Pastor's Corner
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 the late lamented Carl Sagan gave once,
about an image of a little blue dust mote viewed from a departing space
probe. Our entire world, just
a "pale blue dot" in
the vastness. 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.
Peace of Christ, and Blessings,
David
|