An Impacted Life
Dr. Ron Johnston
I received an interesting request this week from someone who has had a positive impact on my life in a number of different ways. I’m not sure if he has any idea the impact that he was had but he is one of the people that I am thankful that God brought into my life. His name is Dr. Rod Wilson.
When I was a student at Tyndale Seminary he was my favourite prof. It was partly because of his ability as a teacher. With all of the courses that I have taken throughout my life, I have never had a better teacher than Rod but that wasn’t what impressed me so much. It was his concern for his students and his willingness to share at a human level something of his own struggles.
During those days when I was a student I went through the most difficult experience of my life. I won’t share the details because they don’t matter but to this day my wife and I look back on the trauma that we suffered with tears in our eyes. In the midst of that experience I received an invitation from Rod to meet him for lunch. He just wanted to make sure that I was okay. I don’t remember most of the advice that he gave me but I sure remember the concern that he showed.
As you all know I am the Executive Director of Small Church Connections. One of the responsibilities that rests on my shoulders is that of fund raising. I read Rod’s book entitled keeping faith in fundraising. The result of Rod’s input was that I developed a set of values that govern what we do in this important area of our ministry. Anyone involved in fundraising needs to read that book.
I was born in 1949 which puts me right in the early stages of what became known as the baby boomers, the host of people born in the years right after World War II. We are the generation that is now in our senior years either in retirement or getting close to that period in our lives when we spend more time looking back on what we have done than we do looking ahead.
So what does all of this have to do with the request that I mentioned at the start? As you might have guessed the request came from Rod. He has just finished another book written especially for my generation. It is entitled Boomer Blessings: Flourishing on the Last Laps. It is currently at the publishers and is to be released next year. Rod asked me if I would be willing to mention it to a small group of boomers that I personally know but I am going to refuse his request. I am not going to mention it to a few boomers but to every boomer with whom I have contact.
If you fall into that boomer generation, mark this on your list of things to buy. I will be mentioning it again when we get closer to the publication date. I am doing this not because Rod is a friend but because he has touched my life and I want him to touch your life as well.
Rod, thank you for doing more than you know in the life of one person who shared a little bit of life with you.
A Challenge That We Face
Dr. Ron Johnston
A few days ago I read this statement:
“Unchurched people are not antagonistic to the church, they are indifferent to the church.”
That is a very important concept for all of us, whatever size church we might attend, to grasp. When I was young growing up in a small town in Northern Ontario there were two types of people in my town. There were those who attended church on a Sunday morning and those who thought that they probably should.
Today, most of those who don’t attend don’t see any reason why they should. The church has no relevance for them. They are involved in sports, family activities or a host of other things on a Sunday morning not because they think that those things have more importance than church. They don’t even think to make the comparison.
When I was a teenager, I loved sports. I was never very good but I loved them all the same. Put together a basketball, baseball or hockey game and I would be there. I loved watching them on television as well. I even watched the occasional water polo game just because it was competitive.
When I was in my last couple of years of high school I met the girl who for the past 55 years has been my wife. She came from a wonderful family. Actually there was only one thing that I could find wrong with them. On Saturday evening they didn’t watch Hockey Night in Canada. It wasn’t that they hated hockey. They just didn’t think that it mattered. They didn’t understand the cosmic impact that missing the hockey game could have on the future of the universe. The amazing thing is that I married her anyways.
That is where most people today are in relationship to the church. They just don’t see the relevance of it. When we think about ways in which we might impact our communities, this needs to be our starting point. How do we become relevant to those who share that community with us?
I want to close with another quote from the same book that the first one came from. The author says:
“The optimistic message I hope to convey is that I believe the Christian Church can be healthy, vital, relevant, effective, and, in the hands of God, be a force for good and for God in this world.”
I agree with that assessment but if we are to be healthy, vital, and effective, we have to learn to be relevant so that our message is heard. That is the challenge that we face today.
No Little Places
Dr. Ron Johnston
In my last article I mentioned a sermon that I came across that was preached more than fifty years ago by Francis Schaeffer. The sermon was entitled No Little People, No Little Places. Last time I focused on the “No Little People” part of the sermon. Now I want to look at the second half “No Little Places.”
