David Williams's Blog, page 72

Lessons for a Small World

It was a reflection that came to me, as things often do, as I was walking.

I was musing on the seeming insanity of my devoting so much time to studying small faith communities, on what possible relevance that might have to the great wild churn of faith.  So much of what makes for viable small faith communities seems alien to the society in which I live, to success and expansion.  Think big!  Think corporate!  Think growth growth growth!

Small churches aren't that.  They're tribes and families, an old and deeply human way of being together.  But they're not reflective of the dynamism of our technological culture.  It feels out of step with both our globalism and our deepening ability to virtually surround ourselves with exactly the folks we want to be with.

If you don't like a faith community, your remedy is simple.  You just leave it.  If the pastor preaches something that isn't exactly what you think is true, or if someone does something that steps on your toes, you just go somewhere else.  Go to another church that better suits you.  Or stop going to church at all.  It's your choice.  We're all free to leave, thank the Maker.  Find the place that is exactly right for you, our society says, and so we do.

That's a good thing, on so many levels.  Being forced to remain in oppressive community is a nightmare.  Being forced to stay in a place where you cannot be yourself and authentic is a terrible thing.

And small can take work.  The work of seeking consensus, the mutual forbearance and patience necessary to sustain the life of little churches?  That can be hard, particularly if you feel passionately about X or have found your life's purpose in Y.  It is much, much easier to seek out the ideal, the community where X is everyone's passion and everyone around you believes Y.

You can't do this in healthy small churches.  You just can't.  There, kindness, patience, and forbearance must rule.  A willingness to show grace in authentic difference has to abide, or the whole thing comes apart.  Or it devolves into darker and unhealthy things, closed off and controlling, bitter and shallow and broken.

I can see the relevance of the small church to healthy family life and relationships.  It bears a strong resemblance to those things.  A willingness to live graciously with difference and not seek your own interest above your partner's life is a vital part of any marriage or relationship.  The same is true in the tribe.  Power and self-seeking tear the tribe apart.

But in the "grand scheme of things?"  I've struggled.  In my darker moments, tiny churches feel quaint, weak, and irrelevant cast against the grand bright scale of our world, where power and profit and growth and ideology rule.

Then, out of some deep recess of my subconscious, I remembered that little talk Carl gave once, about a little blue dust mote.  Oh, love him though I do, he and I aren't on the same page on a few things.  But that's OK.  We agree very, very deeply on this: all we know and everything we are exists in a tiny, limited space.



We are creatures of a small planet, just one.  And we can't leave, not yet, not in any meaningful numbers and not for any significant period of time.  When we imagine that the virtual worlds we create for ourselves are reflective of our reality, those places where we surround ourselves only with People Like Us (tm)?  We're deluding ourselves.  When we surround ourselves with like-thinkers, the hum of that echo chamber comforting in our ears?  It's a falsehood.

This world is itself a small community, a little tiny island in a vast and inhospitable ocean.  There is nowhere else for us to go.  We can't just pack up and storm off because of our passion for X or our belief that Y is the one true way.

We have to be connected, because we are.  We're stuck here together, on this tiny, tiny world.

And suddenly, the learnings about what it means to live graciously in smallness seemed relevant again.

Satan's Six Tips for Creating Online Content

To:  All of You "Content-Providing" Meat-Monkeys On the Internet
From:  The Man of Wealth and Taste
Re:  That Stuff You're Doing Wrong

OK, I lied.  You guys are doing great.  I have to tell you, I'm impressed.  Back when I was first working with DARPA on this little internet project, I had no idea it was going to be as wonderful and delicious as you've made it.

I thought, "Oh, maybe this will help a little bit."

"Maybe the anonymity and the instant access to every last dark corner of your collective subconscious might make you a little more negative and adversarial," I thought.

"Maybe feeding your every desire at every moment will make you a little shallower, a little more empty and trivial, more vain, and a little less patient with each other," I hoped.

Man.  You are nailing it.  Better than my wildest dreams.  There was some risk there, honestly, that you might take this and make the world a better place.  It was a gamble.

But you've taken it, and run with it.  You endlessly pass around empty nothings, outrage and porn and kittens and outraged kitten porn, and the wonderful, bloody, broken world rolls on.  So thank you for that.

But some of you insist on trying to be "creative," "writing" and "thinking" and generally trying to upend my lovely little project.  For the few of you still under the illusion that anyone cares about "content," instead of just endlessly passing meaningless things around, I've got some reminders about how to do it correctly.  In negative form, of course.  Negation and opposition are the only legitimate forms of expression, as we all know.

1)  Don't do it when you feel like it.  C'mon, you worthless fool.  This is work.  You do not write for the "joy" of it.  For the "love" of it.  Because it is your--faugh--"gift."

You write because you hunger.  You want lots and lots of people to read your stuff/articles/blogs and to love you and despair.  You write because you are desperately hoping that you'll become one of the tiny minority of souls who become marketable on the 'net.  Being able to write?  Once, you could make a modest living at that, at a small town newspaper or writing for magazines. Now?  Heh.  Now you get to be desperate and anxious, ever aware of your failure.   You feel that anxiety gnawing at you, that hunger to be needed and wanted, for likes and plusses and shares?  Yes, there.  That shimmering, coppery, stress-feeling.  That's me.  Your fear.  Your sense of inadequacy.  Your envy. Listen to that.  Let it drive you.  Let it rule you. Every day, let it rule you.  It's the path to winning!

2)  Don't Have Wide Ranging Interests.  If you want to succeed as a blogger or online writer, you're not allowed to do this.  It is absolutely forbidden. I forbid it. You can only care about one thing on your blog, because you need to be one of the chorus of experts who chime in on a single topic.  You are a mommy.  Or a car enthusiast.  Or a professional celebri-snarker.

What you are not, as a provider of content, is complicated and varied.  Posts on "faith", followed by posts on obscure economic matters, followed by slice of life stuff?  C'mon.  You need to create a platform, not talk about the things that interest you.  Be monomaniacal.  Be consistent.  Go on and on about the same things, over and over again, because that's what gets you noticed.  Sure, it might feel faintly psychotic and obsessive after a while, as you pore frantically over your analytics.   But that's how you're supposed to feel.  How I want you to feel.

3)  Don't be Peaceful.  To succeed as a blogger, showing a grasp for nuance and a willingness to engage thoughtfully with those who are different is a pretty much surefire way to fail.  To succeed, you must be contentious.  Find people you don't like, and who you know other people don't like.  Or find someone in your field who everyone knows.  Then, snark at them.  Find something that they've said, and be sure to take it out of context and proportion.  Then attack, attack, attack!  Provoke them!

Remember, kids: your goal is to accuse and undercut, because everyone loves a good fight.  Except for them.  But they're weak and horrible and ignorant.  Ignore them.

4)  Don't be Honest and Respect Your Readers.  Clickbait and Triggers and Listicles!  You know what draws people in.  So play with their emotions, with their desire to have the feels all big and feely-like!  Tell them how they're supposed to respond.

Your heart will melt!  I can't believe they did this!  Powerful!  Inspiring!  Tears!  This!  LOLs!  OMG!  You'll never believe it!  You have to tease and play and lie, and draw them in by bending and warping their grasp of the real.

Manipulate, manipulate, manipulate!

5)  Never neglect the Buzz of the Day.  Something just happened?  Something everyone is excited about, as the mad-dreaming-god of the twitterverse lights up over a dress or a celebrity or an awards show or a sportsball game or the outrage du jour?  You'd better have an opinion about it, or you'll miss out on those precious hits and visits and likes.  Do not be circumspect.  Do not reflect.  That slut "Lady Wisdom" doesn't know what she's talking about.  React!  Now!

Or maybe there's a movie just released, and the 'net is alight with the diligent work of publicists and corporate marketers pitching the next lovely bit of ever-deepening cinematic ultraviolence.

You need in on that.  You must be part of that.  Oh, sure, it's empty, mindless, thoughtless stuff.  In a week, it'll be as if it never existed.  In a year?  Hah.  Your flatulence has more existential import.  What a delightful, wonderful waste of your life!  But our goal isn't for you to grow or mature or change, remember?  You don't want that.  You just want to churn and churn and churn, ever in the empty corporate chaos of the cultural moment, never seeing the big picture or the path you're on.

5)  Never Ever Be a Person.  You're a Brand.  People don't want you to be you.  Not really.  They want consistency and simplicity, like a BK Triple Stacker or a can of Red Bull, always the same.  So think about your brand all the time.  Be careful to protect it.  Never vary what you say or think, because that would dilute the brand.  Never step outside of what you know people expect from you.

Yeah, this is basically number two again.  But I'm bored with you already, because you humans are boring and tedious and really should be doing something else right now.  Oooh, look!  There's a thing you can be mad about!  See?  A person you hate!  Oh, how you hate them!  Go flame them!  Now!

Soon, and with practice, you'll stop being and thinking like a person at all.  You'll be your brand, a false, shallow market-construct charred into the dead flesh of what was once your personhood.  Oh, I love that smell.  It smells like bacon.  It smells like victory.

6)  Did I say Six Tips?  Huh.  I guess I lied again.  Surprise, surprise.

But what is a lie, really?  What is truth, really, here in this place that is less real than your dreaming?

Seriously.  You guys are doing great at this.  Keep up the good work!

Conclusion

So how can a community be both small and sweet?  No, some would say.  Our goal is growth!  We must add forever to our number!
But our task as followers of Jesus of Nazareth is not first and foremost to build large and vibrant organizations.  Our job is to be disciples and in being disciples to make disciples, and to together manifest the love of Christ in the world.
And, sure, some large and bright and shiny churches do that. Big can be part of the ecology of the Kingdom.  But big can also become a distraction, as our energies are poured into the structure and choreography of huge and complex systems.  They can lead us to mistake material growth for spiritual growth, mistake material success for success in living out the message of Jesus, and to buy into the endless-ever-bigger-lie of our consumer culture.
In the face of the drab monoculture that has become the face of contemporary American Christianity, intimate communities offer up an alternative way of living out that faith.
They offer up that alternative in the same way that small communities of faith authentically lived out the Way during the time when Christ was spread at the edge of the sword.  
Small and simple they may be, but they remain, nonetheless, a powerful potential force for the living out of the Good News of Jesus in the world.  
My hope is that, in your reading of this little work, that you have found some stories that resonate, and some clues about how you might tend to your own small, sweet, and fruitful patch of the Kingdom.
May that be so, for you and for me.

Chapter Eight: Seven Ways to Grow and Care for a Strawberry Church

Right.  Here we are, at the end of this little journey, and it’s a list.  What better and more... cough... marketable way to end this little book than with a list? Seriously, though, we’ve journeyed from huge to small, looked at the kinds of small, and listened to voices of little churches, one after another, smaller and smaller.  There’ve been lessons there in each of them, and hopefully learning that you’ll find helpful in your own life within a small community.During the research for this project, there’ve been a few key learnings that have leapt out, rules for planting and maintaining your own fruitful small community.  Here are seven:

Not Hating ThemselvesIt seems remarkably simple, amazingly so.  In order for a small church to be fruitful and sweet, it needs to have hope about itself and its place in the world.If a church does not have a joyous sense of its place in the indwelling Kingdom of God, it’s not going to go anywhere.  It might stick around, stubborn as a cuss, refusing to die or do anything else besides cling to existence.  But it will not be the sort of place you want to spend any time.Of all of the blights that can prevent a small church from being fruitful and joyous, negative self-understanding is the most noxious and dangerous.  And yet, throughout the literature written by those who study the small church, a deep sense of malaise in family and tribal-sized churches is almost inescapable:..the phrase “small church” invariably produces the following responses: limited human resources, faithful remnant, handful, too few doing too much, dependence on denomination, petty bickering, lack of privacy, money worries, inexperienced and entry level clergy, limited programs, physical plant millstones, building upkeep difficulties, and many more. Of course, all of that is “real.”  Those are genuine challenges, ones that small communities have to consider as they try to find their way in the world.  To some degree or another, every small community we’ve examined has reflected some of these issues.  But if “realism” strangles out hope, the real Kingdom possibilities within countless small gatherings will be lost.  As John Koessler put it:Realism without a sense of calling will lead to a defeatist mentality.  Our perspective of the church’s ministry will change radically when we recognize that instead of being expected to do the impossible, we have been called to accomplish the mission for which God has also uniquely equipped us.Small congregations have to recognize that they all share two key and vital characteristics.  First, they are fundamentally different from larger churches.  And second, they are perfect.  They are exactly the right size to be and do all that God created congregations to be and do.  They are not organizational errors to be corrected.  They are not stunted, or in any way inadequate.  They exist because they are the intentional choices of human beings who put a priority on human relationships in the practice of their faith.Life in a small community that is filled with hope, joy, and a sense of mutual purpose can be just as abundant--if not more so--than life in a larger corporate church.  

