"That is why we should never judge the potency of a ministry by the excitement or crowds it generates." This quote comes from Charles Stanley's book The Wonderful Spirit Filled Life. I continually judge my classes based on attendance. I even use my attendance to judge whether I am a good instructor or not. A few years ago, I used to log the number of people in my class and then based upon that I would determine if I should continue teaching that class or not. How self-centered. It had everything to do with me and very little to do with how God was working in my classes. Sometimes, I would leave a class devastated because I only had 1 or 2 people. I continually wonder why I'm not getting more people in class. I then reassure myself by remembering that I live in a rural area, most people don't connect God with their body, and our area is always about 5 years behind the times.
As part of Holy Yoga's core team I feel like I should have much bigger classes. Instructors in Arizona would bring in amazing crowds-sometimes between 30-50 people. Wow! I remember teaching my biggest class at a Holy Yoga Retreat. I felt so inadequate because I had never taught so many students in a class before-And I'm in leadership and I'm instrumental in program development.
All this to say, it has taken me what seems like forever to let go of the number of students in a given class. I abandoned logging the number of students in my classes long ago. This is still a work in progress for me. I was humbled even further in this when another Holy Yoga Instructor started teaching in my area. She had over 30 people in her classes and she just started doing yoga less than 1 year ago. Then there was me, a Master Holy Yoga Instructor, program developer for Holy Yoga, and 9 years of teaching experience and I would be lucky to have 10 people show up at my class. God is so funny in how he teaches us-it isn't about me, but about Him. As I continually surrender that number mentality, I have seen an increase in my class sizes. I just recently started a new class and have over 20 people at each class. My biggest class ever...besides retreat! One student or 20---it is about God. Not how many people we think should be there. This is a lesson I' still learning.