I 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.
The 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.
hesterton’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.
Several 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.
My family is a little bit larger than yours. Mine includes people unrelated by DNA, including my husband, adopted son, and daughter-in-law. A larger definition of family might help your allegory.
How lovely it would be to have 200 members, let alone 2000. We have 30 and it’s a struggle, but we are the Body of Christ in this place.
The day when an Earthquake destroyed large, fancy Church buildings
by Mario C Alleckna
After hearing about the earthquake in Nepal and praying, I thought of large, fancy church buildings crumble. I began to wonder where the people would meet if their building was destroyed? Would they perhaps stop meeting? Would they frantically try to rebuild? Would they have the money? Some of these buildings and properties are worth millions. And what about the staff? Who would continue paying ministers, youth-pastors and office staff when there is no building for them to go to?
Be the Church–Implementing the Book of Acts.
Have we perhaps, with good intentions, taken what was meant to be a calling into ministry, and turned it into a career-choice with a degree from seminary and then a paycheque? (Jesus called, i.e. handpicked, 12 out of a crowd.) The Apostle Paul refused to get paid for sharing the Gospel. He said that he didn’t want to owe anything to anyone. Why? Likely because when someone is paid he might feel obligated to earn his keep, perhaps preaching what the people want to hear. Can you imagine a Pastor saying: “I don’t have a sermon today. Let’s just wait on the Lord and see what HE has to say to us.” Of course, right now every paid clergyman will show me the Scriptures where it says that a man should receive his living from teaching. I certainly know ALL of these Scriptures! But honestly, what did that look like in Biblical days? Did the Apostles receive a regular paycheque plus a pension plan? Did they have an office? Or did they likely receive food and lodging while teaching and preaching DAILY (not just Sundays), for a time? “Please Paul, don’t leave just yet to go to another city. Stay a while, and keep teaching us. We’ll look after your needs. You don’t need to make tents; don’t worry.”
Let’s ask: Why is it that there is no power in the church? Here is what A. W. Tozer had to say: (Quote) “The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful adjustment to unregenerate society, they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The idea that this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now been accepted in practice by the vast majority of Christians. There is today no lack of Bible Teachers to set forth correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives.”A. W. Tozer
Indeed, where are the empowered, spirit-filled leaders today? So many teach and preach milk rather than teach and model “meat and potatoes”. Paul said that he did not come with fancy words, but rather with God’s spiritual power. And then there is a simple, likely uneducated, fisherman named Peter. About 3000 people received Christ as Lord and Saviour after he preached a basic message of repentance and the cross. Peter would not easily qualify for any position in today’s highly educated church. It certainly wasn’t Peter’s eloquent speech or a possible degree in theology that determined his success! It was rather the King’s invisible signet ring of divine authority Peter was wearing, and the spiritual anointing that flowed from his words. Here is a fact: TIMES HAVE CHANGED, but has our way of doing church? In today’s day where everyone has access to Bibles and computer Bibles, plus teachings on You Tube and TV, do we really need a full-time pastor to teach what we’ve already heard 500 times? Shouldn’t we study these things for ourselves or in home-groups? Do we perhaps need leaders who, full of the Holy Spirit, first and foremost guide us into God’s presence?! Let’s be honest, do we really desire His presence more than His presents? Has the work of the Lord become more important than the Lord of the work?
It is in His presence where we find all we could ever want or need! And where is His presence found? In a particular building? Are we not the temple of His Spirit? In the Book of Rev. we are told to “come out of her”; i.e. the expensive, deceived, compromised, people focused and people pleasing, ear tickling, business-like institutionalized church with its organized religion!
BE the church in your daily life, and meet with likeminded, TRUE followers of Christ in homes and other places. Every believer is gifted by the Lord to contribute. I know several musicians and ex-pastors, who are quite capable of taking turns in leading worship or teaching and preaching, but are seldom asked to contribute. We are all equal as part of the body. Give to the poor, the widows, single moms, orphans etc.! Give as the Spirit is leading. (See: “Tithing or Giving?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJBPLAAYZMQ ) Learn to hear and discern HIS voice (not your own or someone else’s). Worship is a lifestyle of loving Jesus wherever we are, and in whatever we do! Meet with likeminded folk; love Jesus with truthfulness (no games, no pretending, BE real!) and then love people; help and pray for those in need in your group of likeminded believers, your neighbourhood, your daily, normal life. Make time to pray in your closet. Alone time with Jesus is essential for your growth! Study your Bible for yourself and with friends; read His Word often! The Lord speaks to us through His Word! (Depending on paid leaders holds the danger of making people lazy in their own, personal pursuit of Christ.) And should you run into other such groups who regularly meet in homes or other in-expensive places, and decide that it would be nice to have the groups get together for a corporate time of praying, loving one-another, and worshipping Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, through song and music, pool together and rent a community hall for an evening or whenever it suits. I promise that God will be there! Imagine the amount of money saved by not constantly having to pay for a huge building with office staff etc. Running a typical, “professional” church costs a lot of money; hundreds-of-thousands per year in many cases. Orphanages could easily be build with that kind of money!
May the Lord challenge all of us to step back and take a hard look at how far we have strayed from the example of the first church.
“Jesus, No Greater Love” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPGA7b0sd_s
Book: http://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Sleeping-Giant-Church-Revival/dp/1412001714/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429716471&sr=1-1&keywords=mario+alleckna
Thanks for this. I’ve attended small and large churches, pastored small and large churches, and experienced the highs and lows of each one. However, one thing I have learned is that if it’s community that someone is seeking, then a small church is definitely the place to go. It is very easy to go to a large church and be either anonymous or exclusive – not so in a small church!
What Chesterton said is accurate. In my experience we reflect the reality of the kingdom and often participate in the reality of the kingdom more in a small church.