Rev. Aaron Long: Why Lexington Needs Small Churches

Column

As I left the gym the other day I drove through Lexington and it hurt my heart.  I grew up in Lexington that was constantly buzzing, moving.  The smell of BBQ smoke and furniture varnish filled the streets.  There was life.  What I see today is a burned-out husk of what once was, and I started to ask myself, “what can we do to fix this.”

Now, you might not know this, but I am a fixer.  I have always like to look at solutions, rather than sit on problems because I always want to move forward rather than sit in despair and smugness.

The solution I see is the small local church.  You might ask, “how does that fix anything, we have all sort of small, dying local churches, both black and white?”  Well, here the answer, the small local church is the greatest builder of community around, with a long track record of holding people up and holding people together in times of difficulty and trouble.

The small local church (to define the term, between 50 to 150 members, just big enough to support a pastor) brings people together into a larger family of mutual support and community outreach.  Larger churches may be working with more money and the like but the bigger an organization in any sense, the fewer deep personal relationships can be formed, and people cease being people and slowly become numbers.  With the small local church, you can develop these bonds more fully and deeply, the pastor knows everyone’s name, not only their name but their friends and family, what they do, who they are as a person.  With the small local church, the pastor can truly become a shepherd to his flock, and not only the pastor but the other church members can know everyone in the congregation also.  Instead of faceless and impersonal giving, only seeing each other on Sundays, you have a crowd of people who surround each other with love and support, with fighting and tears, with joy and laughter, you know like a family.

With an active small local church, you can spread the gospel more efficiently by engaging with your local community, sharing Jesus by word and deed with people you know, people you work with.  You as a member are called on to take responsibility for the work of the church rather than pushing that responsibility off on paid employees.  The members have to serve on committees, they are the ones that have to cook the meals and make the phone call, and serve in positions of leadership, causing them to grow in their faith and witness, in short making them better Christians.

It was the small local churches that pushed forward the civil rights movement among the African American communities.  It was the small local churches that sent in their nickels and dimes to support missionaries and mission work.  The small local churches members staffed homeless shelters and raised generation upon generation of faithful Christian witnesses in the world in which we live.

Now, you may ask, “how does this help Lexington?”  it helps like this, what we need more than anything, more than ball parks or bars, is actual community.  Actual family beyond our nuclear family, where we are inserted and invested.  Not just a church where we show up on Sunday and mark off church attendance from our to do list, but instead a community where we have resposnsiblity and support.  Where church isn’t something we attrend , but is instead something we do. 

Big churches are fine, but they are sterile and impersonal.  They don’t provide our native need for family, for community, for inclusion.  They are just another place where we are a face in the crowd.  Small churches are where Christ becomes a reality amongst the people and where pastors truly become the shepherds they are called to be rather than a public speaker or organizer.

We need to get back into small local churches and get out into our communities and build back the family, the faith that has been lost.  We need to belong.