| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “Be smart, be strategic” Our Bible verse for today: “Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve, whom he named apostles, to be with him, to send them out to preach, and to have authority to drive out demons. He appointed the twelve …” Mark 3:13-16 (CSB) Our thought for today: “Less can be more” Did you know that God doesn’t expect all churches to be the same? He doesn’t. In fact, the reason He created so many different kinds of churches, is because there are so many different kinds of people and so many different ministry settings. There’s a church that’s right for everyone, and there’s a church that is appropriate for every conceivable ministry setting. A cowboy church is different from a nursing home church. A Chinese church is different from an African church, which is different from a Romanian church, which is different from an American church. A small church is different from a big church. As we learned yesterday, God gives churches the freedom to be different from one another. But the pressure to copy other churches is intense. That’s especially true for smaller churches looking at larger churches. There’s a misguided notion in the Christian community that bigger is better and small means it must be broken in some way. That’s simply not true, especially in church life. In church life small is often better than large and less can in fact actually be more. We see this to be true in the case of Jesus and the 12 Apostles. Jesus gathered a small group around Himself to be the core group of their fellowship. There was also a larger, but still relatively small group of followers who made up their church family. As they then traveled around, larger crowds often came to hear the preaching and teaching and to participate in the activities (feeding the 5000), but the group that made up Jesus’ church family was actually rather small. Those who study church life tell us that more than 90% of all churches consist of fewer than one hundred members and attenders. What that means is that nine out of ten churches are small churches. Large churches are the exception not the norm. Why would that be? If, as our society seems to suggest, bigger is better and smaller is broken, that would mean that 90% of our churches are broken. Could that be true? Or, perhaps, was Jesus onto something when He seemed to be strategically maintaining a small group? Could there be something about small that is better than large? Is it true that sometimes less is more? Yes. When it comes to church life, small is often better than big and less can indeed be more. We’ll continue this discussion tomorrow. God bless, Pastor Jim |
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