The Blessing of the Small Congregation
We Americans are still living in a culture of post-WW2 exceptionalism. We render judgments based on size and wealth. When we meet someone for the first time, inevitably, the question “What do you do?” comes up. It’s not really about your hobbies or what you’re interested in, it’s about what one does for a living. And if the person says, “I’m a neurosurgeon” or if the person says, “I work at McDonald’s,” we react accordingly. We may have been well-trained enough in our egalitarian culture to keep a poker face, but we are so molded by our culture that we are simply going to draw conclusions about these two walks of life based on the perceived size of the paycheck.
This is especially the way women are judged. If the answer to “What do you do?” is “I’m a stay at home mom,” or worse yet, “I’m a stay at home wife,” such women can expect to be judged and scorned. And the size of the family seems to work in inverse proportion to the size of the paycheck in terms of societal approval. This is nothing less than a satanic inversion. Wives and mothers should be loved and exalted in God’s kingdom rather than being treated the way secular society holds them in contempt.
We also get this as pastors. “How big is your church?” is often the first question a pastor gets. It usually isn’t “What confession does your church hold?” or “Is it interesting to serve as a pastor?” Rather, they want a number. And if you say, “A thousand,” you will get a nod of approval and raised eyebrows. But the reaction would be quite different if you were to say “twelve.”
And among the Church Growth crowd, they ask the question in a particularly crass and vulgar and idolatrous way: “How many do you worship?”
Ugh.
And there is a smug attitude among some who are promoting “big churches” who want to be seen as “more successful” than the rest of us, and use their numbers fetish - regardless of the circumstances as to why numerical growth is happening in their particular demographic situation (such as being located in a growing suburban area with more wealthy younger people) - as a cudgel to beat up on smaller churches, to surmise and imply that we are “unsuccessful” and a drain on the kingdom. They look at the church roster as a score, and if you have a “big church,” you’re at the top of the standings. Unlike the small church, they’re doing something that “works.” And they’re not even trying to hide the fact that they want to exert political power over the rest of us, as if their current demographic and monetary windfall grants them a right to rule over the rest of us.
Synod is an association of members, mainly consisting of churches and pastors, not of the individual members of those churches. Power is not purchased. We do not sell influence to the highest bidder the way the worst of the secular world operates. When churches had to settle their first great crisis, they looked to the church at Jerusalem and its bishop - along with the synod of apostles and other clergy - to make a decision. And yet, Jerusalem was financially poor, and had to survive by the kindness of the richer churches (see 1 Cor 16:1-4 and a host of other passages). These churches and their pastors didn’t object that they, the richer churches, should call the shots instead of lowly Jerusalem. The church doesn’t operate by the world’s principle of “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” nor by the secular American revolutionary battle cry: “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”
Historically, the rule of the big and the rich did eventually take root in the Western Church, as the bishop of Rome arrogated virtually unlimited centralized power unto himself and his particular bureaucracy. And that is why we had to have a Reformation. Those who claim to see Romanizing in showing respect and deference to the miraculous Presence of Jesus at our altars is missing the point of where the real Romanizing tendencies are.
A few years ago, I called this attitude “libido numerandi” - with apologies to the sainted bishop of Hippo.
A lot of ink has been spilled more recently about trends in the LCMS - which are not actually limited to the LCMS, but reflect declines in Christianity in the West across the board. For some reason, people think it is only the LCMS whose churches are numerically shrinking. At the same time, those who are alarmed by the laity shortage claim that we have a clergy shortage.
And the same folks overlook the elephant in the parlor: the precipitous decline in fertility that followed, ironically, the baby-boomers’ increasing prosperity. This boom in fertility was followed by a bust in the fecundity of their children and grandchildren. This has had societal and political ramifications far beyond the numbers of people in our churches. But it is the main cause of our numerical decline. For children who are never begotten never beget grandchildren, or great-grandchildren - and so on, exponentially and generationally. And this was caused by a combination of postwar monetary greed and feminist careerism. It affects all churches and all of society, and not in a good way.
But that is another topic for another day. And thank God, I’m seeing a reversal among young confessional Lutherans who are in full-blown countercultural rebellion against the rebellion. Younger parents are once again counseling their children that children are a blessing, not an enemy of personal happiness and ambition, to be prevented by a pill or a sheath of latex.
