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Small is Large

by Philip Yancey

| 52 Comments

megaI visited a local megachurch recently.  My friend described it as, “You know, one of those big-box churches with one-word names, super-loud music, huge video screens, and long sermons.”  Currently, 1300 U.S. congregations qualify as megachurches, averaging more than 2000 in weekly attendance. The one I visited has more parking-lot volunteers than my church has members.

I’ll say one thing for megachurches: they can afford quality.  The sermon was both entertaining and insightful, the super-loud music flawless (I declined the earplugs that were considerately offered at the welcome booth), and those parking volunteers got us in and out in record time.

Yet the majority of Americans, like me, still attend churches with less than 200 members.  We show up on Sundays to hear less entertaining sermons and less professional music—though we have no trouble finding a parking place.  Why?  Smaller towns don’t have the option of megachurches, of course, and big crowds make some people nervous.  I found one more reason when I came across this paradoxical observation in G. K. Chesterton’s book Heretics:

The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world…. The reason is obvious.  In a large community we can choose our companions.  In a small community our companions are chosen for us.

Precisely!  Given a choice, I tend to hang out with folks like me: people who have college degrees, drink dark roast coffee, listen to classical music, and buy their cars based on EPA gas mileage ratings.  Yet after a while I get bored with people like me.  Smaller groups (and smaller churches) force me to rub shoulders with everybody else.

Henri Nouwen defines “community” as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives.  Often we surround ourselves with the people we most want to live with, which forms a club or a clique, not a community.  Anyone can form a club; it takes grace, shared vision, and hard work to form a community.

Multi-Ethnic Group of People and Church ConceptsThe Christian church was the first institution in history to bring together on equal footing Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves and free.  The Apostle Paul waxed eloquent on this “mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God.”  By forming a community out of diverse members, Paul said, we have the opportunity to capture the attention of the world and even the supernatural world beyond.  (Ephesians 3:9-10)

In some ways the church has sadly failed in this assignment.  (Yes, Billy Graham, 11 o’clock Sunday is still the most segregated hour in America.)  But even monochrome churches show diversity in age, education, and economic class.  Church is the one place I visit that brings together generations: infants still held at their mothers’ breasts, children who squirm and giggle at all the wrong times, responsible adults who know how to act appropriately at all times, and senior citizens who may drift asleep if the preacher drones on too long.

I know one megachurch that tries to seat people based on their commonality: senior citizens down front where they can hear better, single adults over there where they can meet each other, families with young children in the back where they can exit quickly if the kids make noise.  That strikes me as all wrong.  I deliberately seek a congregation comprising people not like me, and I find such people less avoidable in smaller churches.

Chesterton’s insight about small communities appears in a chapter on “The Institution of the Family,” which gives a whole new slant on family values.  “The common defence of the family,” he writes, “is that, amid the stress and fickleness of life it is peaceful, pleasant, and at one.  But there is another defence of the family which is possible, and to me evident; this defence is that the family is not peaceful and not pleasant and not at one.”

The smallest units in society, families offer an ideal laboratory in which to test out Chesterton’s principle that “the smaller the community, the larger the world.”  Reflecting on my own family’s reunions, I must agree that the institution of the family forces me into close contact with characters I would otherwise avoid.  I have no choice about such encounters; we share a gene pool.

Community with Diverse and Multi-ethnic PeopleSeveral of my family members have served stints in prison.  Some carry on feuds that go back generations.  A few spin elaborate tales to cover up unwed pregnancies.  Geographically, my family extends from Philadelphia to San Jose to Australia.  It includes a drug addict and a professional football player with an estranged gay son, a Ph.D. in Philosophy as well as several who never graduated from high school.  Methodists, Church of Christ, Unitarian/Universalists, Independent Baptists, atheists─they all come together at our reunions.

I have learned more about grace, forgiveness, diversity─and, yes, social deviance─from my family than from all the theology books I have read.  Chesterton’s point, exactly.  Troublesome issues like divorce and homosexuality take on a different cast when you confront them not in a state legislature but at a family reunion.

Those Christians who trumpet “family values” need to make clear that we are not proposing a lobotomized society of Stepford wives and their offspring.  We recognize that families consist of imperfect human beings.  We simply contend that the family, the smallest social unit, represents a good place to confront those imperfections.

Some commentators have attacked the entire institution, blaming society’s problems on the dysfunctions of the family.  Such jeremiads miss the point: family is not a perfect institution by any means but simply a place that accepts its members on a single criterion, shared DNA.  From such a tiny group we can learn the principles of true community needed in larger groups.

