The Week-est Link, June 28, 2008

1. Here's a PDF copy of the 9Marks eJournal I mentioned yesterday. It's on marriage and pastoral families. A terrific issue, as I said. Thanks, Z, for the note.

2. Did you miss the audio download from the 2008 Band of Bloggers session? If so, here it is. Some of the best commentary from Christians on blogging that I've heard.

3. A Nashville church recently hosted a conference on the church and theology. Speakers included D. A. Carson, Tim Challies, and Steve Lawson. The audio material looks tremendous. Download it and see your vision for the church expand before your eyes. So exciting to see churches, not seminaries, do this kind of thing!

4. If you are in the market for faith-building music that just happens to be elegantly played and beauitfully sung, check out Red Mountain Church's cd "Help My Unbelief." I recently downloaded it and love it.

--Have a great weekend, all.

Comments on God Delighting in Small (New England) Churches

From Paul Buckley in Methuen, MA (check out his excellent, Christ-exalting blog)--

"I pastor a Sovereign Grace Ministries Church in New England, King of Grace Church. Thanks for your encouraging post! Pastoring in New England has been a wonderful adventure of learning to glory in Christ and the precious folks he does give us and not in our relative church size. It is one thing to say I am pastoring for God's glory, it is another to be tested with small success yet still labor. There are many here as Josh said who have labored faithfully for years (far beyond mine). They are my heroes.

I trust their faithful prayers and labors will indeed be answered in time with new converts, new church plants and a region full of disciples who will surpass them in zeal, knowledge and faithfulness. We intend to labor for Christ and His glory regardless of outcome yet we continue to ask for a greater harvest."

From Mike Freeman in Ohio (formerly of Maine)--

"Having grown up in a Maine small church, I agree with Owen. Additionally, I have labored as a lay youth leader for the past six years at at a church in southwest Ohio. I can say with certainty that the folks in Maine, by and large, "get it." In Ohio, the bible belt, many people go to church because that's what you are supposed to do- even fundamental evangelical churches. In Maine, most people don't go to church; the ones that do come actually seem to want to be there."

Are there other pastors out there who want to comment on the original blog I wrote? I would love more testimony on what it is like to pastor a small church and how you handle it.

To my knowledge, this subject is not often talked about. Small churches are something of the elephant in the room in many evangelical circles. We all know they're there (in large numbers), but as our environment is suffused with notions of success and grandiosity, we don't want to talk about them much or really even acknowledge they're around. We'd much rather talk about the "success stories" than the churches who are, in their quest for faithfulness, achieving a certain numerical mediocrity.

This (extended) blog is no attempt to demonize large churches. Far, far from it. I give thanks to God for large churches that are faithful to the gospel. God often uses them in special ways. God blesses many, many people through them. For Bethlehem and Covenant Life and other churches of similar size and gospel focus, I am thankful to God. But we must not think that these churches alone are faithful and glorifying to God. If our definition of God's glory is measured along metric lines, we are surely off. If faithfulness must in some way equal numerical prosperity, we are certainly wrong. The very message of the Bible is that God takes pleasure in the few. God, unlike men, does not need recognizable size and prosperity--in terms of His followers--to be delighted. The message of the Bible is that God loves His people. He loves the few. He loves the remnant. He delights in the faithful, self-sacrificial lives of His people. It is not massive size that He searches the earth for. He searches it for faithfulness.

The Bible is rife with stories that support this basic idea. Try it out--test this theme out. Read through your Bible, and see how often God delights in a people who are small in number but great in devotion. See how little emphasis there is on the mere size of things. Tiny Israel, puny David, Gideon's 300, the faithful remnant, the mustard seed, the scattered disciples, the overmatched apostles, the slain martyrs--this is just a tiny selection of biblical matters that show with clarity the joy God takes in the few. In so many of these things, in fact, it is God's explicit design for His numbers to be small.

When a church is small, then, we must not rush to feel bad for it, or wonder what has gone wrong, or contrive many ways to fix it. Perhaps change is needed. But it may well be that God is delighting in the small size of the congregation, taking joy in their gathered worship, smiling as they evangelize and celebrate His supper and struggle to fill an oversized room. Knowing God's character from the Bible, wouldn't it be just like Him to do so?