I grew up in what would be regarded as a little place, a small town with about one thousand people in it. I attended what most people would consider a little high school with about 300 students. I attended a little church with an attendance of about forty-five people on a Sunday morning.
That little church though had a youth group that made a huge impact for Christ in the years that followed.
Bonnie spent her adult life working with the Northern Canada Evangelical Mission.
Norma was a missionary in Brazil.
Gloria spent her whole adult life serving in a variety of ministry settings.
Betty spent several years working in Christian camping.
Sandy married a pastor and spent her life as a pastor’s wife.
Linda also served as a pastor’s wife.
Don spend a year as part of an outreach team in Hawaii.
Donna spent time serving in Quebec.
Other members of the group served in a wide variety of ministries within the church.
I’ve thought a lot about why that youth group had the impact that it did. I want to share two reasons that especially apply to small churches.
As teenagers we were given the opportunity to serve. When I was seventeen our youth leader suggested that the young people take a Sunday morning service. My sister played the piano. Norma sang a solo. I preached my first sermon. Young people read scripture and prayed. To our surprise we did the whole service and the adults told us afterwards that we had done a good job. There were numerous other ways in which we served during those teenage years, ways that we would never have been able to do in a large church and those chances to serve laid the foundation for what we did in our adult lives. I didn’t grow up in a little place. I grew up in a church that gave me a huge chance to serve.
The second way in which that church impacted our lives was that everyone knew our names. No one ever officially mentored us during those teenage years but everyone encouraged and offered support. When someone would offer support it wasn’t some anonymous adult. It was people with whom we had worshipped with all our lives. We had been in their homes. We went to school with their children. It was very much our Christian family that was there for us. Small churches are inter-generational and it really does make a difference. I didn’t grow up in a little place. I grew up in a church where the adults were part of my life.
No little places.
You might be in a small church but that doesn’t mean that you are in a little place.
Let me close with a final quote from Schaeffer:
“But if a Christian is consecrated, does this mean he will be in a big place instead of a little place? The answer, the next step, is very important: As there are no little people in God’s sight, so there are no little places. To be wholly committed to God in the place where God wants him-this is the creature glorified.”
No Little People
Dr. Ron Johnston
One of the people that had a profound impact on me as a young pastor was a man by the name of Francis Schaeffer. I wasn’t alone. Schaeffer had an impact on scores of young Christians at that time. He ran a retreat centre in Switzerland to which university students and others could receive answers to the questions that puzzled them.
I just read a sermon that Schaeffer preached called No Little People, No Little Places. First of all I love the title. As you would expect, it is right up my alley. He begins his sermon in this way:
“As a Christian considers the possibility of being the Christian glorified, often his reaction is, “I am so limited. Surely it does not matter much whether I am walking as a creature glorified or not.” Or, to put it another way, “It is wonderful to be a Christian, but I am such a small person, so limited in talents-or energy or psychological strength or knowledge-that what I do is not really important. The Bible, however, has quite a different emphasis. With God there are no little people.
Schaeffer then devotes several pages to talking about Moses staff. In a conversation recorded in Exodus 3 & 4, God asks Moses what he is holding in his hand. Moses replies that it is a staff, just a piece of wood used by a shepherd to guide the sheep.
Just a piece of wood and yet God used it over and over again to work miracles. God told him to throw it on the ground and it became a snake. As the Israelites moved through the wilderness, God used that staff to part the Red Sea. He used it to draw water from a stone. He used it to give victory in battle.
It was just a piece of wood and probably not a particularly new piece of wood. Apparently shepherds liked to keep their staffs for a long time. It was probably like an old piece of clothing that you don’t want to throw out because it just too comfortable to part with. How did it accomplish all of these things?
An important change is recorded in Exodus 4:20. Moses’ staff, that old worn piece of wood, became the staff of God. It was just a piece of wood but it was God’s piece of wood and God used it to achieve amazing things.