We have many examples of what happens when enlightened people get together and devise large institutions to improve on the family.  These social engineers want everyone to be alike, sharing common values and beliefs.  Consider extreme versions of the “politically correct” movement on university campuses.  Consider the thought police in Communist North Korea.  Making people more like they “ought to be” is the great experiment of modern times.

Any parent could tell you that making just one child more like he or she “ought to be” is a dicey proposition at best.  If the smallest unit in society has trouble reforming individuals, should we trust the largest institution, the government?  Better to work things out in small communities, where we may have less choice about our companions─but so does everyone else.

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Discussion

  1. James Conner Avatar
    James Conner

    Hi Philip,
    I have never read anything by you. To be honest, I found this article because my college is having me write a paper on it. While I do find some of your arguments to be correct, such as the smaller groups making it easier to rub elbows with people, I must disagree with most of your argument.
    I do not want to be disrespectful. I realize that you are a well studied man, and that I am just a student struggling through college. I would like to say that I have only been going to a megachurch now for four years, and before I went I was very much against megachurches. I used many of the same arguments as you when my parents started taking us there. The first thing I will say is that a church should not be the driving force to “force” you to talk to other people outside of your clique. That to me just doesn’t sound very Christ-like. Imagine if Jesus had only spent time with people like him. He never would have left Heaven. He would have never stepped out to spend time with people who didn’t have the same interests with him, and he definitely would not have died for them.
    To speak on families, I feel like your argument fights itself. I come from a family of nine kids, seven boys and two girls. My mother comes from a family of ten. My brother already has a family of five kids. If anyone knows diversity, It would be me. One uncle went to prison. Another uncle and aunt hunt big game around the world (We had wild boar from Africa as our ham last Thanksgiving). I have family in Texas, Tennessee, Michigan, Kentucky, and Florida. We all like different things, and I have learned much from them. How to shoot multiple guns, martial arts, Pilipino knife fighting, how to survive the wilderness, and plenty of other skills. If a big family has taught me so many things that most people would never know, how then would a bigger church family not be even more helpful than this?
    I see my church family much more than I do my parental family. I’ve drawn closer than ever to God thanks to my pastor (The head pastor, mind you, who stays an hour after church to talk to anyone who wants to talk), and the other church members. I’ve also learned wood and leather working, thanks to some elderly men who have taken me under their wing, and how to play the banjo thanks to a musician at my church.
    Maybe it is just my church. I cannot speak for the majority of megachurches out there. However, I feel as if articles such as this stir up animosity towards megachurches, which is only further shown by the majority of these comments I have read. Some of them are downright hateful! And these are supposed Christians writing to you!
    I would like once again to express that I have no disrespect for you. I just disagree with you on this one subject. Now, I need to go write my paper, but I hope you see this, and God bless you and be with you.
    James Conner

    1. Philip Yancey Avatar
      Philip Yancey

      Thank you for this most thoughtful reply. In many ways, we’re expressing different matters of taste, not discussing a right-or-wrong isue. I certainly miss the “quality control” that megachurches offer, and am very impressed by the professionalism and biblically-based sermons I’ve heard at megachurches, not to mention the music. I certainly didn’t want to stir up animosity–rather, to help discouraged smaller churches realize they have a role to play as well. They’re the ones who tend to feel beleagured, with a minority complex. –Philip

    2. Philip Yancey Avatar
      Philip Yancey

      Thanks much for the correction –Philip

  2. Rachel Soto Avatar
    Rachel Soto

    Dr. Yancy –

    Thanks so much for this article, and for all your thoughtful and compassionate body of work over the years. This post has given me something to consider.
    As sort of a nerd about accuracy, I have one small quibble – Billy Graham may well have used the quote you opened with, as have Barack Obama and many others. But the man who needs credit for originating the thought is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:

    ” As a preacher… I must admit that I have gone through those moments when I was greatly disappointed with the church and what it has done in this period of social change. We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation. This is tragic. Nobody of honesty can overlook this. Now, I’m sure that if the church had taken a stronger stand all along, we wouldn’t have many of the problems that we have. The first way that the church can repent, the first way that it can move out into the arena of social reform is to remove the yoke of segregation from its own body. Now, I’m not saying that society must sit down and wait on a spiritual and moribund church as we’ve so often seen. I think it should have started in the church, but since it didn’t start in the church, our society needed to move on. The church, itself, will stand under the judgement of God. Now that the mistake of the past has been made, I think that the opportunity of the future is to really go out and to transform American society, and where else is there a better place than in the institution that should serve as the moral guardian of the community. The institution that should preach brotherhood and make it a reality within its own body.
    “Social Justice and the Emerging New Age” address at the Herman W. Read Fieldhouse, Western Michigan University (18 December 1963)”

    Just a minor correction. Dr. King’s words still resonate in this discussion on the issue of self segregation. We may be worse at it than when he brought it up in 1963.

