There's such a danger in spiritualising church size. Mega church think they're more spiritual cause it feels so exciting and impactful, churches of a hundred feel like more of a community, house churches feel more apostolic and down to earth.
I think that's all silly. There are advantages and disadvantages to each size. We tend to spiritualise whatever size we like best or whatever size we've had the most experience with.
Moreover, we tend to fear the other sizes, and spiritualise that fear too. We've never experienced the other sizes working well, so we assume they are dangerous:
- We fear megachurches not caring for people intimately, not realising they can have better small groups than other churches,
- We fear churches of a hundred for being so caught up in the rosters and programs they have no time for evangelism and relationships, not realising that the public meeting can contribute great things to the community life and evangelistic effort of a church,
- We fear house churches because they don't have programs to make us feel like we are doing ministry, not realising that the informal ministry can often be more profound and tailor-made than any program.
At the moment with Crossroads House, we need to keep reminding our parents not to spiritualise the Sunday schools and kids programs of larger church sizes. These larger programs are not caring for kids more they are just caring for kids differently. In fact, we have the opportunity to really emphasise that the responsibility for nurturing kids is first of all the parents, and secondly the church community. Only in a tertiary sense is it the role of some program on Sunday.