Emphasizing and Developing RelationshipsIn every form of small church, it is the character and nature of the relationships that matters.  Human beings in strawberry churches are not woven together by programs and organizational charts.  They are connected organically, through a web of mutual relationship.  A small church is one cell, “..a body of the whole, connected by mutual concern, with each knowing and in relationship with all the others.”  This is immensely difficult for pastors and leaders to embrace, because it’s such a radically countercultural position.  But in every book seriously examining the dynamics of small faith communities, be they denominational, independent, monastic, cell churches, or house churches, the feedback is the same.  What matters isn’t the quality of the programs.  What matters is the quality of the people and their relationships with one another. This is because the small church is fundamentally not an organization; it is an association that generates and lives by its social capital.In the face of the demographic atomization we encounter in our culture, in which every age group and category is separated out from all of the others, the scale and the nature of small congregations allows each person to be known individually and loved uniquely.What this looks like in practice is remarkably simple, part of the pattern of human life that comes from healthy friendships and caring families.  Strawberry churches share the stories and joys of life with one another.  They stand with people in times of crisis, insuring that no-one suffers alone and that the whole community cares when one suffers.  They play together.  Let me say that again: they play together.  The simple celebrations of life are shared, and the pleasure in doing things that human beings like doing together are part of the life of the community.  They are part of the same community, living closely enough together that they encounter one another as part of their day-to-day existence.  They struggle sometimes, but have developed enough of a mutual sense of trust that they can be in conflict without it shattering the assumptions of their togetherness.  They see their material resources as not simply their own, but as something that can be shared together towards a mutual end.Focus on Doing and Empowering Folks to “Do.”Small tribal or family sized churches are relational entities.  They function as an organism rather than an organization.  That means that the congregation’s power base will most likely be determined by position in the clan or in the cluster of families rather than by elected office.In such communities, the power rests most strongly with lay leadership.  If the church is going to be healthy, it needs to be clear that individuals are free to experiment, explore, and do new things within a the circle of trusting relationship.  Permission giving and a willingness to be flexible are absolutely key to the health and sweetness of the small church.If authority is tightly held by a few, then the vibrancy and promise of the small community is compromised.  The great strength of the small, if you’ll recall from the chapter on theology, is that small can be tremendously agile.  When little churches harden into limpet-like inflexibility, they put themselves at risk.  They are David, suited up in armor four sizes too large.  It does not end well.This focus on empowerment and permission-giving is particularly important for pastors in small congregations.  Beyond making the critical error of assuming they’re in charge because of their “formal authority,” pastoral leadership can also potentially stifle the life of the church by assuming that their role is to do absolutely everything.As Mark Francisco challenged himself in Church Without Walls:In this situation, by trusting, training, and releasing people for ministry, more was accomplished than if I hoarded the responsibility and tried to accomplish everything myself.  Pride and arrogance keeps pastors from releasing people to do ministry.  This should never be.Instead, the role of the leader--formal or informal--in the small church is that of companion.  The leader is a helpful friend, someone who walks with another person, supporting them and helping them grow and learn through the celebrations and challenges of life.  Leaders in small communities are partners and friends.  “We’re in this thing together,” they say, and they mean it.Ideally, that “walking together” creates a trust dynamic within the community that will allow them to explore new possibilities without fear of failure.  So there’s failure?  So what?  Just pick up, learn, and try again, knowing that those around you still love and care for you.As Lois Barret described in her excellent book on the dynamics of a microchurch network in Lancaster, PA: It is one of the advantages of the house church that it can be more fully supportive of those who take risks for the sake of Christ’s mission.  I have seen a few large churches take such risks, but the larger the church, the more difficult it is to come to unity of mind.  More often, it is the small church which is willing to take gospel risks.  One reason for this may be that with fewer people it simply takes less time to come to a decision.  But I think another reason is that people in a small church know and trust each other better.There’s a significant “trust” component to the establishing of trust in a small community, which in many ways itself reflects the strange dynamics of faith.  It is something that cannot be managed, cannot be programmed, cannot be created through even our most well-planned interventions.In wondering at the mystery of community, neo-Monastic Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove saw the whole thing through the lense of a garden, as do so many who choose to live in intentionally smaller gatherings:The crazy thing about a garden is that you’re always working but there’s nothing you can do to make it grow.  In the end every garden is a miracle.  Which is to say, it is a gift wrapped in a mystery.   Best I can figure, community is like a garden.  Somehow there’s always work to be done--dishes to wash, meetings to go to, prayers to pray, meetings to go to, laundry to wash, meetings to go to, meals to prepare...and more meetings to go to.  After you’ve sat through a few hundred meetings and heard people say more or less the same things over and again, you are tempted to think, “I know what this community needs.  If they would just listen to me, we could get on with more important things.”  But it never works.  Because, as with a garden, you can’t make a community grow.  All you can do is tend to a culture of grace and truth by listening to every voice, loving people who frustrate you, telling the truth as best as you can.Growing trust and grace in a strawberry church is just like that.

Permeable Boundaries, Deep RootsWithout connection to the soil, strawberries die.  They can live for a while just by themselves, bare roots exposed to the air.  If you ever order plants, that’s how they’ll ship them to you.  But without roots woven up in the earth, drawing in water and nutrients, those plants will eventually wither and die.  Healthy small congregations need to be connected to their communities, rooted in and a part of the soil in which they find themselves.To thrive and be fruitful, the small church cannot fold in on itself.  That “bunker mentality” is perhaps the surest sign that a community is going to wither and die.  To be healthy spiritually, a community has to reflect the interdependence of those who comprise it with the “soil” in which they dwell.  That means attending to and being connected to the place where they are planted.Corporate churches or huge programmatically driven congregations are not like this.  They can exist as free-standing entities, fed from far away sources.  They are their own synthetic ecosystem.  Small communities, to be healthy, must have deeply permeable boundaries between themselves and the particular place in which they find themselves.  They have to lay in roots deep, and be willing to connect strongly with the place in which they find themselves.This form of connecting can be very difficult for smaller communities.  Anxieties about resources can cause them to circle the wagons.  The shadow-side of tribal identity can create distrust of everyone “outside.”  This connectedness is both necessary and, as those who study the small church discover, a rare thing.Of the five case studies looking at congregational life in this book, each of the four small churches in question were intentional about their connection to the “land”...or the community...around them.  All were very open and intentional about inviting in those around them, and about not delimiting their life as a faith gathering to just those already “inside.”This willingness to both care for those within while maintaining a welcoming attitude towards those “outside” is vital.  Congregational researcher Carl Dudley articulated that as follows:A healthy church will care about the members of the congregation, and respond to their needs.  A healthy church will care about the turf, the place, the larger community where God has called it to be.  In the act of healing, a healthy church will share its place with those in need.  A healthy church will have an identity that is carried in the rhythm and pace of the congregation’s life together...a small church will be healthy first, before it can become effective.Where communities are stable, effective churches within those communities are the ones that bring community into themselves.  If they’ve got a building, great.  But if they don’t?  If they’re so small that having a building itself is no longer a necessary part of their lives together?  Then it is the commitment of the church members themselves to bring community into their own lives.   However they approach it, it is that permeability that matters.

Welcoming and not GraspingStrawberries are all about welcome.  It’s how they survive.I am reminded of this whenever I watch chipmunks sneak their way through the chickenwire fences I’ve put up around my strawberry patches to protect them from...well...chipmunks.  Those little varmints sneak the strawberries out of the enclosure I’ve so carefully.  They sit there on their haunches, looking smug, nibbling away at the sweet berry I’ve so carefully grown.  They ingest it and the seeds, and then scamper off to...um…”process and deposit” those seeds elsewhere.And though that frustrates me as a gardener, it is also the reason that strawberries exist.  Their sweetness arose as an invitation for chipmunks and squirrels and birds, which take the berries and spread the growth.Strawberries, humble and small as they are, are generous things.One of the ways small communities can remain healthy and sweet is in approaching everyone who comes through their doors not as a means to an end, but as children of God with their own gifts and graces.  It is easy, painfully so, to place yearnings for growth or anxieties about the future on each and every new arrival.But the goal of a fruitful community is not to be anxious about what others can offer.  It is to provide to others, and in so doing give them a better life.  Though we might want to fence things in, to hold tightly on to everyone and control what they do, that is not the way of strawberries...or of the Spirit.But what about our future, or our needs?  It’s a basic organizational question.  When Gordon Cosby, founder of the Church of the Saviour, was asked about the future of the church, he replied:I have never had a helpful answer to that question.  Have no idea.  I do not know what the judgments of God are or what will be the breakthroughs of God’s power.”  Then he stopped for a long pause and added, “I do not need the church to have a visible or successful future in order for me to feel safe as a person.  I’m glad to leave it to God’s sovereignty.  It is his church--not mine.That does not mean that little churches have nothing to offer those who come through their doors, or that congregations should just throw up their hands and assume that God’ll do everything for us.  Within the boundaries of the connectedness that is such a fundamental feature of the small congregation, Gordon Cosby identified three key ways that intimate communities can engage and develop the gifts of those who participate in them.First, they should assume that anyone who participates in their community life is there because they have freely chosen to be there.  The choice of adults to engage in community, particularly a small one, is driven first and foremost by volition.  Meaning: they want to be there.  This is not a commitment that is undertaken because of social pressure, or coercion, or a sense of material expectation or reward.You participate in an intimate community because you feel God calling you to be a part of that gathering.That’s not true for all small churches.  Little groups, particularly “family” sized churches, can become insular and controlling.  They can manifest all of the unhealthy dynamics of a dysfunctional family.But those aren’t strawberry churches, and they’re not fruitful.Second, everyone within a healthy small community needs to release their desire to control others.  If the assumption is that all have gathered freely, then that freedom must be respected and worked towards.  Patterns of aggression, emotional or spiritual manipulation, or any of the ways human beings seek their own power within organizations?  Those need to be set aside.Cosby describes this as maintaining an attitude of healthy detachment.  If our egos are vested in an organization doing our bidding, there is the very real danger that we’ll stifle the gifts and abilities of others.Third, Cosby encourages those in intimate communities to live together in expectation.  While each of us freely brings our own gifts into the relationships we establish, we need to leave room for God to both act in us individually and through all of us together.  Through that opening up, we’re all given the opportunity to work towards the Reign of God in the world.Maintaining this open, expectant stance is necessary if we’re to give those who enter our fellowships an opportunity to participate in a way that feels both authentic and organic.  In larger corporate and program-sized churches, this is less the case.  Human beings who are drawn by the order and structure of a carefully-crafted institution will expect to act institutionally or corporately.But within the more human-scaled dynamics of a healthy small community, people will seek the chance to participate in ways that reflect the organic character of their gifts.  What matters less are broad and overarching strategies that structure ever moment; what matters more is the participation itself.The essential character of inclusion and participation in a small community is more qualitative than quantitative, a fusion of the structure that comes from the rituals of family and tribal relationships and the freedom that comes in the relationships we share with our closest friends.

Leadership that understands/loves the character of the small churchIf small churches are not driven by overarching plans and structures, and more by the dynamics of human relationships, what does that mean for those in leadership in a smaller congregation?  For pastors in particular, this poses something of a conundrum.  On the one hand, pastors are supposed to be the visionaries, the driven dreamers, the ones with the plan and the passion.  They are thought leaders, actively willing to disrupt the status quo as they prophetically transform a gathered people.  On the other hand, smaller communities...and particularly healthy ones...are creatures of relationship, woven together by the bonds of family, friendship, and the Spirit.Leadership that comes charging in, bright-eyed and eager to change the world?  That’s not going to work well.  It’s going to be a mess.  Here, there’s a peculiar tension in the oldline denominations and their expectations for seminarians.Progressive seminaries are a heady place, filled with the latest and most cutting edge theologies.  Conservative seminaries and bible-colleges are filled with passionate debates about theological and scriptural esoterica.  Within them, students are steeped in a culture that is radically ideological.But small congregations are not ideological creatures.  They are political creatures.  That doesn’t mean everyone in them is continually debating politics.  It means that they are little towns, little “polis,” and what matters most is the interpersonal dynamics within them.  Relationships are what counts, and those who come roaring in with wild ideas and a yearning to be prophetically disruptive are as welcome as your daughter’s drunken and truculent college boyfriend at a Thanksgiving gathering.To lead a small community well, either as a pastor as a lay leader, you have to approach things a little bit differently.First and foremost, effective leaders of small churches can’t be focused too intently on growth and achievement. Their task is not to relentless drive their churches towards one vision after another, but instead to gently move their communities towards what changes would be the most healthy for their thriving.These pastors are not CEOs or managers or administrators. They are not taskmasters or overseers.  They must be, first and foremost, be “lovers.”  No, not in that way, unless you’re referring to their spouses.  A successful small church pastor must genuinely and unreservedly love their community.Not “the ideal of their community.”  Not the Platonic form of their community, existing up there in the ether.  Not their community as it will be after it has finally come around and changed itself to meet every expectation.  But the community as it is, with all of its warts and mess and simple human beauty.The rule of thumb, as I have come to know it over the years: if you would not be a part of a community, you cannot pastor it.  Meaning, if you cannot for a moment imagine yourself worshipping and singing and sharing with a small church outside of the particular role of “pastor,” you should not be pastoring it.Within the healthy small church, there are a number of specific ways leaders can approach leadership that respect the unique character of the intimate community.  Anthony Pappas lays out six of them, all of which are excellent guides for those of us who are called to serve smaller communities.  All of those paths require a leader to set aside the big-dream super-Christian image, and to get a little simpler.In the small church, the pastor isn’t the champion.  Pastors in strawberry churches are meant to act as catalysts, but must resist the temptation to be the point person of every single initiative.  You aren’t the growth.  Your task is to care for it, water it, encourage it, but not to do it all.  This can be surprisingly challenging for many pastors, who lovelovelove to feel needed.  Resist this temptation.In the small church, one of the primary means by which you support a community is by telling the story of the church.  Those tales of faith, family, and life together are core narratives, the great teaching fables of the tribe.  They are fundamental data, the DNA of the little church, and if well told can help give both energy and character to the community.  The leader of the small church knows the history of that community, and can retell it as if it is their own story.  Because, honestly, it is.If you’re going to act as a catalyst and a support, your primary task is to remind the community of what is possible, and establish a “tone” for the life and dynamics of the congregation that affirms what is both life-giving and attainable.  Celebrate what can be done, and affirm what has been done.  The surest sign of a small community that is failing in its calling to be a sweet and fruitful fellowship is negative self-understanding, which, as we’ve seen in prior chapters, is an easy thing for congregations to fall into when they are small and perceive that smallness as inherently inadequate.  Leading such a gathering requires renewing and building hope and confidence in what can be done, and restating that over and over again.  Remind them of their sweetness.

As you’re guiding and supporting a little church, you’ll find that there are gifts and abilities that are part of the fundamental repertoire of the church that might be applied towards new and life-giving ends.  A community hall long disused might be put to use.  A patch of grass might become a garden.  Just as you take up and transplant strawberries from one patch to another, you can often find within one old and overgrown part of community life the seeds of what might become a new thing.

