Go small or go home

The simplest way to do something extraordinary is to do something ordinary over a long period of time.

I didn't know anything about wrestling when I volunteered to help. That might have been my first mistake. As a highschooler our church was helping out a FCA camp as a missions opportunity. They needed help everywhere, and I got assigned to the wrestling breakout to be a "guide. "

The man at the front of the room started talking to the students about wrestling and demonstrating technique as he went along. He called for a volunteer and I went immediately.I had a few pounds on him, not to mention the arrogance of youth. Turns out the man leading that session was the wrestling coach at Oklahoma State, John Smith. His wikipedia says he is “considered one of the greatest wrestlers of all time” so even though I was 20 years younger than him, I was not a challenge. I didn't know all this as I crouched down to spar with him, and in the blink of an eye he picked me up in a fireman's carry. The match was over before it started. He might've been smaller, but I also had to fight his decades of strategy, planning, and hard work.

You would think I learned then and there to not underestimate small things. But our culture's fascination with large things bleeds into every area of our lives and ministries. If you travel across the back highways of America, you can visit attractions like the world's largest ball of twine, basket, frying pan, or rubber stamp. There's enough food items to fill a giant pantry, like the world's largest pistachio, peanut, and ketchup bottle. These attractions work because the big things grab our attention and make us pull over for a picture, and maybe a few toschkes along the way too.

If the focus on large things stopped at roadside novelties it might be ok, but the focus on "big" permeates almost every area of our lives. We want big homes, big cars, big stadiums for our sports teams. Even our language is littered with the appeal to big things, like "go big or go home. " Our churches are not immune from this, as they often compete in an arms race for the biggest and best. Social media is the easiest place to see this as pastors talk about their big giveaways, service projects, baptism services, and budgets. And if you search for "go big or go home" sermons on Google, you get more than twenty pages of results. Even our history books highlight the big moments, the world changing events, and the larger than life leaders of the church.

The constant allure to bigger and better events and ministries overwhelms my heart and mind. It's too easy to compare my church to others and feel that it's behind where it needs to be. I constantly feel like we need to do big things and that we need to "compete" with all the others. Of course, I’m at least spiritual enough that I would never say it that way; I'd at least have the decency to cloak it in religious language. I'd call it "getting out of the boat" or "laying out the fleece. " It's not that it would be entirely wrong to aim for big things. There are certainly examples in scripture where the followers of God are seen stepping out in faith, to fight with an undersized army, to gather more bottles for oil, or to stretch our budgets to the limits. Hebrews speaks of those who did big things, like putting foreign armies to flight and receiving back the dead. But the constant appeal to bigger and better in local church ministry quickly leads to crushing pressure and jaded hearts. The truth is that you can never go big enough and never accomplish enough ministry to satisfy our hearts.

Still, the allure of the big things is hard to avoid. Since at least the tower of Babel, the world has been obsessed with making things bigger, faster, and stronger. Pharaohs competed for bigger tombs, kings wanted bigger armies, people wanted more land, more weapons, more money. The saying “whoever dies with the most toys wins” seems to be a mantra for almost everyone who has ever lived. Today we want more followers, more clicks, more views, more hits. Churches measure success by having more attendance, buildings, and cash. The stench of more invades every part of church life.

That’s why Christians have to fight back so hard to be different. If the world is calling us to long for more, we should learn to focus on what we do have. When we only yearn for big moments, we overlook the power of the small things. Most of life is made up of these small moments, and the weight of them is often more than the big ones. The simplest way to do something extraordinary is to do something ordinary over a long period of time.

That's why I've made the decision that if the world is calling me to go big, then I'm going to go small. "Go small or go home" doesn't have quite the allure, but it's more sustainable for both pastors and churches. We can go small, reach the next person in front of us, disciple one person, pray for one person, see one person saved. We can have the next church service, the next small group, the next prayer meeting, without having to brag about what big results we got. We can simply go small, go slow, and trust that God will bring the increase in due time.