Then he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain…” For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice…
—Zechariah 4:6-7, 10
In every classroom, there are boisterous kids, big kids, kids who shine, kids who soak up attention. And then, hidden away in the corner, are the quiet kids—a head shorter than the others, inconspicuous and little-remembered. These are the kids we overlook. Small people, insignificant. Or are they?
According to a recent study by the University of New Hampshire, “Nearly 35 percent of rural counties in the United States are experiencing protracted and significant population loss.” You may have visited these places. Towns where Main Street is mostly vacant, or children ride the bus an hour to get to the nearest school. Communities where poverty is rampant and opioid use is a plague. Churches in these areas are likewise small, and pastor turnover is common. These are the areas we overlook. Small places, unimportant. Or are they?
As a culture, we revere the big and flashy, and tend to despise the incredible worth and eternal significance of small things—small people, small places, and small beginnings. But the upside-down kingdom of God restores dignity to small people, and reminds us that God looks not on the outward appearance of things, but on the heart. As Francis Schaeffer contended, there are “no little people, no little places.”
The best things often start small, mustard seeds of faith taking root invisibly underground. This is by design. It’s impossible to be Christlike without being humble, happily taking the back seat. A key part of Christian formation, then, is cultivating an appreciation for the spiritual treasure house of small things, learning to see behind appearances and look, as Jesus did, a little deeper.
Small People
There is a scene in last year’s phenomenally popular series, The Chosen, in which the annunciation of Christ’s birth comes first to a lame, ostracized shepherd. While we don’t know much about the historical shepherds who first heard the angelic announcement, we do know that shepherds, on the whole, were a marginalized segment of Middle Eastern society. The portrayal on film is powerful because it puts flesh—broken, scarred, flesh—on the reality of Mary’s words: “he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate” (Luke 1:52).
Jesus made clear that to him, there were no small people. A quick read-through of any of the four gospels draws startling attention to the down-and-out, forgotten, and undesirable. Strikingly, the entire worldwide church as we know it today can be traced to a small, lackluster group of Jesus’ original disciples—uneducated, ordinary men and women (Acts 4:13).
We know this. But still, we lionize dazzling personalities, strive to strategically influence the influencers, and routinely overlook the quiet, unpopular, and poor. We wonder why our impact seems limited, but perhaps Jesus would point us to the Beatitudes: blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek (Matthew 5:1-10). The flashy are often a flash in the pan, while the slow and steady win the race.
History is littered with examples of the counterintuitive impact of seemingly unimportant people. Mary was a teenaged peasant before she became the mother of Jesus. William Carey was a poor shoemaker’s apprentice before he translated the Bible into 44 different dialects. John Newton, the hymn-writer, took long, painstaking hours to mentor a suicidal poet who became one of the great writers of his age (William Cowper), a homeless runaway who became a world-changing missionary in India (Claudius Buchanan), and an 11-year-old child who grew up to become the victorious abolitionist, William Wilberforce. His discipleship strategy was not predicated on the powerful; he believed that God’s power shone brightest in weakness.
Small Places
But surely there is strategic significance to prioritizing ministry in cultural hubs and mega-cities over quiet shepherding in backwater towns. It would be naïve to think otherwise! Certainly this has been a tried-and-true missional method for centuries, often with spectacular results. Targeted mission efforts in large, influential cities undeniably has a trickle-down effect on the broader culture. But cities aren’t more valuable than farm towns, because the individuals who compose the tiniest villages stand on equal footing before God.
Urban ministries, mega-churches, and packed auditoriums receive a lot of attention, rightly so, and attract the majority of new recruits, church planters, and resources. Higher concentrations of seminary grads and pre-existing ministries have a multiplying effect. So when a small-town church scrapes together funds to send its best and brightest off to seminary in the big city, that newly trained pastor is highly unlikely to return, but will probably remain close to the school from which he graduated.
Across the Great Plains and Mountain West regions of the US, there is an area roughly 10 times the size of the UK where evangelical theological training institutions are few and far between. Almost all respected seminaries in America are clustered in prosperous urban centers, while vast areas—entire states—have none at all. Online education has been a lifesaver for pastors in hundreds of cowboy towns, but this hasn’t translated to robust community between likeminded leaders. Instead, isolated pastors labor at small churches while their communities slowly dry up around them. According to a 2019 Christianity Today article, 57% of American churches have fewer than 100 people, including 21% smaller than 50. (Only 11% boast weekly attendance averaging 250 or more.) Small churches, small places. But not unimportant to God.
As Mark Hallock winsomely argues, God’s Not Done with Your Church. Hallock, a pastor at Calvary Englewood church in Colorado (and assistant professor at Tennent), knows from experience that dying churches can be revived and set aflame by the Holy Spirit. His own church went (miraculously) from around 30 people and slowly dying out to becoming the hub of a family of churches that has planted or replanted over two dozen others. That one small church has had incredible impact on the surrounding world.
A small church can also be a sending church. Matthew Spandler-Davison writes that his small church (under 140 people in a small town) has sent members to help with church planting in Scotland and training persecuted pastors in the Philippines. My own church, with under 100 regular attenders, has sent short-term and long-term missionaries to North Africa, South Asia, and American Samoa, and has planted two new congregations just in the past year.
Consider this: if just 2% of Protestant churches in America sent missionary teams to an unreached people group, the whole world would hear the gospel. And that is just what some (very small, very “insignificant") churches have done.
Small Beginnings
Human institutions usually start small. Harvard University began, inauspiciously, with just nine students. Yale began with a small group in a pastor’s parsonage. And Princeton University traces its beginnings to the modest “Log College” of William Tennent, who built a cabin to train his four sons for the work of ministry.
As William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Plantation said, “Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation.”
Catherine Morgan serves as the Director of Communications for Tennent. She is the author of Thirty Thousand Days, Sparrow, and Suddenly Schooling: A Survival Guide for Panicky Parents. She and her husband, Michael, live in Colorado, where they are watching as their kids (with alarming speed) leave the nest.