Recognizing the Mission and Beauty of ALL churches
By the Rev. Canon Leyla King
Canon for Mission in Small Congregations
Size matters.
That’s what we’ve been told – that’s what we’ve heard – as church communities for decades. In the kind of data counted in the parochial report, in the (very different) salary packages of the clergy who serve our churches, in the emphasis and attention given to big-name (and plain big) parishes in the Church – like Trinity, Wall Street, or St. Michael’s and All Angels, Dallas – the message we keep getting as congregational leaders has been clear: size matters. The bigger you are, the better you are, the more vibrant, the more “successful.”
But, even before my arrival as Canon, the Diocese of West Texas had already begun to suspect the lie of that statement. A church’s size does not define its success; rather, the size of a church is usually a symptom of all sorts of factors, only a very few of which are in the control of its members and leaders.
But what leaders of our small churches have started to understand is that size does, in fact, matter. Not as a sign of a parish’s success but as a charism of the church itself. A small church is just that: a small church.
And small can be – indeed is – beautiful. This is something we in the Diocese of West Texas know. Our small churches are filled with big love, committed relationships with one another and a certain scrappiness of faith, what the letter to the Hebrews calls “perseverance,” (“Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” 6:1), a characteristic we could all use in these tense times.
In the Small Churches, Big Impact Collective, we often use the analogy of an elephant and a dragonfly: both are beloved creatures of God, but different animals. We would never dream of saying to the dragonfly, “Why are you so small? There must be something wrong with you! To prove your beauty and your success, you must grow to be the size of the elephant.” And the same is true of our small churches.
But, this change in mindset demands a huge cultural shift within the Church – a shift that is going to take time and concerted effort on the part of those of us who “get it.” And, make no mistake, the Diocese of West Texas “gets it.” What we are doing in our small churches and our diocesan small church ministry is nothing less than modeling for the whole Church what this new mindset looks like. Through Gatherings and Chats, our diocesan programs and Bishop Read’s visioning, our plans for a restructured, robust Iona School and our reintroduction of the vocational diaconate, the diocese is identifying, celebrating and revealing to the wider Church the unique beauty and grace of small churches.
After all, Jesus himself recognizes the impact of even the smallest things: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” Whatever our size, as individuals and as congregations, we are all invited into the holy work of bringing about the kingdom of heaven.
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