Its a weird-sounding idea, isn’t it? Almost an oxymoron; or like the pastor is a moron. But what if, in difficult times, the best possible church is the intentionally small one? Over the next few weeks, we will be doing a periodic series on why CTK is a small church… on purpose. This week: the Family of God. Next week: The Small Church and Mission.
The word “church” calls up all sorts of images in the minds of American Christians. Some of us think of the building we went to every Sunday with our parents; some of us think of organs, some of us think of sermons, some of us think of a rock concert. Some of us think of people; some of us think of programs. What do you think of when you think of the word “church”?
One of the primary metaphors for the church we find in Scripture is that of the family. From Genesis 12, where God calls the family of Abraham to serve him, to Romans 8, where Paul instructs Christians to call God “Father” the family metaphor runs through the whole Biblical story.
The purposefully small church takes this metaphor seriously. By committing to being a size where we can get to know one another, we hope to become a family. This is not glamorous. It demands that we participate, that we deal with our awkward relatives, that we support one another at great cost to ourselves. It isn’t glamorous, but it isn’t boring. Its the mundane work of cultivating intimacy with one another, and by extension, with God. And that is an adventure, because cultivating intimacy with a small family forces us to face the full ferocity of their humanity. What if one of the reasons we want our churches to be big is so that we can walk in, walk out, go home, and be done? What if one of the reasons we want our churches big is so that we can avoid the difficulty of relationship? You cannot avoid the difficulty of relationship with your family. But it is actually in that difficulty that you learn about grace, about mercy, about yourself, about God. The difficulty of the family isn’t a bug in the system. Its a feature! As Chesterton writes:
The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.
Read the whole essay. Then join a family.