Jesus Was No Bean-counter

by Catherine Regen

For over forty years, my life in the church has been lived in small congregations. For nearly all of those years, the church-as-institution has been trying to deal with the "problem" of small churches.

Using the language of the market place, it has exhorted small churches to become profitable units, increasing the larger church's share of the religious market place, even suggesting that the "unprofitable" units be closed or merged with other unprofitable units to make them more acceptable. Sadly, many small congregations have allowed themselves to be defined in this way, then helplessly await whatever fate their judicatory determines for them.

It is high time that small congregations refuse such disdain. They are living icons, windows into the truth that there is no place so small or so insignificant that God is not there. Small congregations have a vocation to call the larger institutional church back to what the church ought to be -- communities in which people are known as God knows them, where people are persons and not mere pledging units.

The Catechism asks, "Who are the ministers of the Church?" and answers, "The ministers of the church are lay persons..." In a small church or in any church being true to the gospel, the people truly are the church, the priesthood of all believers, visible and alive.

Small congregations must not allow their health to be judged only by numbers and money. Jesus was not a bean-counter. Nothing defies that kind of logic and reason more than our Lord's compassion, grace, forgiveness, and love. A small church should assess its health by its prayer and worship, its ministry and outreach, and its stewardship of what it does have. The Methodists call it right when they say, "small congregations are often places of open minds, open hearts, and open doors, where strangers become friends."

As Susanna Metz rightly points out elsewhere in this journal, small churches do need to welcome change. Small churches do need to be growing -- growing in ministry, in outreach, and in their spiritual lives. But change and growth are defined least of all by money and numbers.

Small congregations are communities of faith and to be so honored. Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned that the church that aims for success in the world's terms, inevitably becomes "a slave to the powers of the world." The church-as-institution needs and must have the presence of small congregations to keep reminding it of the danger of measuring its success that way.

Small churches are not a problem to be solved. They are a lesson to be learned. They have much to teach the larger church. The language, practice, and criteria of the market place are inappropriate markers for the Kingdom of God.

[COVENANT, Number 18, October 2004]

The Revd Catherine Regen rides the Tennessee River Ministries circuit for Calvary Church, Cumberland Furnace, and St Timothy Church, Erin

Note: The Diocese of Tennessee, like most of the rest of ECUSA, is made up of small churches, around a hundred or so members each. They are to be treasured and nourished. Any effort to merge or abolish them save for grave reason should be strongly resisted. The next bishop should be made fully aware that this is so and of the words of Amos that God has little use for the noise of solemn assemblies. -- Ed