Recovering from our love affair with bigness.
After Jesus’ ascension, the disciples must have looked like a sorry bunch as they made their way down the hillside. To say that they were a small, defensive group without influence would be almost to understate the case.
Less than three hundred years later, the Roman emperor himself would adopt Christianity. The entire Roman empire fell into line behind him. However much the joining of church and state under Constantine and his successors was a mixed blessing for true Christianity, it represented considerable success in the spread of the gospel from that lonely little Judean hill. By the end of the classical era (A.D. 500), there were Christian churches in every province and major city, as well as Christians in every stratum of Roman society.
What accounts for the utter permeation of the Roman world by Christianity? How did the shaky faith of a little band of Jews become the dominant religion of the empire?
We are inclined to look at the noble missionary heroes of the New Testament—Philip, Peter, John, Silas, Barnabas, and, above all, Paul. However grateful we ought to be for them, though, we must be careful not to misrepresent what they did. This was small-time evangelism: no media campaigns, no tents or stadiums, no P.A. systems, no choirs, no celebrity guests. Instead, there was a lot of tramping about, in ones or twos or threes or fours, conversing and preaching in homes and synagogues and marketplaces—even prisons. Scholars of the early church have concluded that the gospel spread so far, so fast because of local initiative, because ordinary Christians lived out their faith and took it with them as they moved around the empire.
To be sure, leadership and high-profile ministry matters a great deal, and without the guidance of apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers, the early church would not have spread so well nor would it have overcome its many problems. It remains true, however, that the spread and vitality of the church depended upon the faithful leadership of itinerants and local, “ordinary” Christian witnesses, people such as Priscilla and Aquila, for example, mentioned more than once in the New Testament.
Back To The Local
Similar stories fill volumes of church history. Whether we look at the monastic reforms of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), or the work of Francis of Assisi (1181/2–1226), or the reforms of individual cities by the Protestant Reformers in the sixteenth century, we see that almost every significant movement of renewal and expansion of the church began locally as gifted leaders and willing workers invested themselves in small, but worthy projects.
The Evangelical Awakening of the eighteenth century, which brought the gospel to so many in England, provides another example. It arose out of the faithful but ignominious preaching of George Whitefield and John and Charles Wesley as they stood up to their ankles in the mud of fields and crossroads. Small-time, indeed! Yet we now understand that the roots of this revival go back further—in one case, to an unhappily married Christian woman who determined to succeed in one particular local “project”: “There are few [persons], if any,” she once wrote, “that would entirely devote above twenty years of the prime of life in hopes to save the souls of their children, which they think may be saved without so much ado; for that was my principal intention, however unskillfully and unsuccessfully managed.” How grateful many of us are that Susanna Wesley persevered in her calling as mother to that family and to John and Charles in particular. This was one “limited undertaking” that had unforeseen, but immense consequences.
Then there was Mordecai Fowler Ham (1877–1961), a fiery American evangelist in the stereotypical Southern mode. He preached against evolution, communism, and the “liquor interests” and prided himself on “skinning the local preachers” if they didn’t support his causes with equal vigor. Ham claimed one million converts at the close of his career and was awarded a doctor of divinity degree by Bob Jones College; but few today would recognize his name. His work apparently could never be compared with the other notables mentioned so far; he scarcely seems to belong in the same company with Bernard, Francis, Luther, or the Wesleys. Yet of the many converts he claimed, Mordecai Ham should have been especially pleased with one: William Franklin Graham, Jr.—known to the world as Billy Graham.
In Search Of The “Big Time”
We modern evangelicals, though, like things big. Big events. Big projects. Big institutions. Big budgets. Big personalities. As much as we take pride in our particular localities, we parallel the general culture in tending to admire someone only as he or she has “made it” nationally or internationally. (Compare, indeed, the phrases “local hero” and “the big time.”) This attitude, though, poses several dangers.
First, we can wait around for someone, somewhere, to take some grand initiative to solve our problems and meet our challenges. Why don’t our denominational leaders help us, for instance? Why don’t they give us money—or at least tell us how to raise money—for a new church building? Why don’t they provide better Sunday-school materials? Why don’t they show us effective programs of evangelism and social ministry? Why doesn’t somebody “big” do something?
Well, why don’t we do something? Our problems and challenges generally are local, and we are local; so what are we going to do about them? We can read good books and attend valuable seminars that will furnish us with insights and tools. But ultimately, we must discern God’s plans for our church; we must determine the goals and objectives; we must draw up the programs; we must pray and think and study and teach and grow; we must do what is to be done.
The second danger of our preoccupation with bigness is that we will fail to support, and perhaps even notice, the worthy work that is already being attempted around us locally. We may turn our noses up at fresh initiatives of worship, fellowship, or ministry in our church or community because they do not have affiliation with some widely recognized figure or organization. Yet what eminent national organization sponsored John Wesley and George Whitefield? What imperial or papal approval could Martin Luther have produced to validate his work? What major foundation provided start-up funds for the Franciscan order? What prominent mission board sent out the apostle Paul? Who, then, is working among us or around us now that needs our support?
The third danger is that we will look down on ourselves, that we will think less highly of ourselves than we ought to think (cf. Rom 12:3). In the view of our heavenly Master, all of our work, every day, is pleasing to him as we offer it up as faithful service. We are part of his grand project, and he weaves the threads of all of our lives into a tapestry with eternal significance and beauty.
This glorious vision of our work fitting into a great pattern, however, may not always help us get out of bed in the morning to go to work, much less get out of bed in the middle of the night to attend to a crying child. We may rejoice in God’s great symphony, to change the image, but sometimes our own parts still seem pretty small and unimportant.
C. S. Lewis, however, reminds us in the Weight of Glory that things are not always what they seem, that people are not what they seem. “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses,” he writes, “to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would strongly be tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.”
The sturdy Reformation doctrine of vocation teaches us that God values all of our work as it is performed according to his calling us to it. The famous preacher is no more to be praised than the faithful slave. So far, so good, perhaps. But what Lewis tells us, in concert with the testimonies of Susanna Wesley, Mordecai Ham, and so many others, is that our apparently little service may turn out to be of unimaginable importance after all—in this world, possibly, but certainly in the next. We must see that Susanna Wesley and Mordecai Ham wanted to convert the Wesley family or Billy Graham whether they became influential or not, simply because they believed that each individual is terribly important.
Most of us have at least a sense of that now, from a personal point of view, as we look back on those who have given of themselves to us in the past. However parents, relatives, friends, teachers, and coaches have served many, their influence upon individuals such as you or me carries on through the years, never lost, marking us forever.
Renewal movements wax and wane, denominations come and go, and institutions of all sorts will not outlast the Earth itself, but we will—we, and all of those whom we influence every day, right around us. The importance of our daily faithfulness within our families, with our friends, and in our occupations cannot be measured by human reckoning. But one thing seems sure: It is not little.
Can we take care of our part of God’s vineyard, then, and trust God to make of our efforts what he will? Do we have the courage and wisdom to think small and local? For in doing so, we concentrate on the eternal.
