Reading Time: 2 minutes

Michael Phelps stands 6 feet, 4 inches tall.

Simone Biles stands 4 feet, 8 inches tall.

If you’re decent at math, you’ve already figured out that there is almost a two-foot difference between them, but that doesn’t tell the whole story, even though that’s the part of the story that most people would notice first.

There may be a difference in their size, but there’s a similarity in their health.

Sure, Phelps is tall and Biles is, ummm, less tall, but both of them are world-class athletes who spent considerable time at the pinnacle of their respective careers, and between them, they have 30 gold medals (23 for the swimmer and 7 for the gymnast).

So to make a snap judgement about them based on their size would be premature and, more than likely, inaccurate. The same could be said for linemen in the NFL who, at first glance, look like men who just like to sit around and eat donuts. But if you made that assumption on a football field, you’d get hurt when all that weight ran through you at top speed. They may be big, but they can move!

We even have expressions to remind us of this truth:

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“All that glitters isn’t gold.”

The Bible has a saying, too. “Man looks on the outside, but the Lord looks at the heart.” You can read that along with the rest of the story in 1 Samuel 16:7.

I could write a lot about the inside versus the outside, and how much time and money we spend trying to look better without putting as much effort into trying to be better, but I’ll save that for 2025. The purpose of this post is simply to encourage other pastors who feel like Simone Biles in a Michael Phelps world.

For too long, the church world has judged the churches in that world by their size, but I see the tide shifting in the coming years. I see a church culture that finally figures out a metric for judging a church’s health, more than a church’s wealth or size. I see a culture where leaders are asked to headline seminars and conferences based on their faithfulness more than just their fruitfulness.

As I look ahead to a new year, I look ahead with my heart clinging to a prophetic promise given to God’s people in Psalm 126:1, and I am asking the Lord to do it again in our day.

“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed.”

In the Hebrew, the word for “dreamed” can also mean “restored to health.” May 2025 be a year when the church in America and around the globe is restored to health, and once again applauds the things that lead to it.

As Simone Biles and Michael Phelps can attest, size isn’t one of them.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Recently I took an assessment that proved that I have defied an earlier assessment and learned that our church is in a category that only 30% of American churches share: we’re growing.

Not only that, but our church is in the top 10% of American churches based on size and is nearing the top 10 in size among other churches within our denomination in the state. After 8 years of existence, we’ve grown to almost 3 times the size that our original church planting assessment predicted.

You could say that we’re successful.

You wouldn’t be wrong.

[Tweet “Our metrics encourage us to stay shallow, but our mission requires us to go deep.”]

But what I’m finding is that the waters of success are shallow and I crave the adventures that seem to call out from deeper waters. It seems that most of the things we measure encourage us to stay shallow, but most of the things that we’re meant to do require us to go deep.

Look, maybe I’m just waxing nostalgic because today is the one year anniversary of my father-in-law’s passing and that’s got the B99 and me thinking more about legacies and stuff, but I don’t think it’s just that. I believe that there is a call inside all of us to do something bigger than us. And that will never happen in the shallows.

[Tweet “There’s a call inside all of us to do something bigger than us.”]

Shallow water measurements are the easy things: seating capacity and budgets, Sunday attendance and baptisms. The shallow water marks are what typically get pastors and churches things like Next Level awards and, if the marks are big enough, speaking engagements and book deals. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with any of that; at least that’s not what I’m trying to convey here. What I want to say is that I’m no longer satisfied with any of it, and I don’t think I realized it until I actually achieved it.

Now that I’m staring straight at the numbers that show the kind of growth many pastors crave, it feels a little hollow. It feels like the way we celebrate church growth is kind of like celebrating shipbuilding without actually ever putting the ships out to sea. As the old quote goes, that’s not what ships are for.

[Tweet “A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for. – John A. Shedd”]

I certainly don’t have all the answers, and on some days I wonder if I have any except for Jesus. But I do know this: I’m pushing away from the celebrations of safe shallow water exploits. Somewhere out past the breakers is a place where my feet will no longer touch the bottom and where I will find a significance to my faith that can only come from trusting the One who is already out there, calling me to Him.

Maybe I’m the only one who has grown tired of doing old things better and being celebrated for it? Maybe I’m the only one who reads bold declarations from God like the one in Isaiah 43:19 (“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”) and wants to actually see the new thing? Maybe I am, but I doubt it.

[Tweet “If God is doing a new thing, we need to stop trying to do the old thing better.”]

My guess is that there are multitudes of people who want to see the new thing that God is doing in His church and through His church. If you’re one of them, let’s push out to the deep together and dream of new expressions, new adventures, new vision, and new depths more than next levels.

This matters because the answer to God’s question about why we don’t perceive the new thing is simple: the new things lie in places much deeper and much riskier than the shallow waters of success.

Let’s send these ships we’ve built out to find them.