It takes a lot of money to do what we do. We have brought over 122 million people to the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Price Tag Problem

There's something worth examining in how we talk about results and resources together. Copeland's statement does what a lot of us do: lead with the cost, then justify it with the outcome. It's the pattern we see everywhere—a nonprofit talking about overhead ratios, a parent defending their kids' private school tuition, a business explaining why their product costs more. The implicit argument is always the same: "Here's what it took, here's what you got in return. Worth it?"

The tricky part is that this kind of thinking can work in two opposite directions. On one hand, it's reasonable to ask whether any undertaking is using its resources well. On the other hand, mixing money and meaning can blur our judgment in subtle ways. We start believing that bigger budgets automatically mean bigger impact, or that high costs prove high value. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they just prove we found people willing to pay.

What makes this quote linger is that it forces an honest question: How do you actually measure whether something mattered? Numbers can tell part of the story, but they can also become a way of avoiding harder questions about quality, authenticity, and real change in actual lives. The question isn't whether resources matter—they obviously do. It's whether we're using them as a measure or as an excuse.