The Joys of Being Small

Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
-Psalm 133:1 (ESV)

“Smallness is subversive, because smallness can creep into smaller places and wreak transformation at the most vulnerable, cellular level.” -Sarah Ruhl

I don’t know about you, but I tend to think, like most people, that bigger is better. I like Mega Gulp slushies, Extra Large tubs of popcorn, and the flatscreens so wide you have to demolish your kitchen counter just to make it fit into your freshly expanded “living room.”

Some of the desire for bigger and better comes from a materialist worldview which, like all worldly perspectives, can slowly leak into the contentment pools of our hearts. But some of it, I believe, comes from a genuinely Biblical place of thinking about God’s kingdom.

Consider for a moment a few of the parables that Jesus tells about the Kingdom of God: seeds, plants, treasure, parties. What do seeds and plants do? Why, they grow of course! What about treasure? Do you want just enough to fill your pocket, or do you want a Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-style trove filled to the ceiling? And who wants a small party? (Ok, introverts, fair enough, some of you do.) But the party of God’s kingdom will certainly not be small; I can’t wait to see the size of the banquet hall which contains all of God’s people across the ages!

We serve a big God who does big things all the time. When He sent His Son Jesus the Christ to die for sin, it wasn’t for the sins of only a few. Even if you subscribe to a Calvinist style of atonement theory, the Elect are not a small group of people. Jesus died for the sins of the world!

So, dreaming big is in fact a deeply Christian thing to do. If we’re not careful, however, it can get us into trouble. And the trouble is not in what we imagine, but in how we feel about what we have now. Remember, the whole concept of growth logically necessitates small beginnings.

As an Advent Christian, I confess that I have struggled most of my life with a bit of a spiritual Napoleon complex. Our smallness haunts me at times, causing me to feel irrelevant and inferior to larger Christian denominations. This, of course, is the sin of envy. “Look at the big old Baptist church’s facilities!” “I bet the Methodists have amazing conferences.” “Will we ever have theology as rich as the Presbyterians?” You get the gist.

Thankfully, God is gracious, and His Spirit ever patiently beckons me into joy and peace and purpose that far transcends the size or resources or history of the quirky little seed that we call Adventism, or Conditionalism, or whatever little “ism” that we may feel, at any given moment, isn’t quite living up to the potential we imagined.

One way God is doing that lately for me is by opening doors for education and collaboration with my Advent Christian brothers and sisters, doors which I am slowly but steadily realizing might not be quite as open if we weren’t so small. Allow me to share a few examples:

-A regional seminar on leadership development, taught by two pastors on opposite ends of their career, one on the verge of retirement and the other right at the beginning of MTI; a seminar small enough that everyone who attended was able to ask at least one question
-A conference gathering of pastors from various churches within my county; a gathering small enough that we were able to close our time together by praying specifically for each individual and the particular needs they had shared
-A 1-on-1 discipling relationship with an older pastor; a relationship which, because of how few young pastors we currently have, provides me with ample opportunities for spontaneous phone calls to ask half a dozen questions without interruption or the need for the mentor to rush to his next appointment.

To be clear, I’m not saying that I don’t want to see us grow. It would be a wonderful blessing to have full classrooms, overcrowded gatherings, and extremely busy mentors. But that’s not where we are right now. And I can either mope and groan about it, or I can trust and thank the God who works good out of what we might be tempted to think can only be bad. I can trust and thank the God who, in His word, keeps trying to teach me about little seeds. I can trust and thank the God who loves and cares for me so much that He has placed me in this little, seemingly irrelevant Advent Christian bubble, where I continue to have so much opportunity to try and fail and grow. I can trust and thank the God who knows my proud and anxious little heart, and knows what a danger that size and the appearance of great success would have been for me early in my ministry.

I don’t know about you, but I am grateful we are small. Do I want us to stay that way? Absolutely not! I desire to see and partake in the ever-expanding kingdom of God, but I want to learn how to desire with far greater passion to see and partake in the ever-expansive God of the kingdom. And while we are small, I want to practice greater gratitude and joy in our smallness. I want to constantly remember how good and pleasant it is to actually know the people I call “brother,” “president,” “superintendent,” and even “executive director.” I want to treasure the subversively transformative power of smallness. Like Jesus, I want to delight in little seeds.

At the risk of making this article sound like a sermon, I will close with a story. I met a Pentecostal pastor a few weeks ago, and we had a grand old time comparing theology, practice, and denominational structure. At one point in the conversation, he casually remarked that his region had about 2,000 churches. The thought which immediately popped into my mind was, “Boy, I wonder how hard it would be for you to have a conversation with the director of that region?”

Lord willing, someday it will be really hard to have conversations with upper level leadership. Everyone won’t know everyone, because there will simply be too many people to know. But until that happens, I intend to relish in the joys of being small.

After all, my God is anything but.

-Luke Copeland