I am a small church country gal. I grew up in a trailer in the woods; we went to a white wooden church on a hill and sang gospel hymns out of a red hymn book to an organ or, on a special Sunday, a guitar. When I would go to the Catholic church with my friends, I would marvel at the size. There must have been at least 200 people there on a Sunday!
Yes. I said 200. In my world, breaking 100 on a Sunday is a big freakin’ deal. Right now in my local ministry I serve a community of about 150 people, 20 of whom come to a regular Sunday service. It definitely has its challenges. There is much to do and few to do it. But it also has an enormous gift in creating space for relationship.
But this isn’t a post about big church v. small church. Big churches have other gifts. While small churches have to work harder to make sure tasks get done, big churches have to work harder to create space for relationship.
This past week at Harbor we took a look at how communities of God-followers evolved from Genesis to the first few hundred years of the Church. Essentially, the transition goes like this:
Families/tribes
Nation of tribes
A group centered around a single leader (Jesus)
Small assemblies or house churches
When I read the biblical letters written to the churches around the Mediterranean (First Corinthians to Jude), I see very little about what kind of leaders people should be and a lot about what kind of communities they need to create. With very few exceptions (Philemon, Jude), the letters are written to communities—and we would be hard pressed to know the names of those communities’ leaders.
In my little corner of the world, I am part of a rapidly evolving church. Here on the internet, Harbor is part of that same evolution but approaching it in a very different way. What Harbor has in common with some other congregations across space and time is our focus not on individual leaders or personalities but on building community.
In some ways, in this TikTok-ing world, it would be easier to build a following focussed on me and Jon, not because we are particularly compelling but because we can work an algorithm just like anyone else. But that won’t build a community, at least not on its own.
Community means:
People knowing one another, not just a personality.
Working through big questions together, not just doing what the leader says.
People are people, not numbers on a report or a followers list that can be offset with a viral video.
Sometimes we will sink and sometimes we will swim, but nobody sinks or swims alone.
Learning about and responding to the world around us because that world is in our community.
We have more gifts than any one person possibly could.
Humans are built for community, and so is Christianity. We do it together.
