Spiritual Hiccups - Greatness

A few years ago I attended a denominational meeting at a large church in my city.  As I walked in from the parking lot, I noticed a number of vans and buses owned by this congregation.  As one might expect, the church name was painted on the side of these vehicles.  But curiously, the (now retired) pastor's name was also on the side of the vehicles in letters considerably larger than the church's name.

Now I know nothing about whose idea this was or how it came about, but that image came to mind when I read today's gospel.  Jesus has just told the disciples that he will be betrayed, but they seem not to understand.  Instead they begin to argue amongst themselves about who is the greatest.  "But Jesus, aware of their inner thoughts, took a little child and put it by his side, and said to them, 'Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes  the one who sent me; for the least among all of you is the greatest.'"


Sometimes it seems that we in the Church have never totally learned the lesson Jesus tries to teach us.  We pastors generally get paid more if we serve bigger churches, and the big church pastors tend to be more influential in their denominations. I once heard Frank Harrington, former pastor at Peachtree Presbyterian in Atlanta, say that he had to drive a car that was comparable to the cars driven by the well to do members of his church.  There may be some practical wisdom in that, but it seems counter to what Jesus teaches.

Congregations also tend to measure themselves with numbers.  Membership size and financial contributions are easy things to measure and we are happy when they're up and worried when they're down.  In fact we probably pay much more attention to such things than we do to the spiritual health of our members.  I wonder if this is what Eugene Peterson was talking about in a quote from him I saw on Twitter this week.  "Why is there still so much adolescent measuring of religious biceps and breasts in American churches?"

The current struggles of traditional churches can be very disconcerting for those of us who are longtime members of those churches.  But one advantage of this time may be the opportunity to rethink what we mean by a vital and successful congregation.  Perhaps we have the opportunity to break away from measures of success and vitality handed to us from the prevailing culture, and seek the sort of greatness modeled and taught by Jesus.

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