Finally, in a small church, leaders are part of that story. What they say and teach must be visibly modeled in your life and your every interaction with the community you are serving.  The structural distance between you and the little church is basically nonexistent.  You’re part of their lives, and they are part of yours.  That means you need to visibly model and mentor the practices of fruitful, loving, Reign of God sweetness in your every action.   

In all of this, leaders of little churches must be willing to be “tentmakers,” meaning they cannot for a moment expect the church to be their primary form of financial support.  That’s just not going to work, and going into a small congregation with that as an expectation will create unnecessary anxieties.

This is considerably less onerous than it sounds.  If you have a working spouse and children, serving a small church can be remarkably fulfilling.  This is particularly true if the church itself feels embraced and empowered, with everyone involved aware of how much the church relies for it’s health not on the one paid professional, but on them.

Be Radically Grounded in DiscipleshipWhat is the fruit of a strawberry church?  Why does it exist?

It exists, as do all Christian communities, primarily to manifest the Reign of God Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed.  That’s our reason for being.  The radical, gracious, transforming love he lived out is the fruit we are trying to bear.  In each of the little communities in this study, that core is lived out in varying ways in the relationships and character of their life together.

Meeting for the study of the faith, prayer, singing, and worship are absolutely vital to the health and character of the little church.  They ground their fellowship in the teachings and life of Jesus, because, well, that’s kind of the whole point.

In the community I am now serving, in Dayspring and in Holy Cross Abbey and in Movement, that’s the heart and center of the life of the church.  It is the primary measure for every community, and it’s one that the small church can forget.

Just as churches that are extensions of the state can come to serve only as instruments of the state, and congregations that are driven by the corporate model of growth can become little more than JeezOTainment Centers, little churches can be nothing more than families and tribes.  “Faith” can be only the lightest gloss over the top of a way of being together that is utterly unrelated to what it means to take up our cross and follow our Teacher.

Here, the small church must watch itself carefully, being sure that as it tells and retells its story that it remains woven up with that great Gospel story.  It’s a central part of the mission of every church, the deep defining story of which all of us, big and small, are a part.
Discipleship doesn’t have to be complicated.  But it does have to be there, recognized, practiced, and continually renewed.


LINK TO CONCLUSION

Chapter Seven: Voices from Strawberry Churches

What does it look like to be both small and spiritually healthy?  What does it look like to have chosen a path that involves a passionate, deep commitment to faith, and yet set aside the illusion that growing as a discrete institutional structure means a thing to the Creator of the Universe?

We’ve walked together through my own faith community, eighty souls and change, a modest sanctuary for a modest tribe.  But the learnings for good strawberry smallness are to be found other places, and so we’ll whittle down, cutting away the layers like an onion, smaller and smaller.

And yes, I know, I’m mixing garden metaphors.  But so it goes.

How small can a church be, and still be a vibrant, living manifestation of the Reign of God?

For answers to that, I conducted a sequence of interviews with individuals who are deeply engaged in the lives of small faith communities.  From these,  I’ve selected three that meet a specific set of criteria.  These gatherings are 1) different from my own community, 2) increasingly smaller than my community, and 3) seem particularly illustrative of vibrant, life-giving fruitfulness.

The first community that drew my interest was Dayspring, an offshoot of Gordon Cosby’s Church of the Saviour.

The Church of the Saviour is a church in Washington, DC, that was formed and shaped by the vision of Gordon Cosby in 1947, as a Protestant community of radical discipleship.  Their focus was both inward and outward, maintaining and developing a deep personal spiritual life and simultaneously engaging in a life of service to the broader community.

Initially a small community of thirty to forty souls, it grew until it had reached the point where it was pressing out against the boundaries of being a “pastoral” sized congregation, at around a hundred and twenty.  Rather than developing infrastructure, formalizing leadership, and continuing to expand, Cosby and others chose to break the community up into smaller, intimate gatherings of twenty to thirty individuals.  

One of those communities settled into a retreat facility on 200 acres near Germantown, Maryland, which in the 1970s was still a primarily rural area.   I journeyed there from my own Maryland congregation, riding my motorcycle through the endless and expanding sprawl of what is now the exurban fringe of the Washington/Baltimore megalopolis.

Dayspring, on the late fall day I visited it, felt like a magical place.   I pulled into the long, gravel drive, and rode past some simple homes on my right, none of which presented as a sanctuary.  On my left, gardens were being put in, long rows of plantings.  Wending my way through the woods, I found myself after a while at the end of a long drive, looking out over fields, as the leaves cascaded down sunstruck in the bright light of mid-day.  It was silent, and impossibly lovely, and I was in the wrong place.  The retreat center was before me, but there was not a soul around.

I fumbled around for my cell, and called my contact, who graciously pointed me back in the right direction.

I was shown, for a while, through the simple and unadorned life of the place.  The meeting room, where worship was held, simple and spare, with a stillness to it. Wooden chairs, mounted on pegs on the walls.  A wooden floor, neatly swept.  It felt faintly Shaker.  The pavilions and amphitheaters, where worship could be held in nature during the warmer months.  It was primal, elemental, and completely devoid of shine and sparkle.  

Two days prior, I’d had a sustained conversation with Katherine Gibson, who serves as the clerk of the committee that runs the Dayspring community.  An older woman, she’s been part of that community for decades, and it has been her primary faith gathering for well over thirty years.

In our interview, she shared with me that Dayspring is a community that, as she sees it, feels a sense of unsettledness and challenge.  What they perceive is being asked of them now as a community of faith is immensely difficult.  A substantial part of that difficulty comes from being an intimate community, close to the earth and creation.   From the 1958 start date of the retreat site,  members of Dayspring have lived on site and all been a part of the retreat center focus.  They became a formal church in 1976, after two years of prayer and discussion, after Gordon Cosby aggressively pursued his strategy of separate communities.

At Dayspring, community arose out of the land.  Tending to the land had always been a ministry within Dayspring.  From the very beginning, there was an emphasis on gardening, farming, and the earth.  That had a profound impact on the dynamics of their community life.  As she described it:

“Being present in land makes for a very keen awareness of earth-creation focused faith, particularly with the pressing development around the retreat facility.  We’re very connected to the 200 acres of the land that we maintain and sustain.  It’s part of our ongoing call to the contemplative life, to earth care and earth living.  That also drives us to much prayer and intercessory prayer, because we really feel the impact of human beings on the earth that God gave us.”

A significant challenge lies in the size of the community relative to their beautiful, bucolic site.  Dayspring now stands at eleven core members, who have all made a covenant commitment to actively participate in mutual spiritual and communal disciplines.  Another circle, and a slightly different covenant, adds another twenty individuals who also actively participate.   There are thirty or so total individuals, with some younger, but most in their fifties or sixties.

In that group, there is no pastor, and no paid leader.  Everyone is a lay person, and every person has a particular responsibility.  There are two to three elders who do worship and pastoral care, stewards who manage the  land and maintain the various buildings and structures.  There’s a, council, and a monthly meeting as members.  Everything shared in leadership, and as Clerk, she oversees the monthly meetings.  Her job is to keeping track of consensus.  Every decision...all of them...are approached by consensus.  There is no voting, no sides.  Instead, there’s the process of mutually seeking the leading of the spirit.

I asked her what the key features of a healthy small faith community might be.  She thought for a moment or two.

“What’s most important is a deep grasp of the spiritual life and spiritual disciplines.  For Dayspring, prayer, silence, and those things that shape the inner dimension are the core of our community life.  We’re always shaping and continually growing in our spiritual practices.  It’s not easy to do, but essential.”

What else, I asked?  She thought for a moment, then said:

“Shared leadership is also really important..  If you have just...um.  I...in a small community you know each other very well, you know, and if you can name each others gifts and live out of those together, that’s vital.  It’s so much better than ‘just roles.’”

She continued..

“Lively worship that expresses the faith is also key, and music is a huge part of that...and...play is a big part of that too.  ‘Play’ is...ah...not necessarily socializing, not just games.  It’s...a sense of...joyousness and liveliness and enjoyment of the doing of things together.  It’s that sharing of life, the basic things, like cooking, and meals, fellowship...everything that makes for shared connection, and for us at Dayspring, it’s particularly love of the land.”

I asked her, then, what she saw as the primary threat to the health of their communities.

“Fear is maybe the biggest threat.  Fears and frustrations within the community are the primary challenges we face, particularly because we’re so small.  And if you’re a small community that owns land and facility, decisions about those things can be immensely challenging.  Finances in particular can be a tremendous challenge, and in my experience they’re a large part of what makes for frustration in a small community.  You have to make difficult decisions, and those difficult decisions make process challenging.  This can be so true, particularly in consensus, and spirit-leading models of decisionmaking.  It’s just so easy to hurt one another, so easy to damage the relationships everyone has with one another, and those are so important, at the heart of community.”

She went on:

“There are external challenges, too.  Mostly, we feel the pressures on the land and pressure coming with the growth of all of the developments around us.  It gets harder to do what we do, with the  impingement of local government demands and regulation.  We feel it more than we used to, and it places significant limitations on what we can do.”

Every community faces challenges and transitions, be they large or small, and it’s important not to create a fantasy or idealized version of what small can be.  But Dayspring, for a generation, has stood as an example of a strawberry community.  It is a church that “gets it,” that manages to focus on both faith and the life together in a way that resonates powerfully with the core of Christian faith.

And at twenty five total participants, it’s small, unquestionably.  But let’s go smaller.  

For that, I once again threw a leg over my motorcycle, and rode.  It was another perfect late fall day, the sky bright and cloud dappled, the trees in color and the air just on the cusp of warm enough.  My journeying took me to the west this time, out past the sprawl of Washington, deep into the state of Virginia.  I entered the Shenandoah Valley, wending my bright yellow Suzuki along beautiful country roads, past fields and farms, over hills and dales, and...well...you get the idea.

When I crossed over the Shenandoah itself, I angled an abrupt right, and the road grew smaller, barely even a two-lane.

I arrived at Holy Cross Abbey, a Benedictine/Trappist monastery near Berryville, Virginia.  There was a faint hush about the place, a discernable calmness of spirit that seemed to permeate the reality of the day.  I’d arrived as the mid-day worship was underway, and lay people on retreat made their way to the chapel, I sat in the shade of an oak and waited.  A cat, mewling and purring, kept me company as I sat there.

I was waiting for a meeting with Father James, the subprior of the monastery, who’d agreed to talk with me about the life and dynamics of that little gathering.

When it was clear the worship was done, I went to the monastery door, and rang the doorbell.

Father James answered the heavy wooden door, robed and quietly smiling as he welcomed me.  We settled into a sparely decorated room, and sat, and talked.  I wasn’t quite sure what to expect talking to a monk, having not done so before.  What I encountered was a pleasantly serene human being of good humor and thoughtfulness.  He’d been part of the order for thirty seven years, having initially pursued his vocation through the Franciscans.  In addition to being subprior, he was also the Guestmaster for the monastery’s retreat house, a librarian of sorts, and the cantor responsible for leading the sung prayer.

Holy Cross Abbey follows the Rule of St. Benedict, and has been in existence since 1950.  It draws its lineage from the 900 year old Cistercian reforms, which, as he explained with a smile, could be a little intense.  I visualized those monks from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, whopping themselves on the heads with boards, and as he wryly described the medieval practices of penance, I wasn’t far off.

“We mitigated most of that craziness in the twentieth century,” he grinned.

I asked him about their numbers, and how they’d grown or changed.

“We didn’t set out with the goal of being small,” he said.  “But most of the houses of our order are now small.  Back in 2008, we had a series of conversations with a facilitator, because when you get to having our numbers, you need to start taking that seriously and planning for the future.”

How small, I asked.

“We’ve been up to twenty four individuals,” he replied.  “But right now, there are ten of us under our roof.”

Small indeed.  So I asked: given a gathering of just under a dozen, then, what makes such a community healthy and spiritually vibrant?  He thought for a measured moment or two.

“We’ve learned that quality of communication is key.  I know, that might seem peculiar, given our spiritual focus on silence.  But so much discord can get swept under the rug under the rubric of silence and holiness.  Sure, silence is an environment for the life of this vocation, and having space for silence is a vital part of our order.  But even then, honest, open, and faithful communication needs to be present.”

“In addition to communication, we’ve found that small communities thrive when they develop a style of leadership that engages and empowers everyone.  Every member of the community needs to know that they are a vital part of the process of shaping and guiding the direction of the community.  That’s been hard, making that transition, because the way our Catholic orders had worked historically was very hierarchical in nature.  As our numbers have grown fewer, it’s been more and more important to move away from the idea that the abbot is in charge of everything, and that’s been difficult for some to adapt to.

And not just the abbot.  One of the deficits of the old monastic structure was that you could get lost in your role.  What you were doing was necessary for the community, but your job could become your identity, something you clung to, something you used to keep yourself from being truly in relationship to others.  That produces its own form of silence and solitude.  But it’s an alienating kind of solitude.”

He thought for a few more moments, then continued.

“Another source that helps: we remain vital because we arise from a nine-hundred year old tradition. There so much richness there, if you approach it honestly.  Every new challenge we encounter makes us engage in a recasting of our storytelling.  Our past is something we deal with concretely, and knowing our story removes that sense of strangeness as we engage with the new.

Much of that vitality feeds into our liturgy and our learning to do liturgy together.  We’re continually employing and encouraging the talents of the members, asking ourselves: ‘How do we channel our talents in the interests of the common good.  We see the limits, especially with so few of us, but even those limits can be viewed as a resource.  

Accountability to one another is absolutely key, in terms of grounding and discerning our vocation.  In the old model, gifts were like putting someone on an assembly line.  But that’s a procrustean mistake, because real discernment of vocations is absolutely key to the health of our community.  Even when it’s not working exactly as we’d like it, the mutual process of discernment through relationship is a lifegiving thing.” We talked for a while longer, and then I asked about the particular challenges he saw communities facing.

