“SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL”
Judges 7. 1-8a
Since I as a teenager, I have enjoyed hillwalking in Scotland, climbing Munros like Ben Lawers. Mum and Dad’s way of enjoying the mountains, driving around the bottom of them in a car seemed boring, after I had climbed one or
two of them. But when Pam and I visited the Jungfrau in Switzerland, the “top of Europe” I was in awe: they are all so much higher, they’re covered in snow even in the summer and they stretch for miles. So sometimes big is beautiful. And there are special gifts in big churches like Central in Edinburgh, or HTB in London where Nicky Gumbel is Vicar, or Causeway Coast Vineyard Church in N. Ireland where singer Kathryn Scott was. (I can’t think of one in Wales!) Big churches can increase their impact on their community. Causeway Coast, for example, have a staff of 12 who work on the “Compassion” side of the Church’s ministry alone. They respond to poverty and need in their local community by running: CAP debt counselling and money advice; Food bank; Celebrate recovery (Addictions ministry); clothing bank, Community allotments, Crisis support service, supported housing, Street Pastors, an employability scheme, a drop-in cafe, and a community market. Big can be beautiful. When we hear about a church like that, we want to be big.
Gideon, as we have learned, felt small. His little nation was struggling to get on its feet, with enemies to fight on every side. He was from a small family in a small tribe. He felt daunted when God called him and his first work for God was done in the dark because he was too afraid to do it in the daylight. He had this terrible sense of “Who, me?” It would be tempting, like a cat that's cornered by a dog, to try to make himself look as big as possible. He had been blowing his trumpet, gone on a recruiting campaign, and had gathered an army from the Israelite tribes Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali. (Judges 6. 35). He thought big was beautiful. And often the church thinks the same. “Blow your trumpet, recruit, publicise...” So there he was, with his army, 32000 men, at the valley of Jezreel, preparing to fight the Midianites. He needed every man he can get.
But God had other ideas. He met up with Gideon, again. And God said, “Gideon, this army of yours – it’s too big. I can’t turn Midian over to them like this—they’ll take all the credit, saying, ‘I did it all myself,’ and forget about me.” (v. 2, The Message) God was on Gideon’s and Israel’s case. He wanted to respond to the bit of turning back to him that had already happened. He wanted to do what he had done before and free them from their enemies. But he wanted to do it his way, in his power.
Small is beautiful because God gets the glory.
When we are strong, well resourced, and successful it’s very easy to say “We did it all ourselves”. We say “It was my singing. It was my preaching, my bit of drama. It was our creativity, our flair for the visual. It was our planning, our organising.”
And God tells Gideon what to do. Send anyone home who is afraid. Actually, that is a bit embarrassing, because according to Deut 20. 8, anyone who as afraid, shaking in their boots, was excused military service, along with newly weds, and people who had yet to enjoy a newly built house, or harvest grapes from a new vineyard. There’s a bit of a rebuke in this: “Gideon, in your enthusiasm to defeat these Midianites, you’re disobeying my Word.” God’s people are never meant to be cannon-fodder. Never lions led by donkeys.
Small is beautiful because God has compassion on his people.
And I wonder sometimes if in the life of the Church, we get carried away with some aspect of our “Vision”. Don’t get me wrong, vision is important. “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 28. 18 AV). And yes, it is the “duty of every believer to … take part in the evangelisation of the world” as the Baptist Declaration of Principle says. But we do that as a family. And where we love the vision more than we love the people, there is something wrong. Josh and Cass, when they moved to Manchester, got involved in a big, forward-looking church with lots of community involvement and lots of visionary ideas – and every Sunday there was a mini-sermon before the offering to encourage people to give generously. Now I agree with the importance of Christian giving. But where people are treated as an income-stream for a visionary Church – or for a church whose vision is no more than survival – something is wrong. Where a church is constantly bombarding people with appeals to volunteer for this, that or the other – something is wrong. Where people are treated as “troops”, something is wrong. In writing to Timothy, Paul keeps reminding him to be a good soldier. But in 1 Tim 1. 18 he says “Timothy, my son, I am giving you this command...” Now, “Command” is a military word. But what does does Paul call Timothy? “My Son”. Not “My Junior Officer, my Lieutenant”. Being an army defines our relationship to the great commission. Being a family defines our relationship to one another. That’s the Biblical way. Big churches can achieve lots – but small is beautiful because God has compassion on his people and we are called to be first of all a family; only then a mission task-force.
So Gideon’s army is downsized in one sweep, from 32,000 to 10,000. And I guess Gideon is getting a bit concerned. But God isn’t finished yet. “Still too many. Take the soldiers down to the river for a drink. Watch how they drink…” So they went to the riverbank, thirsty, hot and dusty And most of the men got down on their hands and knees, put their heads down to the cool water and just slurped it up. But a few, did it differently. They continued to be watchful. They knelt down, but kept their heads up, each laboriously getting the water up to his mouth in a cupped hand. And god said “Those are my men. The ones who used a cupped hand to drink with. Send the rest home.” And there were three hundred who drank with a cupped hand. 9700 went home. Three hundred. that’s no way to run a war, no way to take on a huge fighting force.
Small is beautiful because God has a strategy.
He knows who the 300 are and what unique gifting they bring to their team and to their task. These are the ones who are alert, soldier-like, disciplined. They were the ones who weren’t going to be caught off guard. And God knows what he is doing. God has a plan. There is a wee hint of that in verse 8b: the three hundred took over the provisions– and trumpets from the ones who went home. Not everyone would have a trumpet. Maybe one in a hundred. And everyone would have something to eat – bread, figs, dates, oil, wine, in leather pouches and earthenware pots.
So as he watches the three hundred pick through the supplies belonging to the rest, Gideon senses that God might be showing him something. It’s daring. it’s audacious. It’s almost a bit mad. It’s counter-intuitive. But I imagine in those moments, a God-idea is forming in Gideon’s mind. We’ll find out in a fortnight how God used 300 courageous, disciplined men, 300 clay pots and 300 trumpets. God had a strategy, and for that strategy, small was beautiful.
And for the Church today, we need to go with the radical, counter intuitive strategies that God is showing us by his Spirit. Not the tired, safe, but ultimately ineffective “strategies” that we have been used to depending on. Keep holding nice services. “Keep the doors open. Get a crowd together and hit ‘em with the Gospel…” But the counter intuitive ones. Dependence on the power of the Spirit. “You give them something to eat” Jesus says to his disciples (Matthew 14. 16). Yes, “it is the duty of every believer to take part in evangelising the world”. You can gossip the Good News in your way, among your people, in your community. And maybe we will find that some of those who are added to the Kingdom, are not added to a congregation – but only find fellowship in a smaller group… And maybe that small group could be a better way of reaching the community with the Gospel than a big congregation. Statistics show that small groups reach new people and make new disciples. Big congregations don’t tend to, so effectively, on their own. They are just there, enjoying the ride but it’s much more difficult to reach new people from a big congregation. Fact.
So, small is beautiful…
Because God gets the glory. Let’s seek to be living, witnessing and making disciples for God’s glory.
Because God has compassion. Let’s be a loving family first and foremost. And God will use us. “By this shall all know you are my disciples, when you have love for one another.” (John 13. 35)
Because God has a strategy. Let’s go with God’s strategies for reaching the world: the risky, small, intimate, ones.
© Gilmour Lilly February 2018
