In Luke 15:8-10 we hear a remarkable proclamation. It says that the angels in heaven rejoice when one wayward person experiences a "turn-about" and is brought to God.

That's not an isolated passage either, in fact Luke makes the same point in his Gospel two other times in this chapter. There is rejoicing in heaven when a "lost" person is found.

Modern outreach-oriented churches have latched on to passages like these as rallying cries to motivate their congregations to grow. But I wonder if we haven't distorted the message of Luke 15 a bit.

Or maybe distort is the wrong word. Here's what I mean. There is a lot of rejoicing that happens in churches over "ministry successes" and Luke 15 is sometimes referenced, but I'm not always so sure that we and the angels are rejoicing over the same things.

Notice that Luke 15 does NOT say that the angels in heaven throw a party when a disgruntled catholic or baptist from the church down the street transfers to our church. Nor does it say that the angels in heaven wait to rejoice until the "sinner" who repents becomes a contributing part of the organization...pulling his/her own weight! It certainly doesn't even entertain the notion that the angels might celebrate when a church quits looking for valuable "lost" people altogether so that it can give more attention to those who are lucky enough to be found!

But sometimes we, as "found" people in churches, get really excited about any and all of the above. Not only that, we imagine that God is as excited as we are. And that's not what Luke 15 says.

Is God excited about things other than the things described in Luke 15? Sure. But he doesn't throw an all out luau for any of those other things.

That's helpful for those of us who are a part of churches to remember. We can feel free to get excited about lots of different things, go ahead, I don't think God will ever get mad at us for being too celebratory. So as long as we don't forget that there is one thing, and only one thing, that merits a full on feast in Heaven... and that's when a human life is turned from death to God. Nothing else compares.