He laughed.  

“Well, some of our biggest challenges come because we’ve been around for so long.  When our movement began, the human lifespan was forty six years.  You can do just about anything for forty six years.  But how do you sustain a discipline for sixty, or seventy, or eighty years?  It’s hard, in life, to open up honestly with what’s really going on in your life, washing away the fantastic and the dreamy ideals.

We also face a real challenge when it comes to recruitment.  Without people coming in, houses in the order just can’t continue.  So they close, and we have to come to terms with that. It does happen, more and more as the flow from national cultures around us grows more secularized.

It’s also really hard finding a fit between ourselves and the economic and political world outside.  Fitting our order into the financial system is a challenge.  How do we eat?  How do we live?  Our community supports itself financially, but there’s always so much learning to be done as we try to manage these issues.  It’s an ongoing challenge, finding that balance between sustaining community and supporting the spiritual life of our vocation.  How do we manage the resources we have so that we’re honoring our call to be better stewards of creation?”

We talked for a while more, about faith, about the beauty of their 1,200 acres, about land practices, about literature and storytelling.

And then I was off, riding home in the first darkening hints of twilight.  It was a remarkable place, small but unquestionably alive spiritually.  

But healthy churches can be smaller still.

For that, I got off of my motorcycle and onto social media.  There, I pitched a Facebook message to someone I’d known through internet conversations for over a decade, as part of the early conversations of the Emergent church movement.   We’d never spoken in person, though, and I knew it was time to remedy that.

John Young is one of the founders of a house church in the Fort Worth area, a community named, simply, “Movement.”   I called him up, one evening after he’d gotten home from work.  We chatted for a while, about life, and then I asked him about the size of his community, which he’d founded eight years before, after getting his Masters of Divinity at Baylor.

“We’re six total individuals, three couples, and that means every week a little different.  When you grow or shrink, it’s a seismic event.  Things can feel very very volatile.   Because we’re so few, we have a very informal worship.  When we get together, there’s food, people, and scripture, with occasional music.  Things are very fluid in terms of weekly dynamics.  By design, we’re totally egalitarian and leaderless, with no hierarchy.  That means there’s no safety net...no performance at all, no prep...the idea that a “service” is being provided is completely removed.  Instead, we’re asking: what value do you contribute?  That’s the question that gets asked every single week.  We’re high engagement, high focus on gifts and abilities.  Honesty and openness is absolutely central.  You will be in fellowship, so you have to be.

Our transitions have occurred based on life stages, as smaller community has changed.  When we were all young and single, and folks were dating, community focus is that and managing that.  When you’re this small, your focus is on community and the interplay of life dynamics, wherever you are in life.”

I asked him what congregations or communities had inspired him.  

The church that had most  impacted his understanding of church was a small independent Baptist group called “Harbor,” which he’d experienced in Houston.  It was a small church of recovering addicts, with two to three houses to support them.  He was really moved by that form of ministry, dangerous, daring, one that both transformed and cost a great deal emotionally and spiritually.

He’d also been part of a little African American community, and a college ministry had been profoundly formational.   

“In those little churches, you’re seeing the depth of commitment.  In a little church, it just has to be a personal connection.  You have to WANT to be there.  You’re not offering anything in a small church, other than a vision of life done differently.”

Life done differently.  I liked that turn of phrase, so I asked him what that “life done differently” looked like.

He sighed, and paused.  Then he said,

“There’s discipleship, loving one another well, you know, all those churchy answers.  But it’s really not a “churchy thing” at all.   When it’s just us, just a half dozen human beings trying to follow Jesus, there is no corporate “glow.”  It’s the healthy people that count.  If you’ve got healthy people, then you’ve got a healthy church.  There’s no program or leader.  If the community is healthy, it’s because the individuals who comprise the community are healthy and self sacrificing.  You can’t hide in small community.  They know your shit.  Can you be honest?  If you can, then the spiritual maturity will be there, and the community will be healthy.  In a “microchurch,” it’s relational, it’s all about the dynamics of personhood.

For us, really caring matters, and learning and growing matters.  Half of group have M.Divs, so there’s the dynamic of three highly informed perspectives.  The conversational dynamics and relational dynamics of mutual sharing and accountability that come out of that are key.  We read similar books, we share in mutual discipling and discussion.

And there’s the money.  We do money differently.  When you have no overhead, no paycheck to worry about, you still have to ask as a Christian, “what do you do with your money?”   We’ve tried to find creative outlets for giving and using our collective resources.  That’s hard, sometimes, but in other ways, it’s been liberating.  It’s neat not to have to think about the financial aspect of church.  I mean, not at all.  Not at all.  All of the anxiety of budget and income is gone.  In every church I was part of, money was a huge point of stress, and drove so many of the decisions of churches.  It becomes nothing more than a cycle of product development and reinvestment in facilities.  Money is no longer a factor.”

So, what have been the challenges, I asked.

“The hardest part is the numbers.  I mean, we’re really just two families plus another one with a kid.  We’ve grown and shrunk, and grown again.  We’ve gotten large enough that we had to talk about multiplication and division...and right as we were getting there, various different events totally beyond our control caused the community to fall in number by around two thirds.   That can be dispiriting, confusing, if your commitment to the path you’ve chosen is not core.  

I mean, I look around, and I hear all this talk of megachurch dieoff.  That’s totally premature.  Most people like big churches.  It’s what they want.  It’s a whole bunch easier, for one.  And being part of a small church is just too risky.  People are going to opt for the easiest path.  Unless you have a heart issue with the way big works, you’re going to choose big.  Everybody here in Texas sure does.”

We talked for a while more, about the metaphor of strawberries and the small sweet communities.  It grew late, and I reluctantly wrapped things up.

I realized, after we finished talking, that I’d talked a great deal in other conversations...and in the one I’d had with him...about how to “sustain” small communities.  “Sustainability” is, after all, one of those lovely organizational buzzwords that makes a manager’s heart go pitter pat.   But how did “sustainable” mean anything, in a community so small and so organic?  As if reading my mind, I received the following in my inbox the next morning:

“Hey, I want to toss out one other thing when you talk about “sustainable” small groups...I don’t think sustainable and small work together.  I’d argue that ‘sustainable’ is dependent upon numbers and structures to sustain.  Small groups either grow or die.  So neither is really sustainable.  They’ll stop being small groups either way.  Our group will die at some point.  That’s okay for us.  That’s the nature of friendships and life, right?  We need to give communities permission to die and restore some dignity in death.  I’m pretty sure there isn’t a church of Ephesus and a church of Thessalonica any more.  That doesn’t mean they weren’t meaningful communities while they existed.  Going back to your garden metaphor: Annuals aren’t any less beautiful than perennials.”

So here you have voices from three churches, each smaller than the last.  And while none of them meet the standards of endless growth and shine that have come to define excellence in church culture, every one of them is bearing spiritual fruit for those who participate in them.  In each of these communities, genuine passion for the teachings of Jesus is manifest.  In each of these communities, there’s a deep care for others, a focus on service and hospitality and gracious presence.Each is sweet and simple, in the way that strawberries are sweet and simple.
So from all of this, what are some of the key ways we can grow and nurture strawberry churches ourselves?  Just how do we do that?
LINK TO CHAPTER EIGHT

Chapter Six: The Strawberry Church - A Case Study

Poolesville Presbyterian Church (PPC) was founded in 1847, in an agrarian community situated near the Potomac river.   It’s small now, with roughly fifty in worship and eighty on the membership rolls.  It’s always been small, with membership fluctuating between 50 and 90 for most of its 160-plus years of existence.  The building is a rumpled, comfortable, and historic red-brick sanctuary that feels full with sixty in attendance, and is a vital part of the identity of the church.  Members know and value the historic character of the church.   As a Presbyterian church in Poolesville during the  “War of Northern Aggression” and where 11,000 Union troops were positioned to 1) protect a nearby Potomac ford and 2) suppress the locals, it wasn’t in step with the broader community.  

In the nineteen-thirties and forties, the area continued to be rural.  As the fortunes of the agrarian town faded with the advent of industrial agriculture and the closing of the C&O Canal, PPC waned in membership, finally closing down in the 1950s.   With the growth in population in the Washington, DC area in the 1960s and 1970s, Poolesville began to expand, as developments within the town limits made it increasingly a distant bedroom exurb for DC commuters.  The church restarted, and currently has roughly the same membership it did in 1891.   It remains small, but comfortable in its own skin as a stable multigenerational community. In reviewing the culture influences on PPC, there are several key influences on the flavor of the community.   Three that seem to have significant influence are region, class, and generation.

The region in which the congregation is physically located is the Western Upper Montgomery County Agricultural Reserve, a location which has a distinct and unique identity.   Montgomery County is a large, wealthy, and primarily suburban/exurban county to the north of Washington DC.  To combat suburban sprawl, the county set aside 93,000 acres in the north for agricultural purposes, explicitly delimiting growth.  Approaching Poolesville from the Washington area, one must travel for miles on country two lane roads, passing farms and fields and forested areas.   Poolesville itself appears to be a very small town, one not too far removed from its 17th century agrarian roots.   That appearance is an illusion.  Within the Poolesville town limits, growth over the last 25 years has been exponential.  Hidden away on both the eastern and western sides of the community are substantial developments, which have pushed the population of the township from under 500 in the early 1970s to close to 6,000 today.   The population of Poolesville is now largely reflective of the major metropolitan area that it orbits.

This reflectivity of regional values runs strongly through PPC.  The influences of the regional culture...an odd admixture of a slower-paced rural ethos and the more driven, educated and hard-charging urban ethos...are in evidence in the membership and energy of the community.   Many members are (or were) civil servants, teachers, state department workers, contractors, or otherwise involved in the culture of the area.   While the church might present as a small and slightly rumpled country congregation, the actual dynamics of the community are more subtly shaped by the peculiarities of being both separate from an “inside the Beltway” mentality and shaped by it.

Within the life of the community, this manifests itself in the shared assumption that things will get done...but in their own time.  Meetings run on what is articulated as “Poolesville time,” meaning they start just a tiny bit late.  That means not so late that it impacts the overall schedule, but late enough that there’s flex for everyone to arrive.   Bureaucratic and structural precision are something that you do...but only when you get around to it.  

This regional influence has a strong impact on the class dynamics at play in the community.  Poolesville has a mix of social classes, but the strongest current influence is the cultural expectation of the upper middle class.  While there are townhome communities which would permit access for lower income families, homes in the substantial developments that now comprise the majority of residential Poolesville typically are sold from $600,000 and above, meaning the residents of those homes are dual-income and educated.   Demographic analyses of the community using MissionInsite confirm this assessment.

The congregation itself reflects the dominant class dynamics of the surrounding community.   Members are upper level civil servants, dual-income families of teachers, consultants, tech professionals, and professors.  While not wealthy in terms of the broader society, they are well-educated and generally financially stable, two key features of that sub-class.  Interests in education, stability and family are strongly present in the community, as is interest in engaging with service-work charities and social movements, such as environmentalism.

Within the community, the orientation of the middle/upper-middle class towards service and social engagement helps shape a strong shared assumption within the church.  Participation in and engagement with local direct service charities is a fundamental assumption within the life of PPC.   Members spontaneously self-organize food drives for Western Upper Montgomery County Help, participate in service programs like Rebuilding Together, and volunteer monthly as staff for a local interfaith food bank.  Service is a baseline norm.

The third of the cultural streams at play at PPC is generation.  Here, the congregation reflects the interests of a mix of generational actors.  It is a blended community generationally, with active participation across a range of ages.   PPC was re-founded by Greatest Generation members when it re-opened in the late 1950s, but also contains a mix of Boomers, GenX, and GenY members.

This cross-generational dynamic is reflected in the blend of traditional worship with an interest in the application of technology through the use of multimedia, an active and dynamically updated website, and social media presence.  Podcasts and blogs and Facebook updates mingle with the traditional hymns, as the community expects to be both simultaneously traditional and engaged with current bleeding-edge technology, a value set that might seem to stand in tension but end up coexisting well together.

Overarching these more local influences are the influences of the broader American culture.   Of the plethora of often contradictory themes within our society, two seem clearly manifest within the life of this little community:  pluralistic tolerance and an egalitarian approach to leadership.

One feature is the assumption of pluralistic tolerance within a democratic republic.  The idea of individual liberty and forbearance towards the different is a basic norm within our society.   While this may stand in tension with the forces that move towards political polarization and isolation, it is still a strong feature of our ideal society.   

This feature flows through PPC.  The socio-political makeup of the congregation is remarkably diverse, as is the range of variant theological assumptions.  Church members are not easily typified as either Republican or Democrat.  There are progressive and conservatives.  There are avid peace-and-justice types, and multiple tour of duty combat veterans.   Those individual differences seem, for the most part, to be something viewed as adding character to the community.   That there are differences of perspective is understood from that feature of our culture as a strength, one that mirrors our broader cultural assumptions about the rights and nature of the individual balanced with our duty to live together peaceably.

Another key feature of the broader American culture is the assumption of an egalitarian system, in which all are “created equal.”  Whether this espoused value is visible in our cultural artifacts is another matter, but it remains a stated value within our society.  This feature is manifest at PPC, in ways that are arguably more healthy than the culture.  As a small Presbyterian congregation, the formal structures and decisionmaking processes of the Session and the individuals who have formal roles and responsibilities are respected.  We do things decently and in order, after all.  

But within the community, the “power distance” between those in formal leadership and others is not viewed as substantial.  As a significant portion of this small community church has at one point or another served in formal leadership, the “Session” is not a distant or unfamiliar entity.  That lends itself to an egalitarian approach to much of the life of the church.   While PPC sees between 45 and 50 individuals in worship, the dynamics of what in the Alban Institute’s church typology would either be a small Pastoral sized congregation or a large Family sized congregation have been shaped by nearly 150 years of half-time supply pastors.  

