Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

The Semi-Official Blog of Zack Hunt

Home
Progressive Christian
Why I Love My Small Church

Why I Love My Small Church

Last updated on: March 4, 2016 at 11:08 am by Zack Hunt

Why I Love My Small Church 2016-03-04T11:08:23-06:00 Zack Hunt

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

country church (Credit: Carol Von Canon, Flickr Creative Commons)

In a recent sermon, Andy Stanley made some comments that are, well, kind of jaw dropping.

When I hear adults say, ‘Well I don’t like a big church, I like about 200, I want to be able to know everybody,’ I say, ‘You are so stinking selfish. You care nothing about the next generation. All you care about is you and your five friends. You don’t care about your kids…anybody else’s kids.’ You’re like, ‘What’s up?’ I’m saying if you don’t go to a church large enough where you can have enough Middle Schoolers and High Schoolers to separate them so they can have small groups and grow up the local church, you are a selfish adult. Get over it. Find yourself a big old church where your kids can connect with a bunch of people and grow up and love the local church.

Stanley has since offered an apology via Twitter, though, to be honest, it’s not entirely clear to me if he’s apologizing for what seems pretty clearly to be his philosophy of ministry or for the offense he caused with his “bluntness.” Either way, I don’t know the man, but from little I’ve heard and read about and from him, he seems like a decent guy. So, maybe it was some sort of bizarre slip of the tongue.

My first response to Stanley’s comments was to join the chorus of (very appropriate) outrage over one of the nation’s most prominent pastors denouncing as selfish the vast majority of Christians in this country (and around the world) who don’t attend a megachurch or just a larger than 500 people church.

Instead, I want to share a simple story I’ve shared before about why I love the small, imperfect church I attend.

If you’ve heard it before, I’m sorry. Well, actually, I’m not really sorry. The events of this story happened almost 3 years ago and I still can’t tell it without tearing up. Seriously. It’s just that beautiful. At least to me. And to me, it captures the sorts of things that make – or at least can make – small churches such an incredible gift to the people that attend them: flexibility, intimacy, connectedness, and grace.

That’s not to say those sorts of things don’t or can’t exist at megachurches. They can and I’m sure in many places and in different ways they do. But it’s in small churches where you actually know the majority of people around you, not just their names, but the stories of their lives and are invested, whether you like it or not, in those lives and they in yours and where things like production value, timing, and sticking to the schedule usually aren’t at all that important that flexibility and an embrace of the imperfect can allow for moments of deeply intimate grace it’s hard to find in a significantly larger congregation because the setting and expectations don’t typically allow for that sort of thing.

That doesn’t mean megachurches are necessarily bad or absent of love and grace.

They’re not.

But this wonderful, grace filled, creative, and hopeful story – along with countless other less magical but just as loving moments of intentionality – really captures why I love my small church and will be deeply saddened to leave it once we move.

It’s a wonderful and grace filled story because I think it shows the church at its best, not perfect, but doing everything it can with the means available to it to incarnate the sort of love, compassion, and grace we talk so much about.

It’s an incredibly creative story because because it shows what’s possible if we allow our God given imaginations to run wild and dream up next ways of being incarnating the Body of Christ.

It’s a hopeful story because it shows the promise of the future and what the church can and will be able to accomplish in a radically transforming world that offers new and exciting opportunities to “be Jesus for world” in ways we never imagined possible.

The church that I attend is a fairly standard evangelical church. We’re not a mega church. We run about 150, maybe 200 on a “good” Sunday. We don’t have a hipster pastor or super produced laser lights and fog machines worship. And we definitely wouldn’t be described as “cutting edge.”

While those are some of the reasons I like the church I attend, they’re also some of the reasons I was so floored by what took place at my church one Sunday morning.

Not only did we incorporate texting into worship, we combined it with something else we don’t do a lot of as a traditional evangelical church – liturgy.

You read that correctly.

We practiced liturgical texting at church that Sunday and it was one of the most incredible moments of worship I’ve experienced in a long time and I am incredibly proud of and grateful to my pastor for creating that moment for us.

Here’s what happened…

There was a 5 month old baby in our church who is sick and hasn’t been able to be at church because of the antibiotics he is on. Before heading in for major heart surgery on Monday, his parents requested baptism.

They couldn’t bring him to church, so our pastor went to them and baptized the baby at their home. Because of the location, the congregation wasn’t able to perform their traditional role in the baptismal rite.

So, my pastor decided to think outside the box.

During worship this particular Sunday morning, the day before the planned heart surgery, our pastor put a picture of the baby up on the screen in front of the church. He asked everyone who could to take a picture of the picture with their cell phones.

After the picture was taken, our pastor read the traditional baptismal liturgy just as he would if the family and their child had been there in person.

When it came time for the congregation to respond we responded with our phones, texting the picture we had just taken to the child’s parents with 2 simple words attached.

“We promise.”

It was an incredibly holy moment where two worlds collided, the old and the new, to extend the hand of God to a family who needed His loving touch the most.

My only hope is that we as a church, both my local congregation and the broader Body of Christ, can find the courage and creative to multiply these holy moments of grace and innovation.

Because if we do, then to quote the great John Wesley, “[we] will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.”

Uncategorized

Previous Post

February 29, 2016

The Religious Freedom War Is A Fight The Church Cannot Win

Next Post

March 7, 2016 American Jesus Madness 2016: Make Jesus Great Again!

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Book Review Classifieds Commentary Fundie Friday Funny Pictures Music Video News Prophecy Technology Televangelist Throwback Thursday Tract Tuesday Tracts Uncategorized Videos

Select a Month June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 August 2018 June 2018 May 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 September 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz