Success Criteria

What was the success factor of Jesus' visit to Levi's (Matthew's) house near the end of Luke chapter 5? Levi was soundly converted ... but we don't know anything about what became of his dodgy friends. Did they join the church? Did they even change their behaviour?

Depending on your success criteria, the time spent at the party could be considered a total failure, a waste of good resources. Since we like (and expect) everything to be measurable, it seems a pretty poor dividend from this 'out there in the wild' ministry. Surely much safer and more worthwhile to be back at the church (synagogue), where it is easier to know where people are at ...

Fortunately Jesus seemed to work differently. Different to the Pharisees, and quite probably different to us church-sub-culture types too. We don't know the outcome, but we can see in Jesus' reply to criticism that he valued the time spent.

As if to prove the point to myself, this afternoon I randomly bumped into a couple who are way out the church that I had not seen for a while, but had been thinking of recently. We sat and had a good chat. I prayed with them. We parted mutually encouraged.