The high-power-distance matriarch/patriarch dynamics that are often present in a smaller community simply are not in evidence.  Instead, there is a rotating cadre of lay leadership that feels substantially empowered and simultaneously accountable to one another.  The shared assumption at play is that each and every member of the congregation has access to and the potential to engage in leadership if they so desire.

From his research into congregational culture, George Thompson also suggests that in many communities, stated expectations about the church can be very, very different from the reality of that community.  There’s the stuff on the surface, the “artifacts” and sayings.  Then there’s the stuff buried in the bubbling ooze.  Thompson calls this the “swamp.”   

Utilizing the Thompson “Swamp” methodology for assessing cultural dynamics in a congregation, PPC  manifests numerous visible artifacts that comprise the visible “stuff” of community life.  Some of these artifacts reflect the values or active “sayings” within the church, showing alignment between the publicly articulated values and the observable reality.  In other instances, the espoused values and the artifacts are dissonant, indicating an unspoken shared assumption that is “submerged” in the dank miasma of the communal subconscious.   

One clear defining focal point of the community is the sanctuary.  PPC’s worship space is a humble 1847 brick building, with a distinctive stepped front brick facade and a small entry vestibule.   Each side wall has three windows, of which one is stained glass.   A center aisle separates two rows of padded pews that sit seven deep.  Two sets of stairs weave tightly up to a pair of balconies that each comfortably sit twelve individuals.   Two banners decorate the sides of the sanctuary, one a PC(USA) logo and the other an American flag which was carried on a helicopter mission in Afghanistan with a National Guard member of the church.  A wooden crosspiece between the two balconies supports a projector and microphones for audio recording.   

At the front of the sanctuary is a small marble-topped table for communion...and by small, I mean it stands waist high and measures one foot by three feet.  Behind that, a pulpit rests on a riser.   On the wall behind the pulpit hangs a simple wooden cross.   The total capacity of the sanctuary is eighty, but it starts feeling full at fifty.  The space smells of pew padding, and is acoustically “soft” and “warm.”

In conversations with members and as it presents to any observer of the community, the sanctuary is routinely cited as a defining element of the community, both in terms of its history and its character.   It’s uniformly described as “historic,” “cute,” “warm,” and “welcoming.”  

Although it exists virtually, the congregation’s web presence is also relatively longstanding artifact.

 While it lacks some of the more complex design elements that can be found on the online presences of program and corporate churches, it is surprisingly sophisticated and well-maintained for a small congregation in a small town.  An array of pull down menus allow relatively easy access to congregational mission and vision, schedules for congregational activities and classes, sermon podcasts, activities at the “Connection Cafe,” an internet training and resource ministry sponsored by the community, details about the recently founded community garden, and a range of links of interest.

Although PPC is the smallest of the five oldline congregations that represent Poolesville’s congregational ecology, it was the first to have a web presence, and the regular updating and maintenance of that site means that the congregation features prominently on search engines when “Poolesville” is entered.

It is, perhaps as significantly as the sanctuary, the most externally visible feature of community.

Looking out across the sanctuary on any given Sunday, the sanctuary typically sits at sixty to seventy percent of comfortable capacity at 10:15 AM.  The lower level is not packed, but feels comfortably full.  A handful of souls may have made their way up to the balconies via the slender staircases.   In 2009, a second worship was added, dividing the services between 11:00 AM.  and 9:30 AM.  The two services were essentially identical liturgically, and after several years of seeing if this would add to either growth or community dynamism, the church returned to a single worship in 2014.

Reviewing the PC(USA)’s dataset on PPC’s recent history, the past 10 years show a worship attendance pattern that shows remarkably little variance.  While there is annual fluctuation, the community seems settled in at around 55 in average attendance.   This is a familiar number, as a review of the Session record book that sits in the Pastor’s Office (covering the years 1875-1891) indicates a similar attendance trend.  

The congregation openly and actively presents itself as a high-touch and informal gathering.    Variants of the “we’re a warm and friendly little community” are found consistently in both printed and online literature of the church, and are typically smattered in conversations with new attendees and potential members.  

The congregation also spends a great deal of time talking tech.  Given the informed and educated multigenerational character of the community, the engagement with technology is actively and frequently expressed as a community value.   It actively presents itself as a connected community, touting its web presence, use of social networks for outreach, and a weekly hosted mission to provide internet classes and connectivity to the community.

Poolesville Presbyterian Church is intimately connected to the community.  Facilities are actively used by a range of different gatherings and organizations.  Twelve step groups, Girl scouts, Race for the Cure, and a small cooperative volunteer-led preschool all keep the buildings in regular use during the week.  The church also recently partnered with a local environmental nonprofit, local businesses, and local government to establish an outwardly facing community garden on the church property.  It’s assumed that the church is, while small, nonetheless deeply connected to the township it inhabits.

In assessing these “artifacts” and comparing them to the espoused values of the congregation, there are areas of both alignment and disjuncture.  Both indicate the fundamental and often unarticulated shared assumptions that are the basic cultural DNA of the community.   The four primary shared assumptions that arise out of this assessment are perhaps best articulated as follows:

Shared Assumption 1:  We are a tribe.   The “iconic” and tiny sanctuary of PPC frames the character of the community.  It’s remarkably “homey,” as comfortable and well worn as an old shoe.  In that, it stands as a tangible representation of the pattern of relationship that are in evidence in the dynamics of decision-making and life together.  Although the community doesn’t tend to present as a single family unit, the network of social and interpersonal connections that have formed between members of the multiple families who comprise the church are “tribal.”  That complex interplay of relationship forms a community of belonging and identity, as the organizational dynamics of the church blur with the social interchanges outside of the church.  The adults of the church play together, as do the children.  Small churches are what small church researcher Anthony Pappas describes as “folk society,” and that form of identity is clearly manifest at PPC.

As noted above, the dynamics of this tribal system do not revolve around a single tribal patriarch and matriarch.  Instead, a collectivity of elders and longstanding members provide a distributed architecture within which microcultural capital is applied towards the continuance of community.

The role of the pastor within this tribal system has been tangential.  Pastors are generally remembered with some fondness, as “characters” and entertaining personae...none of whom appear to have significantly shifted the dynamics of the community.  Those who had difficulty were those who pressed aggressively for change. The more disruptive the change, the more the community felt its basic identity threatened.   The only full-time pastor the congregation had in the last 50 years is remembered as an abysmal failure, mostly for reasons revolving around aggressively assuming authority and from the tensions that this grasping creating within community.  

Within a tribal system, maintaining civility and the balanced integrity of community is absolutely key.  The tiny historic sanctuary and the closeness of an informal and simultaneously high-touch community align to express this only very slightly submerged value.

Shared Assumption 2:  We have to make do with what we have.   Both the sanctuary and the website have a strong do-it-yourself feel about them.  The cross in the sanctuary is handmade, as is the support-mount that holds the projector equipment.  Most of the equipment in the church is hand-me-down from some of the IT professionals and sound-equipment pros at the church.  The slowly collapsing but still functional tiny pipe organ was a donation from a wealthy private household.   It all works.  But it’s mostly held together with elbow grease and duct tape.

The website is similarly constructed from the energy and attention of a congregation member.  Most of the site-architecture was coded by that member, and the server space used to house the data was given gratis to the church by a small local server-farm provider.  It is remarkably effective, but again mirrors the assumption...not inaccurate...that resources within the community are not abundant, and that thrift is necessary.

This focus on the ethos of scarcity can occasionally stand in tension with the congregation’s espoused value of growth.  It’s not part of the public face of the community, but nonetheless helps define and shape the dynamics of community life.   

Shared Assumption 3:  Within the network of trust, change is embraced.   The intermingling of informality and a strong network of social and interpersonal relations within this small community permits opportunities to “play” with newness.  If someone wants to attempt something, and is willing to bring their energy to a new effort or new thing, there’s an amazingly low threshold of permission-giving within the community so long as that change does not pose the possibility for community-disrupting conflict or financial risk.

In the sanctuary, for instance, a pair of carefully situated microphones can be seen on the AV crossbeam.  They were recently mounted on the crossbeam for the purposes of creating a nuanced stereo capture for a podcast.   The sound-guy came up with the idea, which he pinged by an audio professional, who made recommendations and found a few decent mikes, which were wired and mounted that same day.  There were no committees, and no formal processes.  When presented to Session, it was received with nods of approval for being a good idea.  That was that.

Another instance came as part of the groundbreaking for the Community Garden, established in partnership with a local environmental nonprofit.  The community knew, because folks had been told both formally and informally, that ground on the plot next to the church would at some point be leveled in preparation for the “staging in” of the garden.  When I arrived one Sunday, it had happened the day before.  A local businessman, who’d graciously contributed his time and a backhoe, had just come through and plowed it up as time had permitted.  The day hadn’t been approved.  The Session had not been informed.  It hadn’t been pre-checked or confirmed with any committees.

In some communities, this would have been cause for some significant conniptions.  Someone’s turf would have been violated. But...nothing.  Just “we know it needed to get done, and it got done in a way that worked.”

This focus on doing, and the implicit assumption that everyone is trying their best to do what’s right for the community?  it’s a vital part of being a healthy church.

Shared Assumption 4:  We’re gettin’ by just fine as we are.   The comfortable sanctuary and basically stable pattern of worship attendance stand in significant tension with the espoused value of growth.  The actual number of human beings engaged in the church remains essentially static, and although there is lingering systemic concern about resources, PPC feels no significant pressure to grow.  The little sanctuary usually feels comfortably full.  There are kids, and families.  The cycles of congregational life continue.  As the congregation looks to its primary artifacts and values, there is a paucity of disconfirming data to indicate the necessity for growth or significant change.

In the absence of an evident threat beyond the longstanding shared assumption of resource scarcity, the community feels no sense of survival anxiety.

Language about growth and expansion floats on the surface, but in the deep organic muck below the surface, the congregation is quite happy as it is.

The congregation is fundamentally stable, both in terms of membership and organizational culture and dynamics.  While congregational growth is a stated norm, there is some complacence about the basic soundness of the community, much of which derives from the longstanding relationships and lack of disconfirmation of the communities’ shared assumptions.  The trust relationships within the church do permit considerable organizational dynamism, within non-threatening limits.

The way in which a congregation orients itself towards the world has a significant impact on the dynamics of its culture.  The contextual posture grid is a way to measure the relationship of a church to community, and it assumes two primary axes: the inner-directed or “empathetic” and the marginal and the conventional.  Inner directed communities exist for themselves, while empathetic communities are oriented towards the world outside.   Marginal communities are in some way alienated or separate from the culture around them, where “conventional” communities are highly representative of the broader culture.

PPC falls squarely into what George Thompson describes as the empathetic conventional quadrant of cultural life.  Although it is a small and “tribal” church, it does not manifest the deep inward focus, functional invisibility, and sense of marginalization found in many small congregations.  Service and community connection are a vital part of the ongoing life of the church.  From food bank support to a deep connection to the local service charity, the congregation engages significantly in service ministry with the local community...both clear marks of an empathetic community.

As a community that inhabits the empathetic conventional quadrant, PPC is deeply engaged with community.  Service opportunities abound and are actively sought, and are a clear, evident, and valued feature of congregational life.  This is, quite frankly, both an openly articulated and valued aspect of the congregation’s identity, one that is deeply honored by membership but also attractive to the community around it.  It’s a significant strength of the church, which has managed to avoid the dangerously insular “family” dynamics of smaller communities by having numerous “bridge people” who cross the margins between church and community.

The members of the church are, as noted above, almost entirely representative of the broader community.  Connections within the town of Poolesville are many and varied, and the demographic profile of the church is a mirror of the town.  This is a clear indicator that the congregation is “permeable” to the culture of the community it inhabits and serves.

Against most measures of health in smaller communities, Poolesville Presbyterian is a vital, living, “strawberry” congregation.  But there are other forms of small church, and congregations that live out that “sweetness”  even though they are smaller still than PPC.  
We’ll hear from some of them in the next chapter.
LINK TO CHAPTER SEVEN

Chapter Five: A Strawberry Theology: “Small” and Fruitful.

