The Big Picture for Small Churches
In our day and age, size and success are wed at the hip. The amount of times in which we hear the word “influence” or “influencer” leads us to believe that obscurity is a fate worse than death. Our church culture isn’t immune to this thinking. How many people drive past five small churches to arrive at the “big church” in town? Big churches have big budgets, big programs, big youth groups, and are doing big things. However, before we even address the book, let me make one simple statement. Jesus Christ was born in the small, backwater town of Bethlehem; and He continues to do great things with the obscure and insignificant things in this world. John Benton does a fantastic job of addressing that point, of pressing over and over the eternal significance of our small churches. How does he do this in The Big Picture for Small Churches?
First, Benton forms an inclusion with the first and last chapters focusing on the devil and discouragement. The very fact that he opens with a discussion of Satanic scheming against the small church should alert us to its great importance, and it should also signal to us that the problem isn’t a lack of property, people, or pennies. The majority of problems are spiritual. In fact, he summarizes the spiritual attacks of Satan under a few headings: a deviation from the truth, division in the body, decadence among the saints, discouragement under the circumstances, and distraction from our purpose. All of these ploys pull the church away from her purpose - sharing the gospel. These five tactics force our focus to be upward, inward, and downward, instead of being upward. The latter chapter provides antidotes for these spiritual maladies in the character and purposes of God.
Before addressing these encouraging truth, Benton turns to his second point - what we should be doing. He summarizes the entire message in a word - love. He states: “The church is revived and made powerful when people within the church have an overwhelming love, not first of all for the church, but for the lost.” This paradigm shift takes the form of quality presence, quality welcome, quality teaching, quality hospitality, and quality prayer. These are tangible expressions of our love for the lost within our community. Our community is the locale where these quality displays of love take place. He says in another place, “The big church knows you as a group; the small church knows you by name.” Do we not see his point? How can you love someone whose name you do not know? Jesus Himself declares this in John 10, for the Good Shepherd knows His sheep by name. In a world that has become a faceless void of handles, emails, and identification numbers, the small church has an opening to make a big difference in our community.
For this reason. our FEAST Group will be reading this small work by John Benton. Our church has an opportunity to make an eternal difference in the lives of those who call Hinds County home. We may not have all the bells and whistles of the megachurch, but we can provide tangible expressions of love that reflect the love of our great God and Savior. If you are not part of our FEAST Group but want to read, click here to purchase a copy.
