamuna rivers meet with a third, mythical river, the festival will draw more than 100 million people this year. Each day for the rest of this month groups of 1.5 million or more will gather early each morning to plunge into the cold waters of the Ganges river. The ritual bath is said to wash away sins, give start to a new life and absorb spiritual energy that is flowing toward the earth.

Again I am not an expert. This is not my faith. But if you are going for numbers, you really can’t ignore such large numbers.

The ancient story is that the Hindu god Vishnu wrested a golden pot containing the nectar of immortality from demons. They fought for 12 days over possession. During the fight, four drops fell to earth, in the cities of Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujain and Nasik. Those four cities became the site of the festivals and the festival at Allahabad became the largest. Many different sects of Hinduism come together at the festival to dip into the waters. Pilgrims come to holy men, offer alms, and receive blessings. For the usually ascetic religious leaders, it can be a time of enormous income as pilgrim after pilgrim arrives with generous offerings.

We don’t hold any events at our church that draw over a million people a day. We have never hosted 100 million. If you judge by the numbers only, we’re not in first place.

But then, I don’t understand numbers so large. I express my faith and feel the faith of others when three or four of us gather for bible study. I can sense the faithfulness of the dozen who gathered for youth group at our church last night. I am aware of the power of 150 or so gathering for worship on Sunday. I can even count up to the nearly 600 who claim membership in our church. I can even wrap my mind around a budget of a little over $300,000 per year. But numbers beyond those boggle my mind. A million is a theoretical number for me. Ten million is so large as to become meaningless. A hundred million is beyond my comprehension.

I confess that I don’t understand the practice of the Hindu faith. The closest thing we have to a ritual bath is the experience of baptism. I do not become excited by the feats of gods who are beyond the reach of humans. But it isn’t for me to judge the faithfulness of others. My calling is to practice the faith that I have been given among the people to whom I have been called. I have never felt that God calls me to be the leader of a huge crowd. We share the faith one-on-one. We experience the Spirit in small groups.

Jesus said, “For where two or three gather as my followers, I am there among them.” (Mt. 18:20) That is enough for me.

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