Attracting a Crowd

I used to wonder why Jesus did so many miracles during his ministry on earth. There was a time when I thought God just wanted to make the Bible more interesting. It was like Jesus was the first David Copperfield -- except there were no pretty ladies and all of his "tricks" were real. But then I was reading this section from Luke's Gospel: "When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen" (19:37). Suddenly it dawned on me that the purpose of Jesus' miracles was to draw a crowd. Jesus knew that if he wanted to get a hearing for his message of actual needs he needed to deal with their perceived needs. The miracles gave Jesus an audience that he may not have gotten had he not done miracles. The church needs to take its cue from Jesus. While we can't do miracles we can attract crowds. When we meet people's perceived needs we are more likely to have an audience willing to hear what their actual need is -- the need for grace. The bottom line is that while God is totally responsible for building his church through the means of grace, we are totally responsible for building a crowd to hear that message.