I grew up in multiple churches, but spent my youth years in an Assemblies of God Church in Fort Worth. I played bass some Wednesday nights for our youth group. It was loud, full of lights, and sometimes the old smoke machine would get fired up. We wanted to stay relevant to the early 2000s nondenominational movement of music. All of that to say, most churches these days are using modern “worship” songs and holiday themed festivals to bring in the crowds and grow the church numbers. I’ve never really been a fan, but that could have been more personality than anything else.

Fast forward to today, and I’m a member at a small baptist church. We don’t use a lot of modern music, we definitely don’t use stage lights and smoke machines, and we really don’t do festivals or catchy things. I’ve quite enjoyed the change of pace for the last decade. Now, what am I getting at? Modern churches are so concerned with the present attendance in the buildings and not concerned enough with the future attendance in the Kingdom.

“Spencer, we get it. You don’t like modern church services. Stay in your small Baptist church and enjoy your simplicity.” I will. Speaking of “simple”, that’s where I am going with this. The gospel is simple. What else is simple? Bread.

“What does bread have to do with Stage Lights and festivals?” Well, I was reading through the gospels again recently and the opening of the eighth chapter of Mark drew me in. It’s the second time that Jesus feeds the multitudes with bread and fish. At this particular time the focus was on the amount of loaves and less on the fish. But the miracle itself wasn’t what caught my attention. It was Jesus’ first words to his disciples. “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat…” We don’t know exactly what had been happening in those three days, or exactly how long they had gone without eating, but they had been without food long enough for Jesus to be concerned about their ability to make it to their homes if he sent them away to get their own food.

So, Jesus blessed the bread and broke it and had it dispersed, along with fish, to the crowd of approximately 4000 people. But why is this so amazing? Jesus had a crowd of a size comparable to a megachurch following him for three days without food, without a hotel, and without air conditioning. Sure, one could argue that he had been doing miracles and that what people were there for, but he was mostly just sharing His gospel. His simple, but powerful gospel. The message of Jesus drew in crowds. He didn’t make themed festivals, He didn’t bring in the local musicians. It was Him and His disciples sharing about the redeeming Love of Jesus and the need for repentance, and the call to break from traditions and Follow Jesus.

Why do I share these things? I believe modern churches have forgotten that Jesus is what people need and He is more than enough to draw in people. Too often I hear that modern churches do all of these things to draw in the crowds and stay relevant and make people want to stay in their services. If you have to use earthly things to draw people in, are you relying on Jesus to be enough, or are you relying on your own strengths? Are you more concerned about numbers in your seats now or numbers in heaven?

Jesus said, “…I am the bread of life…” (John 6:48)