But I was reflecting on the reality of the silent majority of congregations and their pastors with weekly attendance of somewhere around fifty (no, we do not worship those fifty, rather we fifty worship the one true God in His Unity and Trinity). Although it does present challenges, there are great opportunities and things to be thankful for as well. In particular, I was listening to a podcast of LCMS pastors with very large churches who were commiserating with one another. I appreciate their ideas being discussed publicly, and find them illustrative. They provide me with clarity and focus in my own writing about why I disagree with them. The podcast host is a pastor at King of Kings in Omaha. As a side note, a time management hack when listening to longform podcasts: you can usually skip much of the beginning, which is small talk and commercials (in this case, you can start at roughly minute 20). You can also change the speed to 1.5x, and maybe even 2.0 - especially if they’re from the Deep South.
At any rate, these guys were responding to a paragraph from one of my articles (in which I was reflecting on the words of another Church Growth pastor):
What are you going to do on Monday morning, the first thing you get in the office in order to advance the mission? Because Sunday is behind us now, and we’ve got another six days before we gotta get up and prance around the chancel and preach messages and offer the Sacrament. That important work will come, but until we get there, how are we going to advance the mission? Not how are we gonna care for the sick, how are we gonna counsel the weak and the needy, how are we going to encourage fellowship and the spirit of comradery, or you know, navigate the Ladies’ Aid devotion we gotta do on Wednesday night at seven o’clock after tea and crumpets, how are we getting after logistically, tactically, the mission.
Silly me. I actually believe that presiding over Word and Sacrament, providing soul-care for the sick, strengthening the weak with God’s Word, spending time with parishioners, and doing things like writing and publishing devotions is the mission. We are not the same.
It’s all about the numbers for them, and they want churches to be so big that you don’t get a pastor to visit you with the body and blood of Christ, to hear your confession, to comfort you with God’s Word. No, you get Doug from the bowling team or Sally the attorney. They want their churches to be so massive that the pastor becomes a kind of executive at the top of a pyramid with a bureaucracy underneath him to do the “ministry work” (ostensibly while the pastor is involved in high level strategizing, planning, and other important entrepreneurial and managerial tasks).
This is the Joel Osteen model. This is the megachurch model. It doesn’t work for confessional Lutherans who believe in the Real Presence and the Office of the Holy Ministry. We all have “successful” megachurches of this ilk in our areas. Some of us have even lost members to them. Some of them may even have satellite campuses, in which the pastor only appears on a screen. In such congregations, there is no way that the pastor is ever going to deign to go to the trouble to visit you in a smelly hospital room (although maybe if you’re a big donor…).
(They omitted the part about “We all have ‘successful’ megachurches of this ilk in our areas. Some of us have even lost members to them. Some of them may even have satellite campuses, in which the pastor only appears on a screen”).
The post that they were quoting, written by me, referred to the book and the film The Hammer of God - specifically the scene in which a pastor was grousing about having to leave a party to make a sick call. He was caught up in his own churchly ambitions of things seemingly more important than providing something as pedestrian as one-on-one Seelsorge (“soul-care”) to a dying elderly peasant. He was so unused to such visits (and he messed it up so badly) that all he could do was go outside and retch. His pastoral care was so abysmal that a lady peasant had to reiterate the Gospel to the man on his deathbed. This was not a good thing, but was to the pastor’s shame. But the Lord redeemed the pastor’s visit by allowing him to bring this dying man and his family and friends the Holy Sacrament. This visit changed the pastor’s ministry and his life. The novellas in Hammer are loosely autobiographical, based on the life of the Lutheran bishop who wrote the novel.
The podcasters’ banter was they they want Doug and Sally to visit people in the hospital. So do I. But that is not a substitute for pastoral care, for Word and Sacrament ministry, for the pastor to be available to be there himself in addition to other visitors. And I know this from personal experience. Almost a year ago, I spent six days in the hospital that I barely remember, and I was blessed by visits from my beloved members and other friends (they were beyond amazing in their care for my wife) - but I was also blessed by my brother in the Holy Office who brought me the Word of God, Holy Absolution, and the Holy Sacrament. I’m glad he wasn’t locked away in a boardroom vision-casting instead. We need pastoral care, and thus, we need pastors.