Let me close with another quote from Schaeffer:
“But as the rod of Moses had to become the rod of God, so that which is me must become the me of God. Then I can become useful in God’s hands. The Scripture emphasizes that much can come from little if the little is truly consecrated to God. There are no little people and no big people in the true spiritual sense but only consecrated and unconsecrated people. The problem for each of us is applying this truth to ourselves: Is Francis Schaeffer the Francis Schaeffer of God?”
Come to the Manger
Dr. Ron Johnston
It is early in the morning and I am sitting in my office looking at a very old, worn and somewhat rickety nativity scene that is set up on the filing cabinet across the room from my desk. It was the first nativity scene that Gloria and I ever owned.
Gloria collects nativity scenes with about forty of them in her collection. They come in all shapes and sizes and most of them are better constructed and more beautiful than the one that I have in my office. This one isn’t even my favourite. That distinction goes to an origami set that was hand made and given to me by a family in a church I once pastored. It was a very special family and that made it a very special gift.
The one in my office isn’t special to anyone other than me. In fact for many years we didn’t even set it up at Christmas. This year I decided that I wanted a set in my office so I dug it out and set it up. What makes this one special is that it is the family set from when my children were young. In those early years it was part of what made Christmas for us.
In the church which I attend we just had an event that we called “Come To The Manger” in which everyone brought their nativity sets. We set them up in the basement of our small church and after the service people viewed them. There were about sixty different sets with no two the same. It was a wonderful reminder of what Christmas is all about.
The wonder of Christmas is contained in those sets. A young mother-to-be about to deliver her first child with only her husband there to help. It had to be a scary time for a young girl probably still in her teens. I have to think that what sustained her through that experience was the realization that this was no ordinary baby. An angel had announced the pregnancy. She had skipped the normal process for becoming pregnant and yet the baby was there waiting to be born. History had put her in the right geographical location for the birth of the Messiah. God had put all the pieces together and now the big moment had come.
Shepherds were the only ones who received a birth announcement concerning the birth of Jesus. God sent an angel to make that announcement. The shepherds are there in my nativity set as well. So are the wise men but that is probably a factual slip. They were probably never at the stable. They likely came later.
It is my hope that as I look at the set in my office I will be reminded every day of the wonder of the season. The eternal Son of God, Creator of heaven and earth, sovereign Lord of everything became human at that first nativity scene so long ago in Bethlehem. I don’t understand how that was possible but I have staked my life on the fact that that is what happened that first Christmas morning.
It is my prayer for all who read this that you will be filled with the wonder of the season.
The Need for Prayer
Dr. Ron Johnston
When I was a teenager I faithfully went to the prayer meeting every week in the small Baptist Church that I attended. It was not the most exciting event in my life. There were one or two of the older folk (probably people in their fifties or sixties) who prayed around the world and back. I would sit there wondering when they were ever going to end. The pastor led a Bible study and teaching was definitely not his gift. Most discouraging of all nothing seemed to happen as a result of our prayers. But I went every week.
In the period in between those early prayer meetings and now, prayer meetings have largely disappeared from our churches. Part of the reason for that was that too many of them resembled the one that I described above. The problem though has been that as the old expression goes, we threw out the baby with the bath water. In trying to correct a problem-boring prayer meetings- we completely removed one of the most important elements of church life. Instead of working at trying to improve corporate prayer in our churches we got rid of it entirely.
A few years ago the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada brought Roger Helland onto their staff as their prayer coordinator. He has partnered with Willy Reimer of the 78.7 Collective to begin what they are calling Ignite Prayer Canada which has a goal of bringing together one thousand churches across Canada that are developing vibrant cultures of Kingdom prayer. I believe that this has the potential to correct what has been a serious weakness in the Canadian church.
We all would agree that prayer is important. One cannot study scripture and come to any other conclusion. The problem has been that we need to give wings to that belief. We need to reestablish prayer as a priority in our churches.
I recently received an email from Roger asking if I would encourage churches to become part of this prayer movement. I am doing this with all of my heart because I believe in the importance of what they are doing. I would love to see small churches in every province with a deeper commitment to prayer.
At the very least I would encourage you to go in and look at their website to see if it is something that you might connect with.
One of the beauties of prayer is that you don’t have to be a large church to have an effective prayer ministry. I do have to wonder what would happen if 8,000 small churches across our nation all developed a deeper commitment to prayer.