Does God, Perhaps, Delight in the Small?

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

--Matthew 7:13-14

I think that God delights in the small.

--Mark Dever, June 2008


Ministry in New England is notoriously difficult. I was recently talking with my father about this. In a place where faithful Christians often see very little fruit produced from their evangelistic and ecclesial efforts, discouragement can come easily. I've been challenged to pray hard for the pastors and churches of New England, knowing that they face a hard road of ministry.

Most churches in New England are very small. Many see very few people come to Christ, even over the span of decades. There's little triumphalism in this region, little sense that if things shift just a little bit, the culture wars will be won. The church is not about to win the culture wars in New England. It is a city on a hill, but it is a city that few choose to visit, and most choose to ignore. It is not that the majority of pastors and churches of the area are strategically challenged, or lacking in passion, or outdated in methodology. Many Christians pour themselves into their churches and give sacrificially of their time and energy to advance the kingdom and preach the gospel. Many Christians pray ardently for their towns and cities and yearn for their families and friends to come to Christ. Most of these Christians see little visible fruit from their efforts, few desired answers to their prayers. To be a Christian in New England is, in short and in general, to live a life of frustration. One must continually go back to the promises of God for encouragement. Otherwise, one will grow discouraged and lose faith and confidence in the power and goodness of God. In New England Christianity, discouragement comes easily.

Some of this discouragement is natural. Some of it, though, comes from a culture within American Christianity in which it is assumed that large congregational size is an unquestionably sure sign of God's blessing. In the same way that many Americans seek grandiose riches and oversized homes as a symbol of fundamental life achievement, many Christian Americans seek massive churches and oversized congregations as a symbol of fundamental providential achievement. Put more simply, we don't want to be small. No one in America wants to be small. We want to be large. Large equals blessing, achievement, status, respect, validation that cannot be taken away. Once our business--or church, or college, or denomination, or home, or wallet, or car, or whatever--gets large, then we'll never have to look stupid and insignificant. We'll never be a nobody again. We'll be someone, and no one will be able to take that away from us. We will win our significance, and we will never lose it.

There's a fundamental biblical problem with such thinking: it's not what God tells us will be the case with Christianity in its cultural forms. There is certainly room for exceptions in passages like Matthew 7:13-14, but the general rule is that Christianity will be marked throughout history as a religion of the few. Now, someone out there is saying that Christianity has had the most adherents of any religion throughout history. That's likely true. But with a few exceptions, the number of truly converted, biblically concerned and faithful Christians in any given culture has been small. Yes, Europe existed in a state of Christendom for hundreds of years, and yes, America was founded in part by Christians, and sure, some countries today have large populations of evangelical Christians, but by and large, Christians are and have been the decided minority in the countries and civilizations of the world. The remnant, not the reigning, has been the rule.

Christ's words in Matthew seven, then, ring very, very true. Though we should believe passionately and actionably in God's desire to save many, yet the fundamental reality of Christianity is that few will believe in it. Few, in the end, will be saved. This idea rubs harshly against our success-obsessed American culture in which size is legitimacy, no, size is existence. So many evangelicals want so desperately to see people saved, a desire that is genuine, but they also want to be culturally significant. We don't want to be weird and small and cultish, like the kid on the playground nobody wants to talk to. We want to see people saved--we earnestly and passionately do--but we also want to be a cool kid. For too many of us, it's not enough that we are accepted by God. We want also to be accepted by man. Our thinking, our methodology, even our understanding of the Bible itself is regularly driven by such a concern.

