The Three Priorities of Small Church Thinking
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I recently suggested that we consider reframing pastoral best practice as “Small Church Thinking.” This language was dished out as a criticism of my friend Joe’s pastoral instincts by a mega-church pastor. Sometimes words spoken in derision are not only perceptively accurate but are also worth holding on to. John Wesley and his friends, derided for their methodical practices, embraced the name “Methodist” as their own. We should do the same with the charge of Small Church Thinking. In an age of big box churches, when Small Church Thinking is judged to be out of touch, it would serve us well to see that it in fact captures what pastoral ministry was always meant to be.
Small Church Thinking, as I have come to frame it, is an approach to ministry that prioritizes people, practices presence, and localizes purpose. This feels right and it feels wise.
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First, Small Church Thinking prioritizes people. In pastoral terms, that is, it addresses how we look at the sheep. Such a priority views the members of our congregations as individuals, not as members of some aggregated whole or representatives of some demographic grouping. Small Church Thinking considers the needs of Sally as Sally, without slotting her first as a Gen-Z female, or whatever. This requires one to come to know Sally, to talk to Sally, to spend time with Sally, rather than reading books about the unique characteristics of women or the particular desires of her generational grouping. In Small Church Thinking events and programs become less important than the relationships pastors build with their people. People are not projects to be addressed, but persons to be loved. Pastors prioritizing people preach to the concerns they know or suspect are important to their particular congregations. They resist the temptation to preach what is faddish or viral in the broader culture. Small Church Thinking is therefore highly inefficient and not given to the pursuit of reputation. It requires we come to know our congregations as persons and to consider their needs as more important than our own.
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Secondly, and related to this, ministry influenced by Small Church Thinking practices presence. It addresses how pastors are with the sheep. Much is published on leadership in the church, and much of it wise and good. Leadership is an inescapable part of pastoral ministry. Pastors do lead their sheep somewhere and how they do that matters. Missing, though, is the literature, or even the conversation, that prioritizes the shepherd’s call to be with their sheep. The disciples came to be known as those who had been with Jesus. His presence left his imprint upon them. He taught thousands, and no doubt the thousands were impacted and stirred, but he was with the twelve, and that is what stuck. Small Church Thinking pastors won’t prioritize programs but will prioritize having coffee with Jared, going fishing with Dave, or playing chess with Henry. When our minds are consumed with creating strategies for growing the church, or even more particularly for developing a vision for reaching, say, Millennial men, it is harder to free the time to be with people that they might grow to imitate our faith. When I ask people to tell me about the persons who have had the greatest impact on their Christian lives, it is never the person who planned the program and rarely is it the one who preached the sermon. It is most always the person who sat with them, who connected with them, who entered their world, who showed up, who was present with them. Practicing presence like this may not grow a church large, or quickly, but it is nevertheless the heart of our calling.
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A third element of Small Church Thinking is that it localizes purpose. This speaks to how we inspire the sheep. Instead of animating our people to change the world, a dubious and grandiose vision, Small Church Thinking pastors move them to think and act locally, to find ways to love one another and their neighbors. Such pastors set the sights of their people on a vision that is very local and very particular. The vision of Small Church Thinking addresses the pond in which people swim, not the oceans of some distant shore. The goal of the church is to incubate men and women who so love their neighbors that they would be missed if they were to move away. It’s not the flashiness of the church or even its endurance as an institution that matters most. When a Christian neighbor of mine moved away a few years ago, I mourned. To shepherd the sheep to localized love and good deeds is a goal greater than that of tending an institution.
To be clear, Small Church Thinking is a way of practicing ministry, not an argument for small churches. The garden department at Lowes providing the kind of customer care ordinarily only found at the local nursery is practicing its own form of Small Church Thinking. The barista who remembers my name is doing the same. Small Church Thinking produces practices that transcend church size. But these are fragile ideals easily overwhelmed or snuffed out altogether when churches prioritize growth over them. The pressure to grow a church can distort the pastoral heart. It is not the way of wisdom.
I once heard singer-songwriter David Wilcox tell the story of a painter who was asked to paint so as to make the world more beautiful. He recoiled at the idea. He couldn’t do it. But when the painter was given a frame and told to make what was in that frame more beautiful, this he readily accepted.
To focus on what is within the frame, this is Small Church Thinking.
Randy, thanks for this post. It was insightful and thought provoking. It inspired the following loosely related ramble. I’m not sure it’s very helpful, but in the interest of helping your algorithm, here it is!
I was recently made aware of a debate in certain online circles concerning the virtue of loving humanity in the abstract vs loving an humans in the particular. I also noticed this same debate happening in the Brothers Karamazav when I read it this winter. The argument goes something like, it’s easy send money to charity or feel compassion for the poor when you don’t interact with the people you’re “helping” because when you get close to someone they may reject your charity, or take it without gratitude, or simply offend you by their social awkwardness or odor. Each of us is annoying to our neighbor in the particular where we are not in the aggregate.
I think both sorts or, better yet, modes of love are important since it is my love for the unknown neighbor which motivates me to steward resources for great grandchildren who I may never meet and to vote in favor of civil liberties for men and women of different religious convictions though I don’t know them personally. Yet, I think, it is more difficult and probably more virtuous to love the neighbor that I know by name. Furthermore our love for individuals, like our children, often motivates us to love the aggregates to which they belong, like the next generation.
I suppose it’s appropriate to love the individuals and the aggregates in different ways. To confuse these two modes of love is tempting but unhelpful. I think we love our congregations well when we build good systems by which we incorporate new members into the organic life of the church, like a membership or baptism class. But never allow these systems to treat individuals as aggregates. We do our people a disservice if we think programming and equipping are the totality of our pastoral work. Maybe small church thinking can serve as the soil of a pastoral philosophy from which biblically faithful, human-scaled systems can grow.
You hit the BULLS-EYE, Randy!