Thank You to Small Church Leaders
Dr. Ron Johnston
Over the years that I have worked with Small Church Connections, I have had the opportunity to speak with a lot of small-church leaders all across Canada. Many of you who are reading this are among those with whom I have spoken. I have come to a couple of conclusions out of all those conversations.
The first is that there are a lot of great people who are serving in leadership roles in small churches. Having those conversations is probably the most enjoyable thing that I do. It is partly because of what I learn from those meetings. I want to understand what is happening in churches and you have provided me with an avenue for doing that. But mostly it is enjoyable because you make it so. You have been courteous and appreciative in your response to me. You have shared stories and experiences that have encouraged me.
The second conclusion is that those of you who are working with small churches are making significant sacrifices to do what you are doing. You are giving your time, your experience and your resources in order to serve the people whom you serve and you are receiving very little material reward for doing so. No one has ever become rich by serving in a small church.
My suspicion is that you do this for two reasons. The first is that you believe that you have been called by God and you have a deep desire to be faithful to that call whatever sacrifice that might involve. The second reason is that you genuinely love the people whom you serve. Even in those times of frustration and discouragement, you still love your people.
Some time ago during my devotional time I wrote the following in my journal:
“I think that I came away from this conversation realizing that it is an incredible privilege for me to work with these people. I need to thank God each and every day for the opportunity that is mine to be in contact with these small-church leaders. It isn’t just a job. It is an honour that God has given me to be connected with them.”
In 2026 my goal is to meet with more people than I have in any single year in the past. It may be phone calls, zoom calls or face-to-face meetings but I would love to spend some time with you if you can fit me into your schedule. If you would be willing to meet with me, jot me off an email and I will contact you and set something up.
Thank you for allowing me to be part of your life: to learn from you, to be motivated by your sacrifice, to be blessed by your love for the people whom you serve. May God bless you in all that you do for Him.
An Ordinary Pastor in an Ordinary Church
Dr. Ron Johnston
Back in 2008 D.A. Carson, research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, wrote a biography of his father. At that time Carson had written or edited 120 books but this one was unique. The title is Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson. In the preface Carson gives his reason for writing the book.
“Most of us-let us be frank- are ordinary pastors. Dad was one of them. This little book is a modest attempt to let the voice and ministry of one ordinary pastor be heard, for such servants have much to teach us.” p. 9
Most of us are ordinary pastors in ordinary churches but don’t think for one moment that God’s call on your life is any less important than the pastor of the largest church in Canada. You are there because God has called you to serve there. You are there because God has chosen to entrust the spiritual care of a group of his children into your hands. You are there because God has a reason for putting you there and that reason involved making a difference in peoples lives.
Dr. Carson’s administrative assistant, Michael Thate, transcribed the English part of Tom Carson’s journals. When he had completed the job, he sent Dr. Carson an email that read as follows:
“I used to aspire to be the next Henry Martin [heroic British Bible translator and missionary to the Muslim peoples of India and Persia]. However, after reading your dad’s diaries, the Lord has given my heart a far loftier goal: simply to be faithful. I know we as men are but dust, but what dust the man I read about in these diaries was!” p.13
For all of you “ordinary” pastors I want to leave you with the lyrics of the last verse and chorus of one of my favourite songs. This song was written for Pastor Appreciation Sunday in Ray Boltz’s church back in the 1980s.
One by one they came,
As far as the eye could see
Each one somehow touched
By your generosity
Little things that you had done, sacrifices made
Unnoticed on the earth, heaven now proclaims
And I know up in heaven
That you’re not supposed to cry
But I was almost sure
There were tears in your eyes
As Jesus took your hand
And you stood before the Lord
And He said my child look around you
For great is your reward
Thank you for giving to the Lord
I am a life that was changed
Thank you for giving to the Lord
I am so glad you gave
May God bless all of you as you faithfully serve him.
Thank God For The People Who Changed My Life
Dr. Ron Johnston
If you asked me this weekend what I was thankful for I could give you all the usual answers. I am thankful for family and material blessings and freedom and health. The list could go on and on but as I look back over my life I am thankful for the people who helped shape who I have become.