When a Christian lives in a largely pagan culture, though, such notions--which all of us fall prey to in some form, myself included--are easily scrubbed away. The focus becomes not getting people saved and glorifying God through the life of the church and attaining impressive size and cultural legitimacy, but getting people saved and glorifying God through the life of the church. This is not to idealize the church in New England or any other paganized region. Christians in these places certainly have their struggles and weaknesses, lack of vision and passion sometimes among them. It is to say, though, that in such places the temptation to work hard for cultural legitimacy is strongly diminished. It does not disappear, but it is by necessity diminished. When you labor faithfully in gospel ministry for 25 years and see five people come to Christ, you acquire a different economy of scale in your faith. Of course, it is no bad thing at all to pray for growth and work for growth and think strategically and act with great faith and vision. These are the right things to do. But they must not become ends in themselves. If they do, they will fail in places where God's Spirit is not granting new life to the lost.

This certainly sounds morose and sad. But here's the thing: what if God does not merely tolerate the small, or put up with it while other ecclesial investments flourish? What if God--in a way that is very difficult for our American senses to comprehend--actually delights in the small? What if the thirty-person church in New Hampshire (or South Carolina, or Oregon, or Zaire, or Siberia) actually brings Him great joy? What if, unlike so many of our American peers, God isn't ashamed by the little church, but is delighted by it? Maybe He doesn't look sternly at the pastor of the little church, wondering when he's going to get his act together and grow his church. Maybe He looks lovingly on Him, joyful that he is obeying His Word, evangelizing his area, building up his people in the faith week by week, year by year. I don't claim to speak for God, and I certainly cannot comprehend His mind. But as I search the Scripture, it seems to me that perhaps it is true that God delights in the small.

My mind was led to this track by a comment I heard pastor Mark Dever make a little while back. As I've reflected on Mark's offhand comment, I've considered it in light of my future pastoral ministry, if the Lord does indeed give it. Will I be happy if my church is small and my baptisms are low? Will I grow depressed and angry? Will I snap at my wife and ignore my children and work strenuously to drive up my church's numbers? I pray that I won't. But because I'm a sinner, and an American sinner, I see the potential for such behavior. At this juncture in my life, though, I want to avoid it.

I want to embrace the biblical reality that Christianity will often be small, often marginalized, often ignored, often hated. In spots, it will win huge acceptance. In most, it will not. Some churches will legitimately and by God's grace become very large in number and use this size for God's glory. Most will not. Most New England churches will not, I would guess (though I cannot know). Most New England pastors will labor for year upon year and see few people come to Christ. Most New England congregations will survive budgetarily but rarely flourish. If this is indeed true, is this a sign of failure? It could be, I suppose. But it also could be a reflection of biblical teaching. The hearts of men are hard, and in God's providence and mysterious plan, they are harder in some places than others. New England is such a place at this time.

Yet though our consciences and minds tell us otherwise, perhaps this situation is no stain on God's robe, no embarrassment to His reputation. Perhaps it is, in a way quite inscrutable to us, a joy to Him. Perhaps He loves the little and delights in the small. If so (and I think it is so), what an encouragement to the church of any region and country that is small and struggling. Christians in such places need to work hard and not lose faith. They need to pray for great things and attempt great works for God. But in the midst of difficult and even "unsuccessful" ministry, they need to remember the great love of God, and to find their identity not in their numbers, but in the delight of God which graces their ministries and stamps their lives.

New Series at Said at Southern: Seasons of a Seminarian, Part One

I'm itching to write a number of things this week, but I first want to tell you about a series of articles I'm writing at Said at Southern, the SBTS metablog, about seminary. If you've ever wanted a kind of overview of the seminary experience from a student's perspective, you might find this series interesting. It's nothing special, but in it, I do seek to tell the seminary "story" generally, though I do so from my own experience, mixing in my own anecdotes and memories. I think it does a reasonable job of recounting the average seminarian's experience. Though I tell it from my own personal history, one need not have gone to Southern to resonate with its ideas and happenings.

Here is a paragraph from the first part of the three-part series.

