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People Count
by
Commissioner
Wesley Harris
IN THE Australian
southern Territory an effective catchphrase has been, ‘People
Count’. It is a
double entendre referring to the fact that everyone is
important and everyone should be counted in a responsible
Army.
I have known
those in our movement who have been dismissive of what they
have called ‘mere statistics’ forgetting that numbers
frequently appear in holy scriptures as highly significant
because they represent people.
For example, we are given good cause to rejoice over
what happened through the power of the Holy Spirit at
Pentecost because someone bothered to do a count and left on
record that 3,000 were converted.
I heard of a
survey of a district and a canvasser who called at a house and
asked the lady of the house how many lived in her home.
She began to name those in her large family – Billy,
Mary, Kevin, Shirley and so, on until the canvasser cut her
off saying, ‘I’m not interested in names, only numbers’.
We
should be interested
in both names and numbers because as Christians we are called
to be ‘people people’ – like Jesus who not only saw the hungry
crowds needing to be fed but a little lad with potential to
help in the Lord’s mission.
After an early Salvation Army meeting an
officer reported the number of seekers and then as an
after-thought added that a young boy had also knelt at the
mercy seat. In
fact that boy became one of the most
effective leaders of
the Army, one of the many unlikely lads (and lasses) whose
lives have counted in the building of the Kingdom of God.
Salvationists
should be people with a passions and our passion should be
people - not just
crowds but individuals for whom Christ died.
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