Relationships are Everything in the Small Church
Dr. Ron Johnston
I sat across from a young law student who was contemplating suicide. He came from a very dysfunctional family and with the pressures of school added to his already existing family pressures, it seemed to be more than he could handle.
He told me his story. His father was an alcoholic who emotionally abused his mother. He felt the need to protect his mother but wasn’t always sure just how he should do that. He talked about his father coming home late from a night of drinking with his buddies, waking his mother and arguing with her for hours at a time. He told me how he would almost fall asleep in class the next day because he had spent the night trying to intercede for and protect his mother.
As I listened to him, I had flashbacks to my own life. I have never heard a story that was so much like my own. I was able to identify with this young man at a deeper level than I have with anyone else that I have ever known. His story was my story and to a great degree his pain was my pain. Over the next year or so I spent a great deal of time with him and my prayer is that my investment in his life made a difference. He didn’t attempt suicide. He graduated from law school and moved to Northern Ontario and over time I lost contact with him.
In a small church relationships are everything. The time spent listening to people may just be the most important thing that you do on any given day. People don’t become part of a small church because of powerful preaching or excellent programs or dynamic studies. They become part of a small church because they want to belong to a group of people who truly care.
My favourite book on the topic of Leadership is entitled Integrity and was written by Dr. Henry Cloud. This quote from that book changed my whole outlook on working with people.
“True listening and understanding occurs only when the other person understands that you understand.”
I would love to post that in every small church in Canada. If relationships are the heart of every small church than this challenge would be a worthwhile goal for every person who attends one of those small churches.
Impact of the Small Church
Dr. Ron Johnston
God uses a lot of different influences to shape us into the person that we are. For me some of those strongest influences have been the small churches with which I have been connected over the years.
My public school years were spent in a small independent mission church in the town of Sundridge Ontario. I was part of a boys Sunday class taught by a man who had very limited teaching skills but he had something else that made all of the difference. He had the ability to love us boys and through him I learned the importance of relationships in a small-church setting.
My high school years were spent at the Burks Falls Baptist Church, another small
church in a small town but in that church I learned how to serve. My sister and I started a youth group that soon incorporated teenagers from all over town. I preached my first sermon there and as bad as it was the people encouraged and supported me in it. I organized my first area-wide event while I was there and experienced the fun of seeing something that I had done work. I even served for a time as part of the leadership team while I was still a teenager.
I moved to Toronto to go to Bible College and for the three years that I was there I attended a Brethren church called Doncaster Bible Chapel. When we had only been there for a few weeks, the leaders asked me to work with the youth and offered to pay for our rent for the time that I was there. From that church I learned what it meant to take a chance on a young person, giving him responsibility that he hadn’t really earned.
A few years later I was part of a church plant, Thornhill Community Church, made up largely of young Bible college and seminary students. What we lacked in experience, we made up for in enthusiasm. From that group I learned a lot about what it meant to be part of a Christian community.
I could on talking about several other small churches but I am running out of space in this article. Those churches shaped my life. I will take credit for the failures but those churches contributed to all of the successes that I have ever experienced.
If you are a small church, you have probably had a far greater impact than you imagine. That young person teaching Sunday school as a teenager, that musician who is part of your worship team, that potential leader helping with the youth group, all of those people serving throughout the church, you are impacting in a way that they probably would not be impacted in a large-church setting. Your church matters to God. It matters to me. It matters to the future of the church in Canada.
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