The assumption, of course, is that in order to be faithful, we must grow.  Go out and make disciples of all nations, we are told.  Faith is like a mustard seed, we are told, so the only way for a little thing to be legitimate is for it to grow into a huge thing.  We take the images of harvest, of fields yielding tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold, and then we take a hard look at our own little fellowship.Where are we?  We’re in that little rural church that gathers faithfully in a place where the population is in decline.  We’re that small house church that prays and shares and serves together.  We’re that storefront in a blighted Southern town.  And we’re not adding to our number.If this is your life of faith, those texts can be thrown up into our faces, as evidence that we are neither faithful or fruitful.  Just stop existing, our culture of growth says to us.  Just get out of the way, and let your sad, miserable little excuse for a community go to churches that are actually doing something.Well, it doesn’t tend to be as mean as that, but it’s certainly implied.And yet, as we look to the great and sacred narrative of scripture, what we find is that while growth is valued, it is not valued in the same way that our culture values it.  The growth that matters is not invariably numerical.  In point of fact, the Bible offers us numerous visions that affirm a smaller, more intimate approach to our faith.That vision begins in the Deuteronomic code, and in the relationship that God had with the people of Israel.  In Deuteronomy, we read:It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you--for you were the fewest of all peoples.  It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors.Here, written into the Torah, we find a reminder to the people of Israel that the basis of their covenant relationship with YHWH isn’t their size or their power as a people.  They weren’t an empire, after all, nothing at all like Egypt or Assyria or Babylon.  They were small potatoes in the Ancient Near East, a people so negligible that the real powers around them didn’t even notice the “height” of Israel under David and Solomon.Compared with those sprawling empires, even the greatest aspirations of the Hebrew people weren’t much of anything.  They knew this, and yet still stood in authentic covenant relationship with their God.  This is the very large God of a small, vulnerable, often-kicked-around people.The experience of getting repeatedly invaded and routed by much larger and more powerful nations may well have been what lead the people of Israel to develop their theology of small, a theology that is perhaps best described as a “remnant” theology.
These texts, which begin arising as the young kingdom was threatened first by the Assyrian Empire and then crushed by Babylon, come to us from both the Deuteronomic Histories and the Prophets.  From 2 Kings, for example, we get:
The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward; for from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out, and from Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
From the prophet Jeremiah, writing as Babylon threatened the complete destruction of Judah, we hear this repeated over and over, as the people needed to hear it:
Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.
and
For thus says the Lord:Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob,    and raise shouts for the chief of the nations;proclaim, give praise, and say,    “Save, O Lord, your people,    the remnant of Israel.”See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north,    and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth,among them the blind and the lame,    those with child and those in labor, together;    a great company, they shall return here.
What matters to the Prophet, and by extension, to God, is not strength or glory.  What matters is the faithfulness of a people.  They haven’t been selected for their strength, or for their evident prosperity.  It is their faithfulness and their endurance that matters.
This theme of a strong, enduring remnant is picked up by the Prophet Isaiah, who writes:
On that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on the one who struck them, but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. For though your people Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness.
This theology of patient, faithful endurance is not just a facet of the Torah and the Prophets.  It is a theme picked up by the Apostle Paul, who in his letter to the church at Rome tells his readers:
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.  God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?  “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.” But what is the divine reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”  So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
Within this remnant theology, it is important to see the encounter of those who feel powerless with the powers of their age.  It is doubly important to be reminded that those powers--like the vast empires of Assyria, Babylon, and Rome--are as fleeting as the mist.  Those great and grand works are just not particularly impressive to the Creator of the Universe.
For smaller communities weary of our culture’s repudiation of their worth, these texts can be vital and affirming.  But let it be said--small congregations often deeply underestimate their worth.  It isn’t simply that we can endure hardship.  Being small has advantages.  Strengths, even, that the largest of congregations genuinely struggle to replicate.
One of the challenges of the “remnant” church is that narratives of survival can become stories that trap a gathering in the past.  Those who remain choose to focus on what was, and become so trapped in the “good old days” that they have no real life in the present.  It becomes an impediment for the real challenge at hand.
Here, it’s helpful to turn to the the stories of David, King of Israel.  Or, rather to the narratives of David when he wasn’t king, but just a pup.  First and foremost, the stories of David’s calling to rule remind the listener that appearances--our size, our strength, our place in the culture--are unimportant when it comes to our relationship with God.  As Samuel struggled to select a replacement for moody, brooding Saul, he was reminded of this as one handsome son of Jesse after another was paraded before him:
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
As smaller congregations wrestle with the limitations inherent in their size, this text reminds us that it is what is within that matters.  God’s interest is, again, not the degree to which we’re visibly strong or honored by our culture.  It’s how we are internally.  For individuals, that’s a reflection of our psyche--our soul--and our relationship with God.  For communities, it is the “spirit” of our church, that strange ineffable character that a gathering of human beings develops as they live out common life together.
In addition to that strength of spirit, the story of David that is front and center for any conversation about small and large is that old but valuable chestnut from our Sunday School years: the story of David and Goliath.
Whatever one may believe about the historicity of this battle between a sling-wielding adolescent and a towering, boss-battle giant of a man, the themes within this narrative are clear.
First, we hear that the young David--having volunteered to take on the giant Goliath in single combat--is offered the weapons and armor of an adult man.  But he’s still a kid, and when he tries to put on the bronze armor and carry the sword that Saul offers him, he finds he can barely walk under the weight of the armor.
That, and he has no idea how to make effective use of a sword.  
He sets them aside, and chooses instead to use tools more befitting his size, stature, and skillset.  He takes the weapon of a shepherd...a sling and stones.  With them, he can strike from a distance, keeping himself away from fangs and claws...and spears, even ones with a haft as thick as a weaver’s beam.
He also takes the armor of a shepherd: his agility, his flexibility, and his ability to move.
This, for the small church, is an important lesson.  In a land teeming with giants, it might be tempting to look to how they act and how they function, and do what they do.  This is a mistake, as David realized.  If you in your smallness try to mimic the patterns and strengths of giants, you’re going to get your hat handed to you with your head still in it.
Go with the strengths that God has given you.  Use the gifts you’ve been given, those that reflect your actual identity as a community.  As Jackson Carroll put it:
Smaller churches, by virtue of their size, have unique opportunities for vital functioning in some areas that are not normally open to larger churches..intimacy, caring, and support; opportunities for the development of mutual ministry of clergy and laity; opportunities for significant intergenerational experiences; and opportunities for mission in the community.
Here, though, it’s equally important to take the story of David and Goliath with a grain of grace’s salt.  Sure, the growth and expansion of megachurch Christianity and our theologies of the large have had a significant impact on community and neighborhood churches.  In many ways, it’s worth resisting the growth of the ecclesiastical monoculture that these often-uniform congregations have created.
But if we get too far into the martial metaphors, we can start viewing larger communities as inherently negative, as being such a part of the world that they’re no longer really places where the Kingdom is articulated.  This is dangerous, because it sets us up as being too aggressively negative towards large and corporately sized communities.
The goal of the small church is not to stand in an adversarial relationship with the big church.  We’re not trying to lob our sling stone into the tanned forehead of Joel Osteen, as tempting as that may be.  Our primary goal is to to fulfill our place in the ecology of the Kingdom.  We are different.  Our gifts are different, our role is different, and our strengths are different.
In that, it’s helpful to look to the Apostle Paul’s conversations about gifts and the body of Christ.  Paul repeatedly engaged the organic metaphor of the body as he described the nature of the church, describing the Beloved Community as being comprised not of many identical souls, but of individuals who bring different gifts to their engagement with the faith.  He briefly explores this concept in his letter to the church at Rome, but goes into far more detail in his dealings with the endlessly fractious, pecking-order obsessed Corinthians.  We are all part of the same thing, he reminds us:
If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
While this is typically used to describe our individual giftedness within the dynamics of the whole faith community, it has something important to teach us about the interplay between communities.  Every individual has a gift they can bring to the community, and every community has a potential giftedness to bring to the whole.  Just as it is spiritually dangerous to view small churches as inherently unfaithful or inferior, so too it’s dangerous for those of us who love smaller communities to automatically assume that larger churches are inherently flawed.
It’s tempting, very tempting.  If you were cheering along in the prior chapters during this book’s deconstruction of the ethics of corporate/consumer growth, its very easy to transition from that to a form of bitterness or resentment.  We can assume, wrongly, that nothing good ever happens in those sprawling Jesus MegaCenters.
As the case study in the previous chapter revealed, even the largest and most carefully choreographed megachurch can convey the message of the Gospel.  It is entirely possible.  Rather than give in to the easy siren song of resentment and opposition, it’s important to acknowledge that those congregations that tower like Colossus over the world can be bearers of Christ’s gracious message.
What small churches can offer may be better, sure.  We provide authentic human relationship, organizational agility, less focus on building and salary, and fewer worldly distractions.  But though we’re stronger and more robust, we must have patience with those poor, spiritually-weaker megachurches, and acknowledge that they, too, have an important part to play in God’s kingdom.
I say that with a wink, but also with some seriousness.  What smaller communities have to offer is far more fundamental to the walk of the Christian Way than the sound and fury of larger communities.  As we work our way through the most essential way of being together, resentment or anger towards congregations that are more radically conformed to our culture and the “spirit of this age” does not help us.  Sure, there are flaws with corporately structured churches.  But the task of the small congregation is not to sit there muttering to itself about the flaws of others.  Our task is to do what we do best.   As Stephen Burt and Hazel Roper expressed it:
Do not judge your church by another congregation’s standards for success.  Do not jump to conclusions, mistaking symptoms for causes; beware of faulty perceptions.  Do not try too hard; maybe it is easier than you think.  Be unique, but borrow ideas that work.  Test out a few high visibility ideas that do not drain energy; keep the project simple, easy, and context appropriate.  Celebrate, appreciate, make visible. Pat yourselves on the back more often.  Have fun...
What is that “best?”  It’s our ability to live close in community with one another.  It’s our capacity to share the relationships and intimacy that come from close conversation, from the sustained knowledge of one another that time and togetherness can bring.
We hear much about the teachings of Jesus, about how he spoke in ways that often fuddled and confused his first-century listeners.  When the throngs gathered to hear this wonderworker speak, they undoubtedly caught that excited hum that we all catch as social creatures when there’s excitement in the air.
But more often than not, they left not entirely understanding what it was that they’d heard.  As we read in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, the teachings that came in parables were intentionally challenging, designed to force you to pay attention and use your imagination.  
And if you still didn’t get what Jesus intended, the place where an answer was sought was not in the din and shouting and excitement of the crowd.  For that, you needed to be part of a small circle, a space in which questions can be asked and answered, and conversations and relationship can grow.
Small communities offer up opportunities for that kind of richness, and it is in that place that discipleship really grows.
So from these passages and quotations, what do we have?  We have the scriptural and theological essence of what it means to live in a fruitful, life-giving small community.  We hear that God loves the small and the faithful, even if they are struggling.  We see, in story, that if we’re a little David church, we shouldn’t try to be something that we’re not.  We hear affirmed, in Paul’s understanding of the nature of Christ’s body the church, that the different gifts of those perceived as “weaker” are just as vital.  And we know, from Christ’s own teaching, that small gatherings are often the place where the richest knowledge of the Gospel resides.
They’re a place of profound spiritual and theological value, one that resonates throughout scripture and in the wisest teachings of modern and postmodern faith.  We miss that, and make the same mistake our culture makes when we look at our lovely, tiny little gatherings.  As small church expert David Ray put it:
Too many small churches have failed to do their theological homework.  They’ve missed the fact that God has historically chosen to work through small remnant groups.  They weren’t paying attention when Martin Buber taught us that the I-Thou relationships found in intimate caring groups of people are the kind of relationships prized by God and characteristic of many small churches.  They didn’t understand Reinhold Niebuhr’s premise in Moral Man and Immoral Society that the larger the grouping the more immoral and self-serving its attitudes and behavior tend to be.  Paul Tillich taught us that the essence of sin is separation, yet we fail to recognize that life in larger groups tends to be more impersonal and fragmented.  
Small is beautiful in the eyes of God, and realizing that is the key to finding our confidence in strawberry churches.
So we’ve looked at a giant church, a great and glorious behemoth.  Let’s look at a wee little kirk, now, why don’t we?
LINK TO CHAPTER SIX

