The Advantage of the Homely Wife

Being a Leah kind of church

Can you imagine Jacob’s surprise that first morning of the honeymoon?  You go to bed thinking you married Rachael and first thing you see when you wake up are those weak eyes of Leah staring at you.   How that happened remains a point of debate; some people imagine Leah was wearing Rachael’s clothes and so deceived Jacob, some think that it was so dark that Jacob couldn’t tell the difference, others have proposed that Jacob had drunk so much that he was too inebriated to noticed the nuanced difference between the sisters.  For whatever reason, Jacob got stuck with the woman he didn’t want.  Her dad may not have wanted her either and he saw this as a way of unloading unwanted baggage.  We are not told, other than the weak eyes, what was wrong with Leah.  Perhaps she was attractionally-challenged, maybe she had a personality loaded with sarcasm, cynicism, and negativity (Not everyone finds these traits attractive.  Who knew?), maybe it was those eyes (Perhaps they were very affectionate eyes, always looking at each other).  Her dad, her sister’s suitor and her husband all rejected this poor woman.

But for her faults, whatever they may have been, this woman could have babies.   You get the idea that all Jacob had to do was watch Leah hang up the laundry on the line and she was pregnant.  She was popping out babies like a specialist.  It seems like every time you turn a page Leah is having a baby.  She is so good at having kids that her rival had to bring in a ringer to try to even the score.  Even then Leah takes on the whole field and bests them all.  Even without her own ringer she gave Jacob as many kids as all the other women combined, six sons and a daughter.  This woman was gifted in her ability to get pregnant and produce offspring.

When it comes to our churches we are more like Rachael than Leah.  I’m not talking about numbers in the nurseries, but rather our ability to reproduce disciples.  Some churches depend on a ringer or surrogates to do the work of evangelism.  Some are completely sterile and are quietly content at being that way.

Ed Stetzer reported these interesting statistics:

• Churches less than 3 years old win an average of 10 people for every 100 church members.
• Churches 3-10 years old win an average of 5 people for every 100 church members.
• Churches over 15 years old win an average of 3 people for every 100 members.

Mr. Stetzer may be generous in his evaluation.  I have talked with churches that cannot remember the last time a non-believer from outside of their church became a convert to Christ.  In one conversation an ordained staff member speaking of evangelism said, “I don’t know what that would look like in our church.”  When you factor out children who are raised in the church making a profession of faith when they reach the age of accountability the productivity of the American church is even less like Leah. 

Could it be that in the church we have made a priority of being attractive and have lost the ability, desire or know-how to be reproductive?  Fads in the church-industrial complex come and go so quickly that it takes all of our time to follow and emulate the latest cool thing done by the latest phenom church.  I get a chuckle out of what I call the “Pallet Churches”.  Somebody somewhere, likely strapped for cash, to redecorate used old shipping pallets as a last resort and sha-zam, cool new fad is born.  I am convinced that if a cool preacher started delivering his sermons with a dead fish on his head there would be a run on fish markets.  I am not opposed to churches decorated with pallets or fish strapped on a preacher’s head for that matter.  But when we spend our time, energy and effort focused on the secondary things we are not focused on the main thing of making disciples.  

Okay, Leah was not desirable for one reason or another.  But in an agricultural society the ability to produce healthy offspring was much more important than the shapeliness of figure or the sex appeal of the eyes.  In a world with lost people going off into a godless eternity the effectiveness of making disciples is a lot more important than the level of our attractiveness as a faith community.