Two weeks ago yesterday I sat in a large auditorium which not only dwarfs the building where my church gathers, but the neighborhood I live in. An orchestra with double the members of my local congregation played behind a choir whose membership triples said congregation. They stood atop a platform whose square footage might roughly equal the lower floor of my building and they led 20,000+ members of my denomination in popular hymns and choruses of our faith. That congregation included citizens of over 100 countries and world areas.
One such song was the popular and powerful chorus called the Revelation Song which borrows much of its lyrics from Revelation 4, 5 and 7. We sang through the chorus in 13 different languages from all over the globe. There were 40,000+ eyes in the room and not one of them was dry at the end of that song.
It was an incredible experience which words cannot describe. Many of us remarked afterwards that “this is what heaven will be like.”
Then yesterday, two weeks to the day later, a few members of our local congregation gathered in a country club ballroom to celebrate the Quinceanara of one of our own. The ballroom was small, roughly the same size as my church sanctuary. There were about fifty of us who gathered, not all of us Nazarene or even Christian. Before we ate dinner and devoured cake, we had a worship service. I was unable to secure an instrumentalist so we sang, or rather mumbled, three songs A Capella. I shared a few short words about childlike faith and 2 Chronicles 7:14. We confessed our sins, gave thanks and ate and drank the body and blood of the Lord together. We then commissioned our 15 year old celebrant to march into adolescence with humility rather than arrogance. We presented a Bible to her and encouraged her to read it. I think the words I used were “immerse yourself in it.” Then we sung the doxology and spent the rest of the evening eating, drinking, laughing and dancing.
It was an incredible experience which words cannot describe. Many of us remarked afterwards that “This is what heaven will be like.”
Two such opposing experiences happening within a short time frame, provides a wonderful example of the juxtapositions and paradoxes of our faith. There I was standing with 20,000 brothers and sisters belting out The Revelation Song in Mandarin despite not knowing the Mandarin language. Then there I was with 50 close brothers and sisters belting out “Come, Now is the Time to Worship” without an instrument to keep any of us anywhere near a right key. There I was crying tears of joy in celebration of God’s international mission with international siblings. Then there I was crying tears of laughter as we celebrated the coming of adolescence with one of our own. There I was singing next to someone I had only met that day, a suburban mom from Oklahoma whom I may never see again. Then two weeks later, there I was singing next to some of my closest friends, people I gather regularly with to worship, study and pray.
Both experiences had the same emotional and spiritual impact. I can’t help but believe that both were acceptable sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God which did not conform to the patterns of this world but helped us be transformed by the renewal of our mind.
It reminded me of a paragraph in N.T. Wright’s “Simply Christian” where he captures beautifully the call to gather in worship with groups both large and small. He says, “Ideally every Christian should belong to a group that is small enough for individuals to get to know and care for each other. . .and also to a fellowship large enough to contain a wide variety in its membership, styles of worship, and kingdom-activity. The smaller the local community, the more important it is to be powerfully linked to a larger unit. The larger the regular gathering. . .the more important it is for each member to belong also to a smaller group.” (Simply Christian p. 193. It is also in a blog post you can read here.)
It also reminded me of a particular battle in our ongoing worship wars whereby we fight over the size of our congregations. My twitter and WordPress feeds have often been filled with short, pithy, mean sayings fired over the internet at large church or small church pastors. A large church pastor argues that “Small churches aren’t evangelizing enough.” A small church pastor fires back that “large churches don’t care about people.” A large church pastor laments that small church pastors waste their time on ridiculously menial tasks that don’t advance the mission of God and tells those pastors to get their act together. A small church pastor laments that large church pastors don’t know the names of any of their congregants and claims, “Those mega church guys (and girls) could never do what I do!” A small church congregation is frustrated that they don’t have a full choir, seemingly missing that they are the full choir. A large church is frustrated that nobody seems to know the names of those who worship around them, seemingly missing that the participants in their Tuesday night small groups know each other’s names. All the while researchers are trying to figure out what really is the “best” size for a congregation by choosing metrics that I think God couldn’t care less about.
So I love how N.T. Wright in that beautiful paragraph above cuts right through the battle lines and gets at the heart of the matter. Both are worship. Both are powerful. Both are good. And every size in between is as well.
20,000 people in Indianapolis and 50 people in Utah would certainly attest to that. I know this pastor certainly does.
Go-Before Grace 