Your Church is Too Small

My 45th year of life on this earth just passed me by. It’s incredible to me how fast days and hours and years move. I don’t even realize it. Renee’ and I were recently recognizing the reality that we could be grandparents in a few years, and as I was pishawing that fact, she pointed out to me the reality that my father was a grandfather of a one-year-old named Jonathan at my age.

Ouch.

In 2013, I’ll have been involved with full time work in, with and for the Christian church for 20 years. Thirteen years as a pastor. Seven years as an overseas worker. I love what I do. I’ve always loved “what I do”, at least in the general sense of vocation. Sure there are “days” (sometimes “weeks” and “months”), but that’s the case with every profession. I think back over the years (which I tend to do a lot of this time of year. It’s like a tradition for me), and look at my time in Tennessee and at what has been essentially exported to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, I wonder if our vision - my vision - of the church has been far too narrow. The church is Jesus’ Kingdom and bride. Yet, my experience has been something far less than that. I wonder sometimes what we are leaving to our childred and to our children’s children (even though I’m still holding out that I’m way too young to begin thinking about that…)

Is our church too small?

JB Phillips was a brilliant, albeit liberal, Biblical scholar. When he finished translating the New Testament, he wrote an important volume entitled Your God Is Too Small. It’s a good book, and worth reading. I thought of this volume the other day, while thinking about the Biblical vision for the church (particularly the picture given us in Revelation 21). I wonder what would happen if Christians began to take a broader view, a New Testament view … a Jesus view … of what the church should look like? I deal with and hear a lot talk about “Church Planting” and “movements”. Yet, I haven’t seen much by way of “Church Planting” and “movements” that has taken on the look of something lasting. Eternal. Revelation 21. I wonder if our church is too small? Not by way of head count. In fact, I don’t think it has anything to do with “head count”. I wonder if our church is too small by way of vision. I wonder if there is a mentality we have in our heads that follows (to quote a friend of mine) the “win ’em, wet ’em and work ’em” plan, rather than a plan for long range and long lasting discipleship.

So, in following the tradition of Phillip’s book …

If any of these statements solely capsualize our vision for the church, our church is too small.

The Morality Police
Gay marriage. Abortion. Adultry. Legal vs. illegal drugs. All of these things are clearly issues that the church will and should have something to say about. If we are being salt and light, this will affect and impact how we interact with society on these issues, and we do employ and even verbalize standards of right and wrong. We believe in a moral law. That’s important. However …

The church is ultimately about Jesus and about the Gospel and about the glory of God. The church is not ultimately about picketing and lobbying and condemning/accusing and making sure that society lives up to our standards. If that’s the entirety of what we feel our “mission” as Jesus-followers is supposed to look like, we are small followers, indeed. There are appropriate ways that we are to interact with society on these issues. However, the Gospel is paramount, and change will not happen in people’s lives until the Gospel takes root. This is why I love the vision of organizations like Unearthed. They are working hard to uncover the evils of the sex trade industry, however, they are moving deeply into the real root of the problem: the fallen and depraved and broken hearts of men that can only be transformed by the Gospel, which is what ultimately fuels sex trade and human trafficking. The Gospel is not morality. The Gospel is trnsformation.

The Political Flavor of the Day
Democrat, Republican, Tea Party. Again, I’m not saying that politics are not important. I’m not saying Christians should abstain from voting or from being involved in the political process. I am saying that if we put our hope in the political system, our hopes will eventually be dashed to the ground. I just preached from Psalms 42–43 and the appeal is to “Hope in God”. I think this applies here. The church is larger than every political system on the planet. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 11:15 ESV). That’s where we’re heading, whoever the president might be. I believe that if the church loses sight of this, we become very small and limited in our thinking. Then all that matter is who is, or who is not, in office. We’re bigger than this.

The Conductor and Orchestrator of worship Services
I’m not sure what the stats would be on this one. However, I do know that North American churches spend an enormous amount of time, effort, money and manpower on the Sunday morning worship service. This is not evil. This is often times a good thing. Again … to be clear: I am not saying that we should stop spending money, time or human resources on Sunday morning worship services, or that money spent in this is necessarily being porrly spent. I am saying that the church is bigger than this. If all we do is conduct a service on Sunday, that’s a fail. I wonder sometimes if we were to start spending less on Sunday morning and more on discipleship, along with helping widows and orphans (and other underprivileged in our society), if there wouldn’t be more fruit more joy for us and more glory for God? I wonder if there’s a church planting model that focuses on people and discipleship and NOT on worship services which require a drumset and sound board? If there is, I believe that’s the model that will begin to see the church as large.

Hollywood/Broadway Style Entertainment
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. But, I’ve been to those churches. I’m guessing you have, too. I was surprised when visiting a large church (several thousand people) that had two reserved seats. One for the pastor and one for the “producer”. The producer? The services were very well produced, its true. There were a lot of people in all five worship services that I attended. However, I found engagement to missions and discipleship to be minimal, at best. And this is only one example of many. It’s been going on for awile. I think church history proves the “Church as entertainment” phenomenon as nothing new. However, recent decades in North America have taken things to entirely new levels, some borderlining ridiculousness. “Church is boring” could be a statement about the lifelessness of the church. “Church is boring” could also be a statement about the the lifelessnes of the one expressing their boredom. Our 21st century addiction to entertainment is a problem the church must recogize and wrestle with honestly and with integrity. Neil Postman’s prophetic book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business has come to age in 2012. Under the guise of “reaching people for Jesus”, the church has simply become another cheap entertainment medium, at least in many circles. Where this is the case, the church is tiny, indeed.

Your local YMCA
It can get a little tricky here. I’m not going to get into every nuance of this issue in a 1500 word blog, as it’s actually rather complicated and has rather significant theological foundations. But sometimes the church is too small because the church doesn’t apply the Gospel to the needs of the community and to the social injustices of the of society. This is a huge problem, and often the result of small thinking. However, the church can also be too small when we do “community” ministry and it ends up being just another means to entertain and “keep our people”. Community ministry can be a wonderful thing, when it’s accomplished inside the boundaries of proper motivation and Biblical principles. There are many excellent examples that can be given of this. However, community ministry that is not closely connected to the Gospel and to the Word can turn into another program that shrinks the church to something less than it should be. Changed lives form the inside is the goal. Not a busy calendar of community programs.

The Fortune 500 Company
The church is not a business. There are business and management principles that can and should be followed. However, often the church gets reduced to “customers” and “transactions”. A friend of mine worked for a large church in the Nashville, TN area. She was in a planning meeting and as a part of the evaluation process the church leaders began to make a list of their “competition”. So they named off other large churches in the area (the church I was pastoring at the time didn’t have enough people attending to make the list). I’m not questioning the heart motive of those involved. I am questioning the methodology. It’s these kinds of blantent marketing tactics that reduce the church to being a business entity with profit and loss and bottom line thinking being … the bottom line. At this point the church becomes a pale wraith of the Revelation 21 vision.

As a North American International Worker (M), I’m actually deeply concerned about what we are exporting. It seems to be a much more easily marketable, entertaining product than its Biblical counterpart. Yet … it’s so small. I don’t know if I have 20 years or 20 days of ministry left. I know I do want to to see the unclouded, grand and glorious vision that the Bible has for the church.

A small church produces small people. We need to do better than this.

There is a day that will come, when the One sitting on the the Throne will declare with a loud voice, “Behold, I am making all things new!”(Revelation 21:5), and the rest of the Revelation 21 vision for the church will come to pass. I hope to use the vapor of my life to point to that.

What do you think?

In what other ways is the 21st Century church smaller than the Biblical vision of the Kingdom of God?