Chapter Four: The Face of Growth-focused Christianity

Before going into any significant exploration of the dynamics of small congregations, I initiated a participant-observer site visit at the single largest and most materially successful congregation in my region.That congregation is Mclean Bible Church, the 800 pound Jeezilla in the Washington Metropolitan Area. It's a megachurch in every way, shape, and form. It's got a huge new honking main campus near Tysons Corner. It has several satellite campuses. It has scores of ministries, and scores of pastors. It has tens of thousands who attend regularly, or, at least, semi-regularly. They are the AmeriChrist Inc. Industry Standard, as ranked by J.D. Power and Associates.Having been a lifelong Presbyterian, growing up in urban social-justice congregations, I’d never engaged with anything that could be described as a megachurch prior to this visit. I’d been to biggish churches, sure, with attendance in the high hundreds or a couple of thousand. But unlike a large number of Americans, the Jesus MegaCenter experience was not something I could claim to ever have had.Before I went, I spent some time getting myself centered and focused. Do not prejudge. Do not enter with preconceptions. Cleanse your mind, and enter as if you had no knowledge of this place.I spent some time in prayer. I spent some time reading scripture. I girded my loins. Or at least took a shower and put on some fresh underwear. Six of one, half dozen of the other.I got in my car, and trundled off to meet Goliath.Being open to the positive is important, as was being systematic.  I arrived early, and spent time both before and after the worship event I attended to fully survey the facility and observe the dynamics of their Sunday worship traffic.  First, I noted the things that MBC does well.The first moments of my arrival at Mclean Bible surfaced the first thing they do right: parking. They have parking down to a science. They have to. When you're trying to transition tens of thousands of people out of the 9:00 AM service and transition in tens of thousands of people for a 10:45 AM service, things need to go like clockwork. That's some serious believer volume to turn over. I arrived a tick early, so finding a spot was easy. It was a bit of a zoo when I left...I'm not used to sitting in traffic for five minutes just to get out of church...but the whole experience had a "leaving the stadium after the big game" sort of feel. The combination their parking lot volunteers and the law enforcement folks directing traffic for the church out on Route 7 make things work as well as you could reasonably expect.It might seem flippant, but what that speaks to is a deep commitment to organization at every level of encounter.  The experience of the megachurch is a carefully managed and structured one, at every possible level of engagement.As I walked into the campus from the two-level parking garage, I noted the next thing they do right: facility. It's highly functional, and very familiar. From the exterior, the building gives off none of the classical visual cues that would make you think "house of worship." Honestly, it looks more like a Nordstrom. When one enters, the interior is instantly familiar to any American. It's like some combination of a Cineplex and a Mall. There are nicely produced displays everywhere. The smell of coffee from the coffee bar fills the air on the lower level. Wending your way upstairs, the large airy lobby has arrays of volunteers sitting behind an elegantly curving information desk. It's like the rental car booths at a nice mid-sized regional airport. Entering the cavernous primary sanctuary is like entering a theater. It is an immense windowless auditorium, festooned with a half dozen large screens. At the front of the sanctuary, diaphanous scrims were illuminated with simple images of vines. On the walls of sanctuary, crosses were integrated into the sound damping elements. The sanctuary was designed by the same architectural firm that created the Strathmore theater, one of the best venues for the arts in the DC area.  The firm lists Mclean Bible Church as one of it's performing arts clients.  It's very well done. As it cost $90 million dollars, you’d hope so.The displays tastefully distributed throughout the building told the story of another MBC skillset: breadth. They do everything. There's a ministry for everyone. There are ministries of service. Ethnic ministries. Cultural ministries. There's a gigantonormous hippity happenin' youth ministry. There are small groups and a "university," there are umpty-zillion support groups and book groups. I suspect they may be lacking a Gay Men's Chorus, but outside of that, there's something for almost everyone. They have a ferociously entrepreneurial approach to ministry...and it clearly succeeds in building up the church.As I settled into a seat in the upper tiers of the sanctuary, I waited for things to begin, and when they did, I discovered the next thing that MBC does right: music. The guitarist who opened up with an acoustic version of a hymn precisely five minutes before the service was really very solid. The praise team that came out to begin the service with several Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) tunes was also solid, and not nearly as overbrimming with weepy-emo Jesusness as I'd feared. Unlike many of my Presbyterian comrades, I know this music from my time at my first congregation. The only song I didn't already know was one that had been written for the church, and it was melodically simple enough that I could follow it even on the practice run-through. CCM is not and will never be my first preference in worship, but I like it well enough, and sang along robustly. It worked.With the service now cranking into full swing, another MBC strength surfaced: choreography. I'm not talking about dancing, although there was a troupe of multiethnic munchkins who came out and did an It's-A-Small-World-After-Jesus routine that wouldn't have felt out of place at Disney. I mean the seamlessness of the event. Everything worked. The timing of transitions between one element of the service and another was perfect. The transitions between worship leaders was without flaw. The highly complex presentation used to augment the service...which required coordination of varying images across multiple screens...were sharp, seamless and thoroughly professional. MBC openly declares excellence as a primary governing ethic, and it shows throughout their worship. It exudes a sleek competence. As toight as a toiger, as they say.Related to this focus on excellence is another evident strength: brand identity. The service I attended was running simultaneously with an EXTREEEME youth service in a smaller, 500 seat venue on site. Separate services on five other campuses in two neighboring counties were also cranking at the same time. But when time comes for the message, it's exactly the same everywhere. Outside of the primary sanctuary, MBC worshippers look up at the big screen at the appointed time, and get the same perfectly produced and packaged message that you'd get at the auditorium in the mothership. It's all MBC...and that's smart branding.As the service progressed, I looked around at the now-packed sanctuary. Here, I saw yet another strength, one that's a serious kick in the ovaries for progressive Jesus people: diversity. MBC is a poster child for the multiethnic church. The largest group in attendance was Anglo...but just barely. There was a large Asian contingent, many African-Americans, and an impressive array of families that mixed ethnicity. There were young adults, young families, and middle-aged folk. The only group that seemed underrepresented were old white people. Guess we oldliners have to have some niche. It was as diverse as the throng you might see milling about in a mall in a major metropolitan area.  It was radically different presenting community than my own denomination, which for all of its earnest talk about diversity somehow manages to be 90% white.Let's see. Hmmm. Anything else? Possibly...but those are the primary strengths I observed in the half-day I spent reviewing the facility and its operations.The weaknesses of Mclean Bible Church are harder to ascertain, and easy to miss in the great shiny intensity of this behemoth of a congregation.  First, Mclean Bible Church is not a community. It is simply too vast to serve that purpose. You are as acquainted with the people around you as you would be at the Multiplex, or as you wend your way through Black Friday crowds at the mall. Observing the behavior of most of the folks in attendance, that's precisely what was going on. There were little clusters of folks who knew one another, but there was no sense of connectedness between the clusters. It's an easy place to disappear, to be both nameless and faceless. That is, quite frankly, the challenge in any megachurch. MBC's leadership knows this, and relentlessly pitches small groups and study groups and ministries to help folks connect to a sub-community within the church. Their carefully constructed small groups methodology is clearly a priority.  In articulating their hope to create meaningful life transformation, they say the following:We believe that this is best done in relational environments where biblical disciples can be made. Groups are the primary vehicle by which we carry out the mission of McLean Bible Church.Our groups are led by intentional leaders and meet weekly in homes around the DC area and at MBC Tysons. The group provides opportunity for honest, transparent, and authentic relationships where each member is actively becoming a disciple who makes disciples of Jesus Christ.But it is easy, oh so easy, to move through the church like a shadow. Or, more significantly, to have nothing meaningful to do with folks who are different from you or don't share your particular interests. That's a problem in smaller churches too, of course. But a ministry that is intentionally structured around appealing to particular demographic categories or areas of affinity...and provides little opportunity for transforming relationships in the broader life of the church...runs the strong risk of being "diverse" in the way a high school cafeteria is diverse. Or, again, as a mall is diverse.Second, and this is a matter of aesthetics, MBC's facility really doesn't present like sacred space. It is an unquestionably utilitarian building, and well-designed for it's purpose. But it's also essentially secular in appearance. There is no significant design feature in the building itself that contributes to a sense of being on holy ground, unless you consider Nordstrom to be holy ground. Ultimately, this doesn't bother most folks. Being American and all, we like the practical and the useful and the immediate. You can worship anywhere, and God is present wherever you seek God's presence. It is, as they say, what's inside that counts.I came away from my Mclean Bible Church site visit in much the same way I came away from my reading of Joel Osteen’s “Your Best Life Now.”  Meaning, I found in it more that was graceful and good than I'd expected. The essential teachings of Jesus were there, up to a point, most likely in enough quantity that lives are being transformed and conformed to His grace. Westboro Baptist it most certainly is not. It skillfully uses the tools of the marketplace, it has wildly succeeded according to the terms of the marketplace. But...as the early church learned when it conformed itself to the power of the state and reaped worldly prosperity...sometimes that comes with a cost.And that poses a challenge for the folks who yearn for communities that are more intimate, that are more organic, that are less visible manifestations of material success.It’s easy to look to such a congregation, and assume that this is goal.  Here, thousands upon thousands, getting exactly what they want.  Here, the message of the Gospel is being spread with the precision and efficiency of a rapidly spreading new franchise.What ground do we have to stand on, if we want to offer something very, very different?For that, let’s look to where scripture offers us theologies of intimacy, and the spirituality of the small.


LINK TO CHAPTER FIVE

Chapter Three: Christendom, AmeriChrist, and the Church

As it started, the Jesus movement that spread aggressively throughout the Greco-Roman world bore little resemblance to anything having to do with socio-political power.  Oh, sure, there are folks who argue it did, who'd suggest that Jesus was a political figure, a revolutionary.  There's not a whit of history, not a scrap of text or written tradition to back that up, but hey.  If it sells a million books and gets you on NPR, you're in like Flynn.  For the first few centuries of Christianity, it was radically nonviolent, so much so that as it spread it became a source of concern to those in power.  As more and more human beings engaged with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, they showed an increasing unwillingness to engage in the manly and noble virtue of hacking other human beings to death with sharp objects.  Love your enemies, said Jesus, and for some reason, people took him seriously.Roman Philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius fretted about this trend in his writings.  What are we supposed to do with these pathetic weakling Christians, who'd rather die with blessings on their lips than fight for the Empire?When the Roman Empire fell, as empires always do, there were many Roman thinkers who blamed that fall on Christianity, which had so weakened the martial virtues of the Roman state that folks would rather welcome the Visigoths to the SaturnsDay church spaghetti dinner than stick a pilum into them. But things were changing.  The process of that change began on a bridge, a bridge that represents a crossing over from Christianity as a radically nonviolent faith to Christianity as the awkward servant of social and political power. That bridge is the Milvian bridge, which still stands in Rome today.  It's truly ancient, dating back to the year 206.  In the year 312, there was a battle on and around that bridge that changed the whole direction of Christian faith.  In the mess and struggle that was the declining Roman empire, two leaders were vying for power.  There was Maxentius, who had claimed power in Rome.  And there was Constantine, who was consolidating his power in the East of the empire.  As the story goes, Maxentius arrayed his forces to block access to the bridge. On the far side of the bridge.  With the river Tiber behind them.  Leaving no easy retreat, and no way to regroup or alter position.  Maxentius is not exactly one of the great minds of military history.Meanwhile, as Constantine was marching his army to the city, he announced he'd had a vision.  He'd seen the Greek letters Chi and Rho in the sky, with the Greek words En Touto Nika around them.  Those letters are the "CHR" in Christ, and that phrase means "In this sign, conquer."  And so--in perhaps the single most impressive misinterpretation of a vision in the history of Jesus--Constantine took this as meaning that this new god Jesus was going to wipe out all of his enemies.  That he'd noticed that Jesus was increasingly popular among his soon-to-be subjects, to the point that even his mom was a convert?  I'm sure that wasn't a factor.He ordered his forces to put the Chi Rho symbol on their shields, and on October 28, 312, Constantine's army routed Maxentius, confidently butchering thousands upon thousands in the name of Jesus.  The river Tiber ran red with their blood.Maxentius himself drowned in the Tiber trying to flee.  On a horse.  Wearing armor.  Again, Maxentius wasn't exactly the sharpest sword in the armory.But Constantine managed to recover his corpse, chopped off the head, and then paraded through Rome with the bloody head on a pole.  I'm not sure how that works with the whole WWJD thing, but maybe Constantine hadn't looked at the bracelet in his new member's welcome pack yet.Constantine soon after declared Christianity the Official Religion of the Roman Empire (tm), and Christian faith and political power were fused.  Conversion to Christianity became something done at the edge of a sword.  The radical, transforming, nonviolent ethic of love for enemy became an afterthought, to be "spiritualized" away or diluted or ignored.Christendom--the fusion of Christianity and political power--had begun.For a millennia and a half, the message of Jesus rode on the dark wings of empire.It was the age of Christendom. The state and the church were one.That the message of Jesus was a poor match for the aspirations of power meant little.  If you veiled the teachings of Jesus behind church authority and wrapped them up in nationalistic or racist ideology, you could turn them completely on their head.  Keeping folks illiterate helped, and a little selective reading/editing didn't hurt, either.  "Live by the sword [...]," as Jesus himself said.This made for a whole bunch more Christians."Are you a Christian," asks the man with the gun.  "Sure," you say, looking into the frightened eyes of your wife and children.  "Are you the right sort of Christian," he then asks.  "Whatever that is, I am," you say, because you love your children."Do you repent and believe in the Church and all of Her Teachings," says the Inquisitor, hot iron in hand.  "Oh absolutely," you say, because you want the pain to stop.  You'd believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster and all His Noodly Appendages if the pain would stop."I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," says the priest, casting water on your whip-scarred back as you stumble from the slave ship.  You don't answer, because he's speaking Latin, not Yoruba, and you have no idea what he's saying.  Welcome to Christendom!  Underneath that dark flourishing, though, the essence of the message stuck around.  Here and there, it thrived in monastic communities or in gatherings of believers.  Wherever human beings actually attended to the essence of the Gospel, it changed lives for the better.  It became a reason to show mercy to the enemy, and kindness to the stranger.  If you bothered looking at it for yourself, it seemed to subvert the very power that spread it.  Just be careful about telling anyone that you've noticed, because bad things happened when people spoke up.That was a painful part of who we were, for nearly 1,500 years.  In some places, it is still the way things are.But here in America, Christendom is dead.  Oh, the body is still warm, and twitches a bit now and again, but it's a dead thing.  Honestly?  That's a cause for celebration.You wouldn't know that from some of the yearnings of certain corners of Christianity.  When they see the state's power no longer propping up the faith, they see danger.  We're a Christian nation, they cry! These are the folks that assume that the American journey is the same thing as the story of the Gospel.  In that, they embrace Christendom, the fusion of power and faith.  They're like the folks who assumed that the British narrative was the sacred narrative, or the Belgian, or the German, or the Russian.  We are God's People!  Gott Mitt Uns!  It's Manifest Destiny, baby!  If you're planning on subjugating the heathen, forcing them to abandon their ways, and taking control of their very productive and mineral rich land, it helps to believe this.I'm not so sure how Canadians feel on this front, but if they do think they're God's people, they're probably just too polite to mention it.While the orders and structures of our society are a blessing, it's important not to fool yourself into believing that a nation can be Christian.  It can't.  Not ever.  In that, Christendom was always a lie.Why?Ask yourself: what is a nation?  A nation is a people, a society, bounded and knit together first by geography, but more significantly by laws.  These legal structures provide the common ground upon which the collective life of a people are founded.  They establish justice and balance between the competing interests that arise when human beings share space together.  That legal order can be used to oppress and serve the powerful.  But it can also--as the United States Constitution mostly does--provide an equitable foundation for our life together.Some faith traditions blend the two.  In Torah, Judaism has just such a set of laws, established to govern both the religious and the jurisprudential life of a Jewish nation.  In Sharia, Islam has another set of laws, which do the same thing.Jesus didn't give us that.  We get no carefully ordered system of governance from the Nazarene.  He told us stories instead.  He did not lay out the regulations for running an orderly society, in a tidy little manual with headings and subheadings.  He only gave us One Law, one intended not for ruling, but for the transformation and liberation of human beings no matter what the political system they inhabit.As Christianity in the United States and elsewhere has pulled away from the use of coercive power to enforce itself, it's been powerfully and significantly freeing.  That's the whole point of the separation of church and state.  That little stricture, so frustrating to those who just for the integrity of a constitutional republic.  It significantly serves the integrity of faith itself.Because a coerced faith is not a real faith.  When we use force to compel others to believe as we believe, when we rely on the power of the state to enforce our beliefs, then we are no longer Christian.  Good news can never be shared at the end of a sword.  We serve another power.So this transition, honestly, has been a good thing for Christians.  It frees our faith to stand--or fall-- legitimately on its own.  Without arm-twisting and fear in the tool box, we can get back to our purpose.  Yay us!  Go Jesus!But there are other forms of power.Without the sword of the state to force people to experience the love of Jesus--or at least give unbelievers a real and tangible sense of his suffering--the church as an organization faces a conundrum.How to get people in the doors?  I mean, here Jesus asked us to bring everybody to him, and suddenly they're free to wander off and do as they please. And we aren't allowed to kill them, not even a little bit.We could try being relentlessly gracious, merciful, and kind.  We could try caring for the poor, turning ourselves fully to the needs of the hungry and the oppressed.  We could let the power of the Gospel suffuse our souls, changing us into beings who live only for the reconciliation of the world, and whose every word is grace and welcome, to friend and stranger and enemy alike.  We could show the world our flawed but beautiful struggle to live according to a more excellent way.But that would be haaaaAARD.  Don't make us do that, Jesus. So we look around for other options. Surely there must be other options.Around us, our consumer culture shines and sparkles.  It is the market, but not as Jesus would have recognized it.  This is not the agora of the Greco-Roman world, or the small town equivalent.  The little storefronts that once made a modest living for families are withering away, replaced by big boxes with big parking lots, which themselves are fading as the internet box grows bigger and bigger until we're always in a store, all the time.The values of the marketplace and the ethics of business are ascendant, defining every aspect of our existence.  We celebrate wealth and success.  Our communications with each other are an endless fountain of products, services, and self-promotion.  It is everything we see, and everywhere we are.  Before our eyes are cast images of unattainable perfection, for which we are told to hunger.  When we cannot replicate that unattainable life, we are extended a line of credit at twenty-three and a quarter percent.  When we find ourselves falling apart from the strain of striving for what--by design--cannot ever be attained, we are offered drugs to make the stress and the anxiety go away.Globalized business straddles national borders, extending itself beyond the reach of any one nation-state's legal jurisdiction or currency.  Disembodied corporate persons that transcend national boundaries drive public policy, and define the way we think about ourselves and our world.  The ethos of profit and growth and organizational expansion defines what is excellent, and tells us what is good.And just as the church allowed itself to be co-opted by culture in the age of Empire, so it now embraces the new power of consumer culture. It's all in the name of Jesus, of course.  And it works!  Lord, but does it work.  Brings 'em in like gangbusters, hungry for the elusive blessings of material success and anxious about their uncertain place in a market red in tooth and claw.  It works as well as the edge of Constantine's sword ever did.As John Wimberly puts it in The Business of the Church, “..the Christian church is the original, largest, and wealthiest multinational corporation in the world.  Almost two thousand years before Citibank, GE, or Microsoft, the church began to accumulate assets and personnel.  By the sixteenth century, the Medicis of Florence had become Europe’s richest family by managing the Vatican’s money.  Today, the Christian church owns hundreds of millions of acres and hectares of property, including prime real estate sites in the centers of the world’s richest cities.  The church has a cash flow of billions of dollars annually.  It has millions of employees.  Indeed, it would take a great deal of research to find a country or region where the multinational corporation called the church does not have a local branch operation.”Christendom is dead.  Long live AmeriChrist, Inc.Yeah, I know.  That's a tich hyperbolic.  Just a little.But the value set of our marketized culture has unquestionably worked its way into our expectations for how Jesus folk in America understand and share Christian faith. It shapes our expectations of the leadership in our congregations.  It forms and shapes how we view community, both as we seek a place to encounter God and as we live out our faith within those communities.And all of this shapes how we understand God, and our relationship to one another.We’re fiercely interested in profit and growth, in expanding our influence and the influence of the specific community that we serve.  We use the tools and implements of business development, and the concepts underlying marketing and advertising.  It impacts our gatherings, and impacts the perceived role of those called to lead our communities.Because in this market-driven, growth-obsessed culture, there are pastors, and there are Pastors.Leadership in the church in America tends to take two very distinct forms.  One, we don't see, in the same way we don't see the air around us.  The other is the only thing we see, because it's so very bright and shiny.What we don't see is the general reality. Most congregational leadership exists in the modestly sized communities that comprise the vast majority of American churches.  The median church in the United States has a total of 75 regular participants.  These are the neighborhood churches, the town churches, the storefronts, and the gatherings that come together in schools and whatever space they can cobble together.Within these churches, life revolves around community.  It's small, it's quiet, and faith has an intimate quality.  These little congregations aren't necessarily perfect.  Like human beings, some are sweet and beautiful, some are flawed, some are as mean as a rattlesnake.  But when you're talking about where most pastors reside, you're talking the small church.That means most pastors don't really make much of a living at it.  They tend to be either poor, part-time, or otherwise employed.  If they're full time, they're lucky to live like waitresses or librarians, warehouse workers or cops.  It is humble work.  But if you're called to it, you don't much care.They pour their heart and soul into their communities.  Some are great, and some, well, not so much.  But they are the norm.  They are the fat part of that pastoral bell curve.  When we think of what it means to teach and preach and care for a community, this is where most folks are.AmeriChrist does not show us these people.  It does not wish us to understand the life and purpose of a typical pastor through their journey.Instead, AmeriChrist, Inc. shows us the shiny ones, the one-percenters.  These megachurch pastors aren't representative of the reality of pastoring, any more than the CEO of Monsanto is representative the reality of farming. Instead, they are those who have succeeded by every standard our society has established.  Within our culturally mediated expectations of what it means to be excellent, they define what it is to be the best, to be the thing to which every person should aspire.They have grown a church, or taken over a growing church.  That church has gotten huge.  Big.  Vast.  Books have been published, and then pitched.  There is a campus, and a media empire.  It is bright and glorious and remarkably lucrative.  This is what we are asked to aspire to.  It becomes our norm. In AmeriChrist, Inc., where the values of the marketplace define what a pastor is and does, pastoral leadership has several key features, features that track along an arc that leads to that shiny place.And if we’re not in that shiny place?  If we’re not that powerful, influential, large-haired big parking lot church pastor?  Then we have failed.  If we’re in lay leadership or attending a smaller church, one where the programs are not shiny and sparkly and professionally presented?  Then we are somehow inferior.That, more than anything else, is the operating assumption of the growth ethic of the marketized church.  It is an assumption that guarantees that most congregations will feel radically anxious about their identity and about their value.  It is an assumption that doubly impacts those called to lead and teach the church, as market-driven values lead pastors to view themselves in ways that are radically and fundamentally unbiblical.If we assume that the skillsets required to run these market-metric organizations are the same as those that form and shape real life-giving Christ-centered relationships, we’re deluding ourselves.  Elizabeth O’Connor, one of the founding members of Church of the Saviour, put it best when she said:We have discovered over the years that even the people who know how to administer churches, banks, corporations, and hospital units have no idea how to nurture a small group so that its members deepen their lives in Christ--learn self knowledge, how to listen and to care--the deep nurture of the spiritual life so essential for the recovery of vision and passion.And yet we roar ahead, convinced that bigger is better, and corporate is the goal.  In the next chapter, we’ll explore what that looks like, as we visit a giant, corporately structured congregation.