"We come to seminary from a wide range of backgrounds. Some have worked in campus ministry, some in local churches, some have been missionaries, some were accountants or lawyers or investment bankers in past times. This is part of what makes seminary a profitable experience: the wealth of diversity accrued to a campus that pursues a common goal, namely, training for the ministry of the gospel. I came to Southern after an action-packed year in Washington, DC, where I interned at Capitol Hill Baptist Church and the U. S. Department of State. Like many seminarians, I had thought it best to take a bit of time off from school following college graduation, as I was a bit weary of books and quizzes and papers and classes. After a year in “local church bootcamp” (I assure you, an affectionate moniker for the CHBC internship and church experience), I felt ready for the Christian academy. Like many prospective seminarians, I knew some theology and had read through the Bible, but I had little sense of the bigger picture behind it all. I wanted to really know the Bible, to be able to read it for myself in the original languages, and to learn the history, philosophy, and theology that it birthed. I was old enough to know a little, but young enough to be aware of the same. I was young and hungry, and seminary was the answer."

I'll have more on this series in days to come.

How Many Services Should a Church Have, Anyway?

This is a controverted question in the current day. Following from yesterday's discussion, there are a considerable number of churches today that cut out some of the traditional services--Sunday night and Wednesday night--in order to streamline the church and avoid cluttering the busy calendars of the members. Is this a positive development or a negative one?

Well, let me first say that I personally have no problem with a church that has multiple weekly services, meaning the Sunday night and Wednesday night gatherings. There is much good that comes from such times of worship, and I personally enjoy the Sunday night service at my local church as much as any other service in the week. It's relaxed and calm and tends nicely to reflective thought and encouragement. I thus can see the benefits of having such a service. In addition, a Wednesday night service can be really nice for those who seek some midweek nourishment from the Word of God. That is only a positive thing, and it is unwise to cast stones at those who really enjoy and benefit from the midweek service. In short, then, I'm not opposed to a church having any kind of service devoted to the edification of the church members.

However, I do think that we can sometimes become a little over-distressed at the loss of traditional services. I guess I could put it like this: I can see the merits of both sides of this discussion. As a married man whose family time regularly consists of a few squeezed-in hours each night, I am quite aware of the lack of time I have with my wife. I want us to worship God as the New Testament calls us to do, and so that means that we must be absolutely committed to the corporate gathering that takes place on Sunday morning. And because our church emphasizes attendance on Sunday night, and because I find that it is rich and nourishing, we go to the Sunday night service. But were I to be a pastor, I cannot say that if my church met only on Sunday morning that we would be violating Scripture. There is no proof that I personally can adduce to make that argument. The same goes for a Wednesday night service. I fully understand if someone wants to fight for the continuing existence of such services, and I think it unwise and ungodly to sneer at them for doing so. However, I do think that this line of argumentation suffers from a lack of clear biblical support. Put plainly, we are not commanded to worship on Wednesday night.

There is much wisdom in observing church history and seeking to learn from Christians who proceeded us in the faith. I want to do this for the rest of my life. I do not presume to think at the present stage of the church's life, we have reached the apex of wisdom. Far from it. There is so much, so very much, to learn from Christians who proceeded us in the faith. In fact, I naturally hesitate to depart from the traditions of godly Christians who laid down a path of faithfulness for future believers to follow. The confessional traditions especially draw my interest and devotion, for they were so thoughtful, so rooted in Scripture, and the reformers and the Puritans possessed such strong faith and biblical wisdom. With all this said and acknowledged, though, I am yet aware that these traditions are not themselves divine. Their practices and advice do not carry the weight of the Bible. While I see them as godly advisors, then, I do not see them as the normative voice of authority.

Where does all this leave us? With freedom. With freedom to pursue simplicity. We must obey Scripture, and we must seek a vibrant congregational life. We must preach the Word, hear the Word, pray the Word, sing the Word. We must not give these things up. We must do them with joy and freshness. And yet we must also avoid a new law, an addendum to Scripture, that binds our consciences and induces guilt where it is not deserved. Churches have freedom to structure their weekly calendars. They should take into account the busyness of life, the demands upon the family in a society in which the father must often be away from the home for much of the day, the separation of many children from the home due to schooling, and the effects that these modern trends exert upon the family. They must ask whether they are harming the family to help the church. This is a difficult question, and we must wrestle with it today, balancing the scriptural mandate, the goodness of corporate gathering, and the gifts of freedom and simplicity that God has given His local church.