I am thankful for Sam. He was my Sunday school teacher when I was in high school. He had been a very successful business man. I think that he was the last person to hold the position of vice-president of Canadian Pacific Railways without having a university education. He was raised in a rural setting and never got over that rustic influence even though he lived much of his life in large cities. Sam loved Jesus. From him I learned that whatever else we might accomplish, nothing is more important than that.
Bonnie was our youth leader during that same period. I can still remember the youth meeting when she suggested to us that she thought it would be a good thing if the young people led a service on a Sunday morning. I preached my first sermon at that service. Norma sang at it. She spent her adult life in mission work in Brazil. My sister played the piano. She was married to the president of the Northern Canada Evangelical Mission. That youth group also produced a missionary to the Philippines, two pastor’s wives, and a camp worker. Bonnie gave us a chance to serve when we were still in our teens and our later service grew out of that.
When I was in my thirties, I was part of a church plant that consisted almost entirely of people who were younger than me. They were almost all young and it seemed like there was no end to their talent and their desire. We were all excited about being part of something that we believed was a brand new way of doing church. Then there was Howard. He was twice as old as most of the other church members with all kinds of experience as a church leader. What amazed me about Howard was the freedom that he gave us to lead the church. Even when he must of wondered about our decisions, he kept quiet and let us lead. I am committed to giving young people the chance to do ministry in their own way and I owe that all to Howard.
I am so thankful for these three people and so many others whom God used to shape my life. I am so much richer because they shared a period of time with me. At the top of the list of things for which I am thankful is the salvation that God provided for me at Calvary but right next to it are the people whom God used to shape my life.
I can’t close this without a mention of small churches. You probably aren’t surprised by that. All of the people whom I mentioned above attended small churches when I knew them. Having an impact on a young person’s life can happen more naturally in a small church just because they are less likely to get lost in the crowd.
Making a Difference in a Small Church
Dr. Ron Johnston
Yesterday, as we do every Sunday in our small church, we arrived at the prayer time in the middle of the service. One of the things that I love about this special time is that it could only happen in a small church. There just wouldn’t be time to fit everyone in if the church were larger. Yesterday was typical of what happens.
Gloria had received a phone call before the service from one of our members who wasn’t in the service that morning because she had taken someone who lived in her retirement home to the hospital because he was having trouble breathing. We prayed for both of them.
Someone else mentioned an older woman who was having problems with her mind because of age. She also mentioned the daughter who was providing care for her and the difficult decisions that faced her as a result.
An older women in the church recently broke her leg and as a result is facing a difficult period of rehab. She is also faced with a host of decisions regarding her future.
A young couple last week announced their engagement. We prayed for them as they plan their wedding.
As people called out these requests and others I became somewhat emotional for two reasons. The first was the fact that people were asking for prayer for people both inside and outside of our church. These weren’t just things about which people had heard and thought that it might be good to pray for them. These were people with whom our people were involved. The people in our church were touching lives and bringing the love of Jesus to others.
The other reason was that I knew that our prayers made a difference. Several months ago Gloria went through the sheets on which she had written down the requests each week and then made up a list of all the answers to those prayers that we had received. It filled an entire page. Our prayers are making a difference in people’s lives.
As I said at the top this could only happen in a small church. We are very small but we have found a way to make a difference that works for us. If you are in a small church, there are many things that you aren’t able to do that larger churches do but the reverse is true as well. There are things that make a difference that you can only do because you are small. The key, in your unique situation, is to discover what those things are.
If you have a small church story I would love to hear it.
My Passion
Dr. Ron Johnston
I have a passion.
I would like to see small churches in Canada arrive at the point at which no one would even think about holding a significant event without having a small-church voice at the planning table.
I have worked with small churches throughout my entire ministry experience, the last fifteen as Executive Director of Small Church Connections. I have come to several conclusions over the course of that time.
The first is that there are many highly qualified, gifted, committed leaders in small churches who would bring an important voice to any planning team. The idea that the most qualified leaders are those in larger churches or national organizations is simply not true. I am not putting those leaders down but I have worked along side some incredible men and women who are serving in small churches and who have a lot to contribute. When we don’t include them in our planning, we are doing an injustice to whatever it is that we are doing.
