A not-so-tiny idea...Micro-Church

If you’re listening to the news these days, there’s a lot of talk about the ominous threat of the bird flu. They call it a “pandemic” because of the enormous potential for this disease to spread worldwide in a short period of time. The thought frightens me and I pray that scientists find a way to stop it and that politicians don’t screw up the process of distributing the cure; I think the second half of that prayer requires more faith than the first.

The irony in all this is that while the potential damage from this disease is global, the source of the cure will be microscopic. We can’t build a giant bubble to insulate our country and protect us from this plague. But we can (and I pray we will) discover some sort of antibody that can attack and defeat – cell by cell – the Bird Flu. It’s such a wild paradox; a worldwide threat of death and destruction and our best hope is a vaccine that can’t even be seen with the human eye. There’s nothing particularly new or innovative about this dynamic; we beat Small Pox that way, we’re beating (I hope and pray) AIDS the same way.

While listening to the news, I’ve also been re-reading the Gospels and I’m seeing something I’ve never seen before. God’s plan for the redemption of the world is the same; the threat of evil, pain, suffering and broken lives was and is global. There may, in fact be no better word to describe sin itself than the word “pandemic.” But God’s response to our hopeless condition was microscopic; literally! A zygote came to life inside of a young woman. That woman carried her pregnancy to full term and gave birth to a Son; what utter mystery! The Savior of the world in diapers, nursing at His mother’s breast.

But it doesn’t end there.

That boy grew up into a no-name carpenter from a hick town in a distant province of a vast empire; hardly a platform from which to launch a worldwide rescue effort!

It gets better.

The boy became a man and recruited a microscopic (compared to the vast power of the Roman Empire) band of men and literally changed the world. The Gospel "virus" spread through human contact; family-by-family, household by household.

Not long ago I was trying to explain some of these things to my dad. I was telling him how my church, though it is small (microscopic next to many big churches) possessed so many healthy signs of life; healthy, growing relationships, a hunger for ongoing, meaningful connection with Jesus and a willingness to serve. I realized as we talked that SIZE DOES MATTER and smaller may, in fact be better. Dad, who's been a physician for more than 40 years and who has a staggering amount of insight into life said a most profound thing. "What you have is a micro-church!" He understood the enormous potential contained in small, healthy living things. Cells. I don't think he meant to, but his insight was the most encouraging thing I'd heard in a long time.

Life or death, health or sickness; it all happens at the microscopic level.

That's not to say it can't happen even in large churches. It most certainly can, but the good news here is that healthy micro-churches don't require huge corporate structures, budgets and staffing to thrive. Sometimes they thrive in spite of those things.

I guess none of this should be a surprise; Jesus said, "Where two or three are gathered, I'm there..."

Two or three,
two or three dozen,
two or three hundred,
two or three thousand

the only number that matters is

One.