LINK TO CHAPTER FOUR

Chapter Two: Growth, Church and the Purpose of Profit

Years ago, I found myself in a job I hadn't anticipated.Honestly, I'd not really anticipated much, what with my Religious Studies undergraduate degree.  I'd pursued what interested me, and taken the coursework that I found fascinating.  Having graduated and looking at at my prospects, I became convinced that this would lead to a lucrative career either driving a forklift or in a dishroom.  I had experience in both warehouses and dishrooms, right there on my resume next to the degree, so I figured one of the two was a shoo-in.I knew how to work, and was willing to learn, so after a few fits and starts, I found myself with a job in an office.  I became a fetch-and-carry intern, sorting and filing and--here there's a sign of how old I am--faxing.  I chugged around, learning things, like how to operate and program the database my employer used.One thing led to another, and after a while, my immediate supervisor--the only other person who knew how to operate the database--left.  Lo and behold, I had a real job.It was at that point that I began paying more attention to the big picture of what I was doing.  My workplace was a bit peculiar.  The Aspen Institute was and is a very unique organization.  Founded in the nineteen-fifties, it was created with the idea that maybe it might help society if leaders--in business, government, and the nonprofit sector--took a few moments to place their lives into the context of classical philosophy. Socratic method, togas, and mountains?   That seemed to take, and so the organization grew, adding on programs designed to help leadership in varying different fields get a hold on what really matters in their field.  I was working for a program called the Nonprofit Sector Research Fund, which gave grants to support research into the "how" and "why" of nonprofit organizations.It was a heady place, a "big-ideas" sort of place, the kind of job that finds you sitting at a bar drinking beers after work with a member of the British aristocracy and one of the founders of ACORN, as they gossiped about Dennis and Margaret Thatcher's relationship. It was not quite the dishroom I had anticipated.And the more I worked there, and engaged, the more engaged I became in the ideas I encountered.  Why do we engage in charity and selfless, mission-driven behavior?  What should voluntary endeavor look like?  How does that relate to government and to business?  These questions were bubbling around in our society, and we had no real sense of the answers.That's not quite true.  The "answer," as it was being pitched out there in our profit-driven culture, was that nonprofits should look like businesses.  As it was, nonprofits were slow.  They were clumsy.  They were inefficient.  To be more effective, they needed to embrace the values of entrepreneurial endeavor.  They needed to structure themselves like businesses, and act like businesses, and run themselves like businesses.Leaders of nonprofit organizations needed to look to the C-suites of business for their inspiration.  And charities that were doing work that businesses could handle more efficiently should just step aside and let the market do its job.This was the early 1990s, and the big push was the transition from nonprofit hospitals to for-profit hospitals.  Businesses were buying up charitable health care providers right and left, and while there was some concern that maybe this might be a bad thing, those concerns were dismissed.  Nonprofits were clumsy and inefficient, after all.  Once profit-seeking and market competition was introduced into the health-care sector, or so the argument went, the inherent efficiencies of the marketplace would drive down costs for health-care consumers.  Just let the market do its job, and we will all benefit from the...Yuh huh.  Sure.As economist Milton Friedman famously put it, the goal of every business endeavor is to maximize profit.  Period.  And if you're selling a product that people must buy or die, and aren't in a position to critically assess, there's just not a chance in H E double toothpicks that prices are going to go down.  You haven't researched your provider options while you're in the back of the ambulance as they're trying to revive you?  Gosh, you need to be a savvier consumer.Burt Weisbrod, professor of economics at Northwestern University, describes this phenomenon as an inherent flaw of “information asymmetry.”  When the recipient of a product or service can’t critically assess that service, market forces fail.  And in health care?  It's been twenty years since we began that “profit transition” experiment.  We know how that worked out now.  The price for hospital care has soared, with absurd markups and outrageous charges added on to bills that drive tens of thousands of families into bankruptcy while a few huge companies do really remarkably well.Then there was executive pay.  To get good leadership, you had to pay for it.  If you expected an organization to fulfill its mission, you needed a motivated and committed executive.  That means salary, salaries that increasingly rose and rose to wild heights.  So said the nonprofit bigwigs, and the CEOs of businesses who sat on their boards.  A significant proponent of this back in the late 1980s and early 1990s was William Aramony, the head of the United Way.  Aramony had made a bunch of changes to the United Way, but his biggest ideas were drawn from the world of big business. For example, to drive the United Way to be more businesslike, responsive, and consumer-oriented, he pushed it to allow you to specifically allocate what charity you wanted your money to go to.  Donor choice, they called it.  It empowered the charitable consumer!  What a good thing!Of course, the entire purpose of the United Way was twofold.  First, to free nonprofits from having to chase after donor dollars and to focus all their energies on doing good.  Second, to free human beings from the endless dunning calls and letters from charities hitting us up for cash.  Really.  That's why it was created.  It wasn't just about the convenience of payroll donation.  Eliminating the waste and annoyance of endless charitable money-seeking was its mission, its whole reason for existence.Twenty years after Aramony, nonprofits are still forced to advertise to get United Way dollars. Aramony was also a jet-setter, who lived the lifestyle of a corporate executive.  His self-justification was simple.  If nonprofits are to be run like businesses, their executives should live like the leaders they are.  He schmoozed and wined and dined with the powerful and the wealthy.  He was an amazing fundraiser, and brought in a half-million dollar salary as recompense for his abilities...which back then, was considered a huge chunk of change for a nonprofit leader.  Not so much any more.He also, as it turned out, "borrowed" millions from the United Way to finance his C-suite lifestyle, which included a teenage mistress.  Self-interest, as a value, does tend to do that sort of thing.  That mess ended with Aramony spending seven years in prison for embezzlement, but as badly as that turned out, the ethic that made Aramony possible lived on.In the ten years I worked for the Institute, I had a chance to delve deep into the history and reality of charitable and voluntary action.  I read and met the best and most insightful voices in the nonprofit field.  During those years, what continually and repeatedly struck me was that the fundamental value of nonprofit organizations is not the same as the ethos that drives business.  It can’t be.Instead, the ethic and that guides and shapes the existence of a healthy nonprofit is their mission.Oh, sure, you need to be focused and realistic. You don't want to blunder around helplessly, with no plan, no measures of success, and only empty, unrealistic fantasies to guide you.  As church management consultant John Wimberly rightly points out, Jesus calls his followers to be good stewards.  But what drives a nonprofit organization is a radical commitment to its mission.  Period.  A nonprofit organization succeeds when its volunteers and staff have a driving passion to get 'er done, whatever “er” might be.That value is not the same as profit maximization, nor is it the same value as material self-interest or organizational survival.The more I studied and the more I steeped myself in the best research being done on nonprofit organizations, the more convinced I became that extending the values of the marketplace too deeply into nonprofit organizations diluted their commitment to mission.It was an absolutely fascinating and growing field of study, and as the years went by and I picked up more and more by osmosis, I found myself often thinking I might want to get into it myself.But God had other plans, which is why I'm now a pastor.  And in the church, in that sacred community where our holy and untainted mission is to follow Jesus and seek to love our neighbor, the yearning for profit and self-interest has no place.Uh huh.  Sure.We still hunger after the power that comes from profit and self interest.  Human beings love power, and Christianity is filled with human beings. So Christianity has always had a strange relationship with power.How strange?  Well, let’s look back a little bit into the history of the church.  Just a couple of thousand years.  C’mon.  It’ll be fun.


LINK TO CHAPTER THREE