If Jesus Ran a Ministry Today, Would You Donate?

Ever wonder what it would look like if Jesus ran a 21st-century nonprofit parachurch ministry?

With year-end donation season here, my inbox is flooded with glossy impact reports from ministries touting massive numbers—billions of video views, hundreds of millions of impressions, millions of “decisions for Christ,” and claims like “10 cents a year per disciple” or “1 cent per profession of faith”, “63 cents in the Caribbean” and “$3.46 globally per soul saved!” 

It got me thinking (with a bit of satire): What would Jesus’ own year-end report look like if He had to submit one today? And how would it stack up? 

Imagine the real Jesus team turning in these numbers after three years: 

• Core leadership team trained: 12 

• Short-term mission participants sent out: 70 

• Total committed followers remaining: about 120 

That’s it. Hand that report to most modern donor marketing teams, and they’d be speechless. A consultant might gently suggest, “Lord, we need to optimize the engagement funnel. More conversions, fewer hard teachings.” 

Yes, Jesus did preach to thousands—He even fed crowds of 5,000 and 4,000, each in one sitting. He healed the sick, cast out demons, and left profound impressions wherever He went. But when the teaching became difficult—when following Him demanded a real cost—many walked away. Jesus never chased them with slicker messaging or softened the truth to keep the numbers up. 

Instead, He turned to the Twelve and asked, “Do you want to leave too?” That moment reveals everything: Jesus wasn’t chasing scale. He was pursuing depth. 

By today’s common metrics, His earthly ministry would be underperforming. No marketing team would tout “120 committed followers!” in their impact report when others are celebrating hundreds of millions or billions. They’d bury Jesus’ committed disciple numbers and highlight the flashier wins: “Fed 4,000 plus in one sitting—twice!”

Yet we all know whose ministry truly changed the world forever. 

When Bigger Seems Better 

I rejoice that technology lets us reach people with the Gospel in ways never possible before. Many ministries are doing faithful, creative work on a massive scale, and lives are genuinely being touched. That’s worth celebrating. 

But here’s the question mature believers need to keep asking: Are we measuring what Jesus actually cared about? 

• Watching a movie about Jesus does not automatically make one a Christ Follower 

• An online "decision” is not automatically a disciple

• A click or impression is not the same as a transformed life. 

• An app download is not the same as someone treasuring and obeying God’s Word

• Showing up is not the same as surrender

Jesus didn’t say, “Go into all the world and rack up decisions.” He said, “Go and make disciples…teaching them to obey everything I have commanded” (Matthew 28:19,20). That work is slow, deeply relational, often messy, and rarely lends itself well to a photograph for an annual report. 

This hits close to home for me. For decades at Back to the Bible, we did what most legacy ministries did—we measured “reach.” Airtime, stations, distribution, estimated listeners. Success was often assumed and defined by how far the signal traveled, rather than how deeply lives were changed. 

Like others, we had seasons when outputs mattered more than outcomes. Years ago, we repeated claims that our broadcast reached “90% of the world,” and we built “Bible-teacher-to-the-world” fundraising campaigns around that. In hindsight, upon researching ourselves, we found that those numbers were deeply flawed—well-intentioned but overstated. They weren’t that different from some of the massive claims celebrated today. 

Our research team is gathering proof that when we overstate impact, even unintentionally, it can subtly teach believers that real discipleship is something professionals with large platforms do while the rest of us merely consume content or write checks. It can make quiet, faithful obedience feel small or unnecessary. We weren’t immune to that trap, and recognizing it forced real change in how we think, what we measure, and what we value. 

Reach still matters to us—people hearing God’s Word on a wider scale is a gift. But we’ve become far more serious about evidence of actual life change: prayer lives deepening, thinking renewed, faith moving from passive to practiced, Scripture shaping daily decisions, as well as the movement of an individual from being discipled to becoming a disciple maker. That’s the fruit we’re after, because that’s the fruit Jesus was after. 

One practical way we’re trying to help with this—both for our ministry and for others—is through the SALT Index (Scripture Absorption and Life Transformation). This is a research-based tool we launched this year to measure whether engagement with Scripture is truly producing transformed lives—our own and those around us. We’re making it available as a free resource to churches and ministries around the world, because this challenge of measuring real fruit isn’t just ours—it belongs to the whole body of Christ. 

In closing, here’s the irony that stops me cold every time: 

Jesus’ ministry looked small at the end of His earthly life. But it changed the world. 

What if we trusted that the same could still be true today? 

In Christ, 

P.S. If you have a comment or prayer request, contact me here: or call me and leave a message at 1-800-811-2387. And be sure to join me tomorrow through Friday on our new podcast Spiritually Fit Today.