As their conversation in this podcast went on, one of the pastors objected to my words, saying that in his church, if someone wants a pastoral visit, he can call the church office and leave a message. He can make an appointment and someone will get back to him “as [they] are able.” It might be an associate pastor, or it might be a vicar (I suppose if it’s the vicar, you’re not going to receive the Sacrament, at least hopefully not). Ironically, right before that statement, I had paused the podcast because a parishioner had called me. Nobody calls our “church office.” Everyone has my cell number. It was early in the morning, and this was already our second conversation of the day. She needed her pastor. She needed her pastor. She didn’t need Doug or Sally (or a vicar) at that moment. And thanks to the fact that my congregation is small, and that as busy as I am with chaplaincies and side hustles, I do have more temporal flexibility than a megachurch pastor whose schedule is filled with meetings, strategy sessions, and other managerial tasks - I was able to give pastoral care to my parishioner right then and there.
My congregation is part of the silent majority of the LCMS. We are small in numbers. We don’t have a big online footprint. We don’t run a podcast. We don’t livestream our services. We don’t have an elaborate production. We have one low-tech Divine Service on Sunday and one on Wednesday. We have one weekly adult Bible class before Divine Service, and one weekly Bible class and catechism/confirmation class for the children after the Divine Service. Sometimes, we have special Saturday night Bible classes. I preside over the services and I teach all of the classes myself.
I don’t delegate the Words of Institution to a praise band singer. We don’t have a praise band. We don’t even have a choir. We don’t have a pipe organ, but we do have a really good electric organ and an outstanding organist. It is my joy serve as celebrant and preacher nearly every Sunday and Wednesday. On the rare occasions when I am away, I am blessed to have a deacon who leads the liturgy without taking unto himself Word and Sacrament ministry. We use DS3 and the hymns out of LSB. I celebrate with reverence, and with a good bit of dignified ceremony as befits the Real Presence of our Blessed Lord. We make use of bells (always) and smells (often). Our lack of dependency on technology allows us to even continue worshipping after a hurricane, when we have no electricity.
I don’t delegate my classes, nor do I use a canned curriculum (with rare exceptions that I supplement with my own teaching). I teach right from the Scriptures. I don’t delegate the teaching of the children (from toddlers to tweens) to someone else. I teach them myself, using the Bible and the Small Catechism. It is a joy, and I now have every single child and at least one parent staying after Divine Service for the children’s class. I teach the Bible and the Catechism with rigor, and the more rigorously I teach, the more the kiddoes respond with joy. They know the Bible, and they love it. This energizes my own faith. I had unwittingly discovered the same thing as the author of this piece. The little ones need both facetime with their pastors and more in-depth study of God’s Word. They would not have that if I were a big church pastor, tied up with other responsibilities.
These are the joys of being a pastor of a small church. I get to be the pastor. I’m not a CEO or a manager. I don’t have to create a pyramid of small groups led by the laity because I have too much on my plate. I have been here at this parish twenty years - two decades of births and deaths, tragedy and triumph, joy and sadness, peace and friction, rejoicing in baptisms, and even rejoicing at funerals. I can’t begin to estimate how many times I have been privileged to hold the Lord’s body before the eyes of someone, say “the body of Christ, given for you,” make the sign of the holy cross, and commune him or her after a hearty “Amen.” It just never gets old. And the same is true for sharing the chalice, and also blessing the children and other non-communicants with the sign of the holy cross. And I have preached from the same pulpit more than two thousand times. I would not trade the ministry of Word and Sacrament for anything. There isn’t enough money to draw me away. One of my former parishioners, a young man, once blurted out, “Beane would rather die than leave the parish.” I had never thought of that, but he’s right. I love the front lines of parochial life. I love my little parish. I love the people that have become like my own family to me. I don’t have a wandering eye for something bigger (which, let’s face it, in our current culture, means “better”).
In my opinion, this lust for numbers is a plague. It is like a culture of married people on the lookout for a new spouse. It’s just gross.
I remember one of my professors, the Rev. Dr. Daniel Gard, saying that pastors ought to be willing to serve at small churches, and see it as a blessing, as an opportunity to spend time in study and writing. In that sense, I do feel bad for harried big-church pastors who have to attend lots of meetings, who are forced to delegate their pastoral work to assistants, clergy or lay, and who get embroiled in a web of bureaucracy.
Maybe they do deserve our pity.