The second is that small churches contribute what may be a disproportionally large percentage of leaders to the church in Canada. I don’t think that there is any hard data on what that percentage is but from talking with leaders about their background, I believe that it is quite high. Reality is that small churches produce leaders.
The third is that small churches represent a very significant portion of evangelicals across the country. There are something over 8,000 small evangelical churches in Canada. If each of those churches averaged just fifty people in attendance on a Sunday morning, there would be more than 400,000 people who receive their spiritual support in a small church. That number alone deserves to be represented at the planning table.
Finally, when one moves out of an urban setting most churches are small. It is quite rare for a small town to have a large church. Those small town/rural churches need to be heard.
In my next blog I want to share with you how this passion might become a reality. Let me close with this thought. While it is very difficult for one small church to have a voice that is heard, there are more than 8,000 small churches in Canada. If all those churches came together, they would have a voice that would be impossible to ignore.
The Miracle
Dr. Ron Johnston
Do miracles still happen today? I have experienced too many miracles in my lifetime not to believe that they do but I have been reluctant to talk about them. This article is all about a personal miracle that God has performed in my life. If you have been reading my articles for the past few weeks you will know that I have undergone a change in my approach to the supernatural. God still works miracles today and we need to share them when they happen to us.
For more than a year I have known that there has been something wrong with me. I was experiencing a great deal of fatigue even when I hadn’t done anything particularly tiring. My mind wasn’t working as well as it should have. I just was not able to function up to my usual standards.
Then a few months ago things got really bad. My balance was completely off. I had to plan out a trip to the washroom because if I didn’t have something to grab hold of I might not make it without falling. I had a constant pressure in my head that never went away. I was fatigued even when I hadn’t really done anything. I was beginning to worry that I might be confined to my house since going even short distances was a challenge.
Last February I decided that it was time for me to step out of my role as Executive Director of Small Church Connections. It was a hard decision but as things got progressively worse I knew that it was the right decision. I couldn’t lead an organization when I wasn’t sure if I could even walk across a room.
I saw several specialists and was put through the usual gamut of tests. No one was able to tell what was wrong. They gave me a lot of good news. My heart is fine. All the blood work came back positive. I don’t have cancer or any other brain issue. Basically I am in good health except I didn’t have the energy or capability to do anything.
Then it happened. I woke up one morning and felt better than I had in over a year. Over the next few weeks I felt progressively better each day. Ten days ago I attended the memorial service for someone who had played an important role in my life when Gloria and I were first married. To get there I had to drive six hours each way. I left home at 4:00 am and didn’t get back until 11:00 pm and still had energy at the end of the day.
There are a lot of explanations that I could give for what has happened but I believe that God just healed me. I still don’t know what was wrong with me but God did and he worked a miracle. Many of you were praying for me and God answered your prayers.
The board at Small Church Connections has graciously reinstalled me into my old position as Executive Director. I am excited for what lies ahead. I believe that God has some great things in store for small churches in Canada and I am thrilled to still be a part of it.
The Dream
Dr. Ron Johnston
For as long as I can remember I was taught that today God speaks to Christians through his word. That was drilled into me as a child. It was the foundation of what I was taught at Bible school and seminary. If I was going to be a successful pastor I had to acquire the exegetical skills that would allow me to accurately interpret and teach God’s written word.
I knew people who believed that God spoke to them through a variety of other means but their messages were a little bit suspect. I was performing a baptism right at the beginning of a Sunday morning service once. I was just about to step into the tank when someone came running up to tell me that God had told him that we needed to switch the baptism from the start of the service to the end. I preceded into the tank and the baptism went off just fine. Needless to say I had my suspicions that his message really wasn’t from God.
I share all of this as background to what was one of the most important experiences in my life. About a year before Gloria and I had come to the conclusion that it was time for us to move on from the church in which I was serving. I had spent about eight wonderful years in that church but we felt that I had given it all that I could give and it was time to leave.
