Christmas and the Power of Small

It’s a very good thing that Christmas comes every year.

Every year we need a reminder of the power of small.

God started out with a bang. The epic stories of the Bible come from the Old Testament. Floods and famines. Wars and destruction.

But at some point, God shifted gears.

You can hear his exasperation in the prophetic words of Isaiah.

Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also?
Therefore, the Lord God will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

God turned away from the epic solutions with casts of mostly unnamed thousands.

“Thunderbolts and lightening. Very, very frightening.” wasn’t working.

God, holding all the power in the universe, went small.

It was dramatic—earth-changing.

Suddenly, the cast of thousands become known to us by name. There are 12 male apostles with names and a bunch of women with names, too. Suddenly, our scriptures have us looking into the crowd. We see the boy with the fish and loaves of bread, the woman who is bleeding, the crippled man, the dying girl, the fisherman, the merchant, the rich young man, the priest, the widow, the soldier, and the tax collector. Many of them are named. Suddenly, they are all equal in importance.

Our all-powerful God went small. He bundled all his power into a tiny baby and let it loose in the world. He came to earth and joined us. Immanuel. God with us. Large and small.  Rich and poor.

Wow!

The Church is always tempted by big. We feel secure when there are big congregations making big contributions to support — who knows what? We can look across our large congregations as they pass the offering plates at three or four Christmas Eve services and feel a sense of accomplishment. We’ll know some of the names in the crowd. Many will be strangers and will stay strangers.

We look down at the little neighborhood and country churches who struggle to find a supply pastor on Christmas Eve. They are seen as a drain on the hierarchy without clear evidence that they are costing hierarchies anything. The Church will set unrealistic expectations, making the mission of every congregation to equal the financial capabilities of the very few large churches.

The Church, in its own interests, has a hard time valuing small.

But once a year, we are reminded.

Every Christmas we remember the power of small—the power of knowing the person sitting in front of us in church and the ones behind us as well — the power of every person being able to contribute in worship and mission with the gifts God gave them, not the gifts the church perceives it needs for its own survival.

The power of the Church is in strengthening small churches—not focusing on growing numbers but in empowering influence.

We can do that best when we look across the congregation and know the names.

Once a year, at Christmas time, Christians return to our roots.

It all started with a baby and love.

His name is Jesus.

Schools Flipping the Model of Learning
Will Fuel Discontent Among Future Worshipers

Enlightened educators realize that the world has changed. In response they are flipping their classrooms.

A flipped classroom realizes that the educational world does not have to subsidize one expert lecturer teaching the same material in every classroom across the United States and beyond.

The old model had 30 or more disengaged pupils listening to lectures in school and going home to work in solitude on solving sets of problems. Working together was considered cheating. Students who encountered difficulty didn’t get help when they needed it and often lagged hopelessly behind.

The new model has students listening to online presentations of material. They come to school to work together on solving problems. Students can view the best deliverers of facts and theory online. Students and teachers can choose the ones that fit their learning styles and curricula! When teachers work more closely with students, problems are identified and addressed at the best time for learning to take place.

Local teachers are free to facilitate learning in more hands-on ways. Classrooms are used less frequently as lecture halls and more frequently as workshops and labs with the added benefit of collaborative learning. Working together is no longer cheating but expected.

Teachers are loving it. Students are getting used to it. It’s a bit harder to dodge the homework.

This is providing a future work force that is accustomed to collaboration and innovation and using resources from many sources to solve problems. Eventually the flipped classroom will be a flipped work environment. It already is in many cases.

But how does this major societal change affect church? Will worshipers who have never experienced lecture-style teaching sit still for sermons? Probably not.

Can we flip the church experience? Can worshipers follow the scriptures and teaching aspects of worship at home and come to together in church to collaborate in worship and mission or will mission continue to be the optional “homework”?

Does every little church have to pay a professional theologian in order to work together in mission?

The answer, hard as it may be to accept, is no. This is nothing new. The small churches which are now struggling to meet unrealistic budget expectations of the modern world started out with itinerant pastors in many cases. They were built on the passion and work of lay leaders who maintained the mission between pastoral visits.

The model of the flipped church has yet to be developed. It must happen. 2×2’s experience is a start. We’ve flipped by necessity!

As the numbers of children reared in flipped classrooms grow to maturity, the experience of spectator worship will become anachronistic. It will seem demeaning and purposeless. Small churches with minimal professional leadership are learning that their members have leadership skills that larger churches purchase.

Talk to the majority of Christians. Most are already less involved in church. When they come to worship, they are going to want to know their involvement will make a difference.

Churches need to find ways to engage, beginning with worship. That will change the way everyone thinks about their relationship with Christian community.

If you want to transform, start flipping!

Here’s what we are doing: 2×2 offers a weekly object lesson for use with adults. We’ve called these “Adult Object Lessons.” We will keep using this term. It helps drive search engine traffic. We will start using the term “experiential worship or experiential sermons.” That will help flip the concept of worship from spectator to participatory. That’s where worship needs to go if it is to remain the communal experience we expect it to be.

photo credit: Dabe Murphy via photopin cc

The mother at the Reagan dinner table on Blue Bloods last night made an interesting comment. (Click to Tweet.)

“A lot of wars start with
‘I’m taking your house,
and God said it’s all right.’”

A Culture Ruled by Someone Named Universe

There was a definite spiritual element at a recent business conference I attended. There was a lot of talk about yoga and meditation and references to various popular spiritual gurus. The Bible was quoted a couple of times without attribution. Most of the focus of spirituality was on something named “Universe.”

Participants were looking to become more united with the Universe. They wanted to please the Universe. They wanted blessings from the Universe.

And therein lies the problem faced by modern religion. God, going by the name of God, just doesn’t fit in anymore. We need a euphemism for God if we are to escape the critical eye of modern culture. At the same time we long for a personal connection. We want to be noticed. Privately, please.

The God who knew us before we were born is something to hold closely. We don’t want to offend or proselytize. We accept spiritual lives lived on tiptoes — partly so we can all get along.

Enter Universe—the new God without a name, without expectations or demands. The new God with no baggage or history—the new god that won’t embarrass us or cause us to be ostracized or labeled.

Oh, divine Universe, grant that we might prosper and thrive. Don’t ask too much of us —help us to fit in with the rest of the . . . well, universe.

It’s sort of like Santa . . . someone everyone believes in with a wink of an eye and a twist of a head and only for about one month of the year.

It’s so easy to get lost in this big universe. Kind of lonely down here.

Oh, Universe, please send us some kind of sign, something we can understand. We just want to know you are real.

Happy Advent.

Thanks to our 2×2 Friends in Michigan!