Since we no longer have a school (we had to close it as part of the long-term demographic fallout after Hurricane Katrina, as did many local Roman Catholic parishes and parochial schools), I don’t have to attend a plethora of meetings. I loved teaching in our school, but those days are over. It is what it is. God had other plans for us. And since we also no longer have a multiplicity of boards and committees on the church side, I don’t get caught up in those meetings either. We are able to do most of our routine work efficiently via text and e-mail. This frees up time in my schedule for actual ministration instead of administration.
The big-church podcast included the revelation from the pastors that most of their pastoral work was not tending the congregation, but tending the staff. They compared it to serving a “congregation within the congregation.” How sad that the pastor has to pick and choose who gets pastoral care based on who is working for the church and who is not, leaving the non-staff people to get pastoral care elsewhere - hopefully from another ordained man on staff, but perhaps not. That is indeed a problem that I don’t have. I’m able to be the pastor of all of my flock. My parish is very much like a family with brothers and sisters living their lives as sinner/saints in a fallen world rather than like an entrepreneurial enterprise with suppliers and customers, stakeholders, numerical goals, cost/benefit analyses, margins, and profits. My parishioners are human souls, not human resources.
And while I lead an exceedingly busy life, and over the years that has included a lot of side-hustles - from managing educational programs at a non-profit, substitute teaching, putting up ads in the local mall, and driving Uber - I have generally had work that is flexible enough, usually part-time, that has allowed me to be at the ready for my parishioners. I seldom take vacation, and when I do, it is usually a working vacation of some kind. It is a challenge of small churches that their pastors have to tighten their belts. But if you love what you do, you’re not doing it for the bucks. You may have to be creative in finding income streams.
And this is another advantage of the gold standard of residential seminary formation. I didn’t get to keep my lucrative job. My wife and I had to learn to get by on little, on donated food and second-hand clothing, to forego luxuries, to eat simple meals at home, and to trust in the Lord to provide even when the budget was frighteningly tight. Such dependency on charity is a way of life of ministers dating back to the Levitical priesthood and the prophets. It is humbling, and it is a call to hold fast to the Lord’s promises in faith.
Having a small parish does give me the flexibility in my schedule to take on more ministry work “outside the walls of the church” as the Growthers like to say. For 14 years, I have been a fire chaplain. I am on call 24-7, and almost always when the alarm goes off, I am able to go. I minister to our firefighters, to victims of fires, and I routinely make connections with police, EMT, and the elected officials of our city. If I were the pastor of a megachurch, that would probably be out of the question. For eight years, I’ve been a Civil Air Patrol (US Air Force Auxiliary) chaplain. I’ve served on ground teams and flight crews. I attend weekly squadron meetings, and teach at least once a month. I lead the prayers, and counsel with people in confidence. I make an impact in the lives of our cadets, Christian and non-Christian. I minister to airmen of all ages who may have no pastor, sometimes in times of crisis. I’m also the wing chaplain for the state of Louisiana. I’m able to take classes online and in person to become a better chaplain - and that education bears fruit in the parish as well. These chaplaincies are voluntary, but I am able to serve my community, state, and nation, to wear the uniforms of service, and serve those who serve. I have access in places that I would not otherwise. I’m able to do things as chaplain that I can’t as pastor, and vice versa. My small congregation is supportive of these endeavors, even when I have served at summer encampments on base.
In addition to these chaplaincies, I’ve served my state as a Louisiana State Guard chaplain for about a year now. I attend drills, receive training for emergency service, and was activated last year after Hurricane Francine. We are mainly training in force protection and running rescue operations by boat, as well as for post-disaster distribution of supplies. I get to do chaplaincy training with the Louisiana National Guard. I also receive annual chaplaincy training from the LCMS’s outstanding Ministry to the Armed Forces. (If anyone is interested in auxiliary military service or state guard service - for both chaplains and for laity - please contact me. We need more confessional Lutherans in the chaplaincy and in the auxiliary services in general).