I submitted my resignation believing that I would quickly move into another church. It didn’t happen. I spent a year looking. I had several churches tell me that I was their second choice but that didn’t help me at all. Finally after a year of searching I found what looked like the perfect place. I preached there and both Gloria and I fell in love with the people. We knew that we could be very happy working in what seemed like the ideal setting.
Then it happened. I went to sleep one night and something happened that changed my life. I had a dream in which God told me very clearly what he wanted me to do. A Christian leader whom I greatly respected and admired came to me in the dream and told me that I was to begin a ministry to small churches in Canada.
I shared the dream with Gloria the next morning and together we began the adventure that has been Small Church Connections. One of the most difficult things that we have ever done was telling the church that we were not going to become their pastor.
Over the years I have been reluctant to share this story even though I believe very much that this was God’s leading for my life. I knew that God spoke to people in the Bible through dreams but I also knew that there were people who might question such supernatural intervention today and I wanted to be accepted by the evangelical world of which I was a part.
As I wrote in my last article, in our North American context we are afraid to talk about the supernatural even when God works a supernatural event in our lives. I am determined not to do that ever again. Our God still works in supernatural ways. He still speaks through dreams and he still works through miracles. This is the story of the dream that God used to plant Small Church Connections.
In my next article I will share the miracle that I believe will give Small Church Connections a new burst of life.
Are We Afraid of Miracles?
Dr. Ron Johnston
I love it when a book makes me take a step back and rethink my life. A couple of weeks ago I got hit by a threefold barrage that did just that. It all came out of a book by Lee Strobel entitled The Case For Miracles. I wasn’t all that excited about what I had read in the first two hundred pages but then I came to the chapter that really made me do some thinking. The chapter was entitled Embarrassed By The Supernatural. I had to admit that what he said applied directly to me.
He quotes from an article written by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon in the Christian Century back in 1985. The article was entitled Embarrassed By God’s Presence. At the end of the article Hauerwas and Willimon say this:
“The central problem for our church, its theology, and its ethics is that it is simply atheistic.”
That was designed to make people take notice and it did just that with me.
In preparation for writing this chapter, Strobel interviewed Roger E. Olson, a theologian at Baylor University in Waco Texas. Olson had written a blog entry entitled Embarrassed By The Supernatural in which he said this:
“I suspect our contemporary evangelical avoidance of the supernatural in the physical realm of reality has little to do with intellectual questions and issues. I suspect it has more to do with wanting our religion to be respectable; above all we don’t want to be viewed by the world around us as fanatics. The abuses of the supernatural seen on cable television causes us to drop it entirely. But as the old saying goes, the cure for abuse is not disuse but proper use. We have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.”
That statement got Strobel’s attention and it got mine. In response to his interview Strobel, himself, wrote:
“Even Christians like myself often hesitate to talk openly about divine interventions in our lives. We don’t want to be seen as being weird or outside the mainstream. We don’t want to be lumped with televangelists and flamboyant faith healers. We want to be respectable and accepted by people in our secular culture. The result? In our churches and even in our prayers, sometimes we subconsciously hold back from fully embracing the God who still performs the miraculous.” p. 214
As I looked back over the history of Small Church Connections, I realized that I have been guilty of exactly what these men are accusing evangelical Christian of doing. Small Church Connections was born out of a supernatural act of God. I have shared this with a few people but for the most part I wasn’t sure how Christians would react and so I have kept it to myself. In my next article I am going to share the story of how God gave me a message out of which Small Church Connections began.
I am currently living another miracle and in the second article from this one I am going to share that story.
We serve a God whom the Bible tells us did miraculous things. He is still performing miracles today. It is my prayer that I will never again hesitate to talk about the miracles that are part of my life.
Thoughts from “The Grasshopper Myth”
Dr. Ron Johnston
What if our understanding of God’s plan for the church is all wrong. Karl Vaters in his book The Grasshopper Myth suggests that that just might be the case.
“What if, as I said earlier, when Jesus said, “I will build my church,” what he had in mind wasn’t a world filled with grand cathedrals and megachurches? What if the current breakdown of 90% Small Churches to 10% medium-, big-and megachurches, instead of being a problem to solve, is actually closer to what Jesus intended?” p. 63
Think about it. What if your small church is a key part of God’s plan rather than a problem to be solved? I love thinking about that possibility. Maybe, just maybe, your small church is an essential part of God’s purpose.
