In the western church success is often promoted as a supreme goal of Christianity. This success might take the form of business accomplishments, personal wealth, fame, a large ministry or other status symbols the world deems noteworthy. Personal fulfillment is often the end result of the teaching and preaching. I suggest that perhaps significance is a better indicator of the successful Christian.
The American Dream has become integrated with the gospel message to such a degree that wealth, personal success and comfort takes precedence over faith, love, humility, servanthood, sacrifice and other virtues.
Psychology tells us that ‘significance’ is one of the seven primary psychological needs of every person. In fact I think that when a person never has or loses hope of ever being significant it leads to a mentality of poverty, hopelessness and resignation that impacts individuals and families for generations. Another primary psychological need is to be a part of something larger than yourself. This explains why people join teams, clubs, and organizations. It probably is the key reason why youth join gangs.
It is interesting then that authentic Christianity (not the tainted version so often preached today) meets these key psychological needs in humanity. And is it really surprising, since God created man, that He would create a spiritual experience that met those needs? I think not! The problem is the true gospel message is not being preached and an emotional, spirit-of-the-age-driven substitute has taken its place. After all it is much easier to get someone willing to listen to a message about how they can be personally successful and blessed without much effort on their part. It is summed up in the pitch, “give a dollar and get 100 fold return on your investment.” When it is promoted this way, giving is not motivated by self-sacrifce and sincere desire to advance the kingdom, but rather self interest; which is never a good motive in God’s eyes. If those guys really believed what they taught they would send me a dollar instead of asking me to send them one.
On the other hand significance is not necessarily self motivated. It can be, but only when significance is defined in worldly terms like I mentioned above. Then it becomes more of a success issue than a significance issue.
So how do we define significance?
The dictionary uses the words meaning, importance and consequence to define the word. On the other hand success is defined as 1. the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like. 2. the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.
You can see there is a significant difference (pun intended). Please be assured I am not advocating failure as a means to significance. Quite often significant people are successful (in outward terms). However successful people are not always significant in the grander scheme of things. Significance is relative to the subject. For instance I am a professional web developer and have helped design many successful commercial web sites. This had significance for the clients I served, but was totally insignificant for people without Internet access. In fact they could care less about my accomplishments or web design success. I trust you see the point. Since we are discussing the Kingdom of God, the significance we are talking about must be relative to the Kingdom. Worldly success does not automatically translate to Kingdom significance. Does it?
Even our modern Christianity that focuses on the individual rather than the Body of Christ runs the risk of insignificance. So what if I read my Bible, go to church, tithe and pray – the supposed hallmarks of a successful Christian - if I am not doing anything other than developing a me and Jesus attitude? Significance directly relates to how I impact others positively – or in the case of the Kingdom of God, spiritually and eternally.
I would define Kingdom significance as impacting lives for God. Anything less is insignificance. For instance large organizations or ministries that define success by how big the organization is, or how much money the generate or how many programs they promote may or may not be impacting lives. In America the welfare system is a life blood for many genuinely needy families who need help to get back on their feet. However when the system produces an entitlement mentality or worse, traps those same families in a cycle of poverty, it is not really helping them in a significant way.
Ministries and even individuals can fall into the same trap if they are not careful about motives and methods. Likewise churches that are primarily focused on growing the organization, while collecting more and more spectators are not necessarily being significant. To produce disciples who will go into all the world is significant.
I believe one fundamental attitude that separates success from significance is a servant’s heart. A true servant’s heart, guided by the gospel, motivated by love and empowered by the Holy Spirit will prove to be extremely significant in the Kingdom of God. The problem is that the allure of self fulfillment has to be broken and a humility to serve cultivated in its place.
Christianity offers to meet three of the deepest needs of mankind: The need for value, significance and belonging. Through genuine spiritual connection (fellowship/sharing together - GR: Koinonia) with the Body of Christ we find all three fulfilled. Through this connection I understand I have value apart from my performance, but by virtue of God’s unconditional love for me. I discover a sense of belonging to a local and world-wide family of believers that is rich and diverse. I can contribute my time, resources and abilities to something bigger than myself and this world. I can tap into the spiritual realm. I can change lives, not for a day, a year or a lifetime, but for eternity. This is true significance and it is success in the purest sense of the word, because it is everlasting success, not temporal success. Jesus said the world and everything in it is passing away. Worldly success is, at best, fleeting compared to eternity.
Albert Einstien said, “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” I think Al understood the issue of significance.
I want to encourage you to shift your thinking from worldly success to Kingdom significance in whatever area you see there is a need.
May God richly bless your journey to significance.
Steve
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