I stopped driving Uber (as much as I loved it) because of the increasing violence in New Orleans. I was able to afford giving it up since I do also work as a teacher and chaplain for Wittenberg Academy. I’m in my 13th year as a teacher, and in my 7th as chaplain. I lead the weekly Vespers service, lead the annual family retreat, write daily devotions, and am able to attend the annual Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education (CCLE) conference. This year, I’m teaching Lutheran kids all over the U.S., including Hawaii, as well as in Germany and China. It is part-time work, and I’m paid for it. It is a big help considering the financial challenge of serving a small church. But to me, it is so worth it! What a joy to have all of these opportunities to serve in what the Church Growthers call “missional” work. Once again, if my congregation were large, if I had to manage a staff, if I were stuck attending meetings, if I were thrust in the role of manager - I would not have these opportunities to love and serve my neighbor in these various ways.
Last year, I was able to help serve a local congregation that was vacant, swapping out with three other pastors to conduct the Divine Service and preach. I was able to do this for some eight months. And I have been able to serve as an editor at Gottesdienst as well (I’m in my 18th year as blog editor, 16th year as sermons editor).
I’m also able to attend the local German American Cultural Center meetings, our city’s historical society meetings, and serve on the board of our city’s community association. I am almost always called upon to lead civic meetings with prayer, even though this is an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic city. I had the privilege to give the invocation at our last inauguration. It is important to be part of the community. I am able to live a block away from the church, and to take an active part in civic life. Once again, if I were serving a big church and commuting in traffic every day, my footprint in the community would look very different. So bigger churches do not always equate to better churches.
And thanks to the flexibility of my schedule, I am able to lead Matins at the church during the week. The doors are open to anyone who wants to join us. This time of prayer, Psalms, the New Testament reading, a meditation, and a hymn is central to our day. It is good for me, for our parish, and for our community. The canard is that “confessional” pastors just hole up in their offices within the four walls of the church. Truth be told, I’m almost never in my office. I’m usually out and about the neighborhood or serving in ministry around people who aren’t part of our congregation. It is a form of evangelism, even if it doesn’t parlay into new members of the congregation. From the Church Growth perspective, all of this work might be considered wasted effort.
I’m sure our small church pastors and members - who are the majority and the backbone of our synod - could write their own narratives of the blessings that they reap because they serve and belong to small churches. Their stories will look different than mine. Everyone’s is unique. And this isn’t a knock against large churches who are faithful and authentically Lutheran in doctrine and practice. There is room in the kingdom for all of us. Some serve in areas of explosive demographic growth, and they will simply get bigger as a result. But I think we do tend to default to the mentality that bigger is better, and small church pastors are conditioned to see themselves as failures. After all, there is a Church Growth Movement, not a Church Downsizing Movement - and their best practices are inevitably based on econometrics and nose-counting. What “works” is what makes you bigger, not necessarily more faithful.
Of course, we welcome visitors, new members, new babies, adult converts, and anyone else who wants to join my beloved congregation (which some of us refer to affectionately as the Island of Misfit Toys, of whom I am chief). All are welcome. We don’t care about your ethnicity, what you do for a living, or how you got here. But at the same time, we don’t judge ourselves to be failures because we are a small church. We are truly blessed, and we are growing, though more so in ways other than in numbers.
So take heart, small church pastors and congregations! You are not second-class citizens of the kingdom. We face challenges that big churches and their pastors do not, but we also reap blessings that they can only imagine. God places us where the Holy Spirit wills, and it is the Holy Spirit who grows - or shrinks - the numbers in the church. His will is hidden, and we are not owed an explanation. But keep in mind, no matter what, God provides for His ministers and His ministry according to His will. God provides for his congregations. You are more valuable than the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.
While the megachurch up the road - or even the new CoWo mission plant that the district allowed (and financed) practically in your backyard - are better at ginning up a buzz of excitement, while they turn entertainment into the focus instead of the cross, while they are loud and slick and emotionally manipulative - remember the lesson of Elijah, who was made to believe he was a failure in the face of those who isolated him and convinced him that his ministry didn’t matter. And remember that those people who attacked him were not from without, but from within: his own countrymen and leadership. Remember what God revealed to the discouraged preacher of the prophetic Word, that the voice of God is not found in the raging wind or the roaring fire or the bombastic earthquake, but rather in the counterintuitive “still, small voice.” Remember the lesson that God taught the discouraged Elijah, how God told him not to judge the kingdom nor his own ministry by its apparent weakness according to worldly standards. For what was more important than big numbers and noise and fury was Elijah’s faithfulness in proclaiming the Word. Meditate on this passage, and take heart!