It Took a Small Church

The Place of Approachable Smallness

Outreach magazine is well known for its annual report on America’s Largest and Fastest-Growing Churches, in association with LifeWay Research. That work is going on now (and we welcome your input). But equally significant is this summer’s special issue celebrating the big ideas that are coming out of smaller congregations. The issue highlights the resurgence of church planting, community engagement, global awareness and collaborative effort that is changing the face of the small church in America. (The July/August issue releases June 15.)

Both of these great expressions of church life are celebrated not only in the pages of Outreach magazine, but also through the National Outreach Convention in San Diego this fall. Like most of us, I appreciate the insight I gain from the pastors of some of the country’s leading megachurches, which are well represented in the conference lineup. But NOC has also provided a great opportunity for idea exchange among smaller churches, sessions I particularly look forward to each year.

And small is what’s on my mind as I write this afternoon. In large part because of my own experience …

I did not find Christ in a large church. I’m certainly not saying I couldn’t have. But it would have required something extraordinary: The large church would have had to create a place of approachable smallness.

Each person’s journey is different. But small is what I needed—a place to know and be known. And I would not have gone looking for it at that time. I would not have ventured into a megachurch, then found my way to a kiosk to sign up for a small group. Some things you just about have to be invited into. Or, providentially, you stumble across them, as I did when I found a place of approachable smallness.

Here’s why small was important. I had two very badly mistaken ideas about faith. First, I could not imagine anyone really living it, and second, if they did, I could not fathom how it could improve them. I had seen religious people from a distance and had not been impressed. I figured if you scratched them, there would not be much of anything under the surface. Just a thin glaze of religion.

Such wrong ideas!

But it’s difficult to correct mistaken notions from a distance. Have you noticed? It’s hard work trying to talk people out of wrong ideas. But you can “live them” out of their erroneous impressions, if you can get close enough. That happened to me in a place of approachable smallness.

This is on my mind today not just because of the magazine’s special issue or NOC’s small church workshops, but also because now, years later, I have renewed contact with one of those real Christians who met me in that place of smallness so long ago. Just knowing him, watching how he handled the challenges of real life, showed me how wrong I could be about people. His life changed my mind about the nature of faith. Bill went on to give his entire career to ministry in small places. I know something of the impact that can have because I know how it changed me.

So today I’m cheerleading small. And I’m hoping that your church, regardless of its size, will find the way to tap into the power of approachable smallness. The place where we can know and be known. That intimate place of transformation.

Contributor: James Long
Managing Editor, Outreach Magazine