    Thanks again!

  3. Mega Churches In United States Avatar
    Mega Churches In United States

    God Bless you for this information

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52 thoughts on “Small is Large”

  1. Hi Philip,
    I have never read anything by you. To be honest, I found this article because my college is having me write a paper on it. While I do find some of your arguments to be correct, such as the smaller groups making it easier to rub elbows with people, I must disagree with most of your argument.
    I do not want to be disrespectful. I realize that you are a well studied man, and that I am just a student struggling through college. I would like to say that I have only been going to a megachurch now for four years, and before I went I was very much against megachurches. I used many of the same arguments as you when my parents started taking us there. The first thing I will say is that a church should not be the driving force to “force” you to talk to other people outside of your clique. That to me just doesn’t sound very Christ-like. Imagine if Jesus had only spent time with people like him. He never would have left Heaven. He would have never stepped out to spend time with people who didn’t have the same interests with him, and he definitely would not have died for them.
    To speak on families, I feel like your argument fights itself. I come from a family of nine kids, seven boys and two girls. My mother comes from a family of ten. My brother already has a family of five kids. If anyone knows diversity, It would be me. One uncle went to prison. Another uncle and aunt hunt big game around the world (We had wild boar from Africa as our ham last Thanksgiving). I have family in Texas, Tennessee, Michigan, Kentucky, and Florida. We all like different things, and I have learned much from them. How to shoot multiple guns, martial arts, Pilipino knife fighting, how to survive the wilderness, and plenty of other skills. If a big family has taught me so many things that most people would never know, how then would a bigger church family not be even more helpful than this?
    I see my church family much more than I do my parental family. I’ve drawn closer than ever to God thanks to my pastor (The head pastor, mind you, who stays an hour after church to talk to anyone who wants to talk), and the other church members. I’ve also learned wood and leather working, thanks to some elderly men who have taken me under their wing, and how to play the banjo thanks to a musician at my church.
    Maybe it is just my church. I cannot speak for the majority of megachurches out there. However, I feel as if articles such as this stir up animosity towards megachurches, which is only further shown by the majority of these comments I have read. Some of them are downright hateful! And these are supposed Christians writing to you!
    I would like once again to express that I have no disrespect for you. I just disagree with you on this one subject. Now, I need to go write my paper, but I hope you see this, and God bless you and be with you.
    James Conner

    Reply
    • Thank you for this most thoughtful reply. In many ways, we’re expressing different matters of taste, not discussing a right-or-wrong isue. I certainly miss the “quality control” that megachurches offer, and am very impressed by the professionalism and biblically-based sermons I’ve heard at megachurches, not to mention the music. I certainly didn’t want to stir up animosity–rather, to help discouraged smaller churches realize they have a role to play as well. They’re the ones who tend to feel beleagured, with a minority complex. –Philip

      Reply
  2. Dr. Yancy –

    Thanks so much for this article, and for all your thoughtful and compassionate body of work over the years. This post has given me something to consider.
    As sort of a nerd about accuracy, I have one small quibble – Billy Graham may well have used the quote you opened with, as have Barack Obama and many others. But the man who needs credit for originating the thought is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:

    ” As a preacher… I must admit that I have gone through those moments when I was greatly disappointed with the church and what it has done in this period of social change. We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation. This is tragic. Nobody of honesty can overlook this. Now, I’m sure that if the church had taken a stronger stand all along, we wouldn’t have many of the problems that we have. The first way that the church can repent, the first way that it can move out into the arena of social reform is to remove the yoke of segregation from its own body. Now, I’m not saying that society must sit down and wait on a spiritual and moribund church as we’ve so often seen. I think it should have started in the church, but since it didn’t start in the church, our society needed to move on. The church, itself, will stand under the judgement of God. Now that the mistake of the past has been made, I think that the opportunity of the future is to really go out and to transform American society, and where else is there a better place than in the institution that should serve as the moral guardian of the community. The institution that should preach brotherhood and make it a reality within its own body.
    “Social Justice and the Emerging New Age” address at the Herman W. Read Fieldhouse, Western Michigan University (18 December 1963)”

    Just a minor correction. Dr. King’s words still resonate in this discussion on the issue of self segregation. We may be worse at it than when he brought it up in 1963.

    Thanks again!

    Reply

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