I baptized a couple of people down at the river last Sunday. I got to the park a few minutes early and was standing in the parking lot holding my little binder where I had my baptism sermon. Some people walked by and saw me holding my binder in one hand and a pen in the other and they asked me, "Are you counting heads?" Without skipping a beat my immediate response was, "No, I'm baptizing heads" (this baptism was a sprinkling/pouring not full immersion).
As the words were coming out of my mouth I started thinking about "counting heads" and how, unfortunately, sometimes baptisms and conversions have been seen as just that; adding numbers to the church membership list. How unfortunate that these Kingdom moments can be relegated to such a temporal and worldly way of counting, keeping track, keeping score.
After I got over my anger about this I then began thinking about what else people count and the first phrase that came to mind was "counting the cost". Luke 14:28 urges us to count the cost of following Jesus and then describes it as quite a large cost, in fact it costs everything! Were the people listening to Jesus really prepared for his words and ready to give up everything? Are you?
Great crowds were following Jesus. He turned around and said to them, "If you want to be my follower you must love me more than your own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters -- yes, more than your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple. And you cannot be my disciple if you do not carry your own cross and follow me. "But don't begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first getting estimates and then checking to see if there is enough money to pay the bills? Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of funds. And then how everyone would laugh at you! They would say, 'There's the person who started that building and ran out of money before it was finished!' "Or what king would ever dream of going to war without first sitting down with his counselors and discussing whether his army of ten thousand is strong enough to defeat the twenty thousand soldiers who are marching against him? If he is not able, then while the enemy is still far away, he will send a delegation to discuss terms of peace. So no one can become my disciple without giving up everything for me. ~ Luke 14:25 - 33 (NLT)
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