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Church
Loving the Large Church (and Worrying About It)
by
Jason Byassee
“What book are you recommending now to the average workaday pastor?” asked my friend, who is hardly an average pastor. A church with a four-digit membership roll is enormous in an America where most congregations are still small.
My answer surprised me: Eugene Peterson’s new memoir,
The Pastor
. Not because it’s not great -- it is a powerful piece of theological storytelling about a life that has influenced all of North American Christianity (don’t believe me? Heard of
The Message
?). And my friend’s response surprised me more: “It sounds like Wendell Berry. I love Berry.”
Why should a pastor of a church of 1,500, and an employee at a leadership institute that invests in large congregations, both love Berry and Peterson? Both are theologians and poets who love the local, the regional, the particular, and loathe the large, the abstract, the anonymous. A theologian-pastor friend once opined to me that he couldn’t imagine a faithful church of more than 200 members. How can you really know more people than that? This Berryian, Petersonian claim is an odd one in an America in which professing to have 1,000 Facebook “friends” is nothing special.
[STATS: Megachurch research by The Hartford Institute for Religion Research.]
But why should my friend and I both be committed to the importance of large congregations and love writers who loathe them?
“The Pastor” details Peterson’s love for a regular gathering of pastors when he served a small (what other kind?!) congregation in Maryland. “The Company” met while learning the basics of psychology together, and kept meeting when the CPE-style class ended. They wondered together how a pastor is different than any other caregiver, and how the rhythm of their worship leadership could ripple out into the rest of their lives. And this group of mostly Christian pastors, ranging from mainline liberal to unapologetically evangelical, listened attentively to their one rabbi member about how the Sabbath works its way out in Jewish life via the Torah.
At one point a member decides to leave The Company to take a much bigger church. He spoke of “multiplying his effectiveness.” Peterson is distressed. He writes the man a confrontational letter in which he runs over him with a train, backs up, and runs over him again: the man’s decision has to do not with Christ-like service, but with “American values,” like “adrenaline and ego and size.” Peterson quotes Kierkegaard’s adage, “The more people, the less truth.” He speaks of large churches as offering a “false transcendence” contrary to a Christian maturity marked by “intimacy, renunciation, and personal deepening.” In effect, he excommunicates large church pastors from The Company (though he doesn’t stop to kick the Catholic priest out, despite the man’s 1,000-family parish!).
So why should I and my friend love such a voice as it accuses us who love large churches of blasphemy?
Because Peterson is largely right. Large churches can offer a flight from God and the neighbor who meet us face-to-face, and toward mere entertainment. Small churches can remind the large that salvation is always personal, and often difficult. I’ve made such arguments in
my own book
on the grandeur of small churches.
But here’s the thing: large churches don’t have to go that way. They can be communities that are more hospitable than small ones. If they divide up into small groups for prayer and worship and study and service, as the early Methodists did and faithful megachurches do today, they can offer first-name discipleship themselves. And large churches offer that, obviously enough, to more people than small churches can. And those “more people” aren’t a faceless mass. They are souls for whom Jesus died and rose, whom he longs to gather under his wings like a mother hen her chicks. Large churches remind the small that there are lots of people out there with no church -- being satisfied with the small can mean keeping Jesus to ourselves.
We need to hear critics like Peterson carping in our ears as we love the large. They can be right. And we’ll hold that word opposably with a word that sees God’s saving goodness even in large congregations.
-----
Do you think large churches present considerable (or even insurmountable) hurdles to disciplemaking and formation? What is your reaction to Kierkegaard's maxim, "The more people, the less truth"?
-----
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on the Duke Divinity "Call & Response" blog. It is reprinted here by permission.
The artwork above is quoted from here.
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Comments
Soren
I appreciate this article's premise. The reality is megachurches aren't going to disappear over night, so instead of attacking what's wrong with the model, it might be best to "find the bright spots" and develop a more sustainable, faithful paradigm. Megachurches are capable of providing their members with the same values that a small congregation enjoys. On the contrary, the beauty of a small congregation is you get to know the majority of the people. You're able to truly engage in the community I think Jesus envisioned for the church. In order for megachurces to practice this form of community it is obviously important to form small groups, but it may be even more important for those small groups to interact. Otherwise, the church remains separated from each other, only this time the church is divided by groups instead of individually. Indeed, less can be more!
Dave Ketter
I grew up in the average large church in Western PA (around 200 in attendance). For most of my life I had a distrust and bias agaiast churches larger than 300 because I didn't hinm they could do their job properly. As a church planter and working towards understanding what others have done, I've come to recognize that megachurches actually have the opportunities to do dkscipleship at a whole new level. Because they are free to have a team of staff pastors and have more freedom to train members to fulfill leadership roles, there is a tremendous opportunity for multiplying disciples. Small churches can do it too but it is a harder road to get there.
Glenda Farmer
I went to a large church because I wanted to hide from God - but he had other things in mind. None of which have I been terribly thrilled about!
It's not connection or services but it's purpose that makes and breaks a relationship in a large church.
Wally Harrison
I pastor a big/small congregation in an very urban setting. Smaller numerically (100), but huge in generosity and heart, which I think always measures more. And that, I think, is the point. A mega-church can be incredibly effective if the ethos is of a HUGE heart, and there is a contagious drive to love and serve far outside the walls. Always wondering if the neighbors are impacted and "need" the church to exist. I've seen the larger church use its plenty to be a huge blessing and resource, and far more often though, I have seen the large church largely irrelevant to the outside world. All the more that we prophetic voices to call the church, however large or small numerically, to be light for ALL.
Nate
I grew up in a small church in South Georgia. What I experienced there was not some much community as a sort of cliquishness that often prevented those from outside the church from coming in, something described in this peice. I now attend a much larger church (around 1,100 average attendance) and have found a far more welcoming community of people who are serious about disciplship and have a tremendous spirit of service. It is easy for large churches to devolve into "entertainment venues" but, as the author here says, they don't have to. A large church can have a small church feel if God's spirit is moving through the leadership and the members and there is a commitment to ensure people are connected to each other and to God and not just coming to sit in the pews on Sunday morning.
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