Vater’s book had a huge positive impact on my life the first time that I read it. I say the first time because at this very moment I am in the middle of reading it for the third time and I am enjoying it just as much as I did on my first reading.
The Grasshopper Myth was the first book to make me feel really good about serving in a small church. When I read the book, I needed that encouragement. I needed to know that my life mattered and I needed to know that the church I attended mattered. I needed to know that it was an important part of what God had planned for this world. Vater’s begins his first chapter with these two statements:
I am a Small Church pastor.
And I am not a failure.
I want to close with Vater’s question from the quote above.
“What if your small church is not a problem to solve but rather an important part of exactly what Jesus intended.”
Humility in Leadership
Dr. Ron Johnston
In their book Lead Like Jesus Ken Blanchard & Phil Hodges give the following wise advice:
As a leadership trait, humility is a heart attitude that reflects a keen understanding of your limitations to accomplish something on your own. It gives credit to forces other than your own knowledge or effort when a victory is won or an obstacle overcome. According to him Collins in his book Good To Great, a leader with a humble heart looks out the window to find and applaud the true causes of success and in the mirror to find and accept responsibility for failure. A leader who does that is not coming from low self-esteem. In fact, people with humility don’t think less of themselves; they just think of themselves less. p. 66
As Christian leaders we have a step up on being humble in that we know that we really can’t do anything significant by ourselves. First, we need to rely totally on Jesus. None of us is going to stand before God and brag about all the great things that we accomplished. When that day comes, we will fully realize that it was all him. We just had the incredible privilege of coming along for the ride.
Second, God designed the church to be a group project. Paul makes that clear when he talks about spiritual gifts. We all need to rely on each other to get the job done. My wife is a wonderful administrator. I have no ability along that line whatsoever. In fact I am terrible at it. Whenever I am successful in something it is because she is there beside me making sure that it happens. That is simply the way in which God designed his church to work.
In a leadership conference Jim Collins, author of the best seller Built to Last shocked those attending when he stated: “A charismatic leader is not an asset but a problem to recover from.” If that is true in the business world, it is even more true in the church. Humility is an indispensable ingredient for leadership. All of us in leadership positions need to carefully read through Philippians 2:1 – 11 on a regular basis.
Cross/Resurrection Event
Dr. Ron Johnston
There are many things about which we as evangelicals disagree but there are some things about which there is no room for disagreement at all. These are the absolute essentials of the Christian faith. If someone denies these truths they may be many things but they aren’t Christian.
In his first letter to the Corinthian church Paul gives us one of those truths and then he goes on to say that this is what the gospel is all about. In fact this is the gospel. Without these facts, there is no gospel. Here is what Paul says:
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” 1 Cor. 15:3, 4
In my study I am surrounded by books, many of which describe different authors’ views on a host of theological issues. People have been presenting such views for twenty centuries. As I look at all of the arguments that are given on a wide range of topics, I am so glad that the essential truth of the gospel is so simple.
I made a promise to myself a long time ago and I am determined to keep that promise for as long as I live. I committed to keeping the gospel simple. No matter how much schooling I got or books I read or people I talked with I would not make Paul’s simple description of the gospel more complicated. It has served me well over the years.
P.T. Forsyth, British theologian and pastor, talked about the cross/resurrection event making the point that the two aspects of Easter weekend can never be separated. I love that phrase. Christ died for our sins but he rose triumphant from the grave. That is what the Christian faith is all about
He is risen
He is risen indeed.
May God make your Easter special as you worship in the light of this truth.
Passing the Torch
Dr. Ron Johnston
I have spent a large part of my adult life in school. It isn’t that I have a lot of degrees. It is just that it took me a long time to earn each of them. For instance it took me twelve years to earn my masters degree. For most of that time I lived almost next door to the seminary which meant that I could take one course at a time. I had to take twenty-four courses. You can do the math.
I am thankful for everything that I learned in those classes. When I was twenty before I took my first course I thought that I knew pretty much everything that I needed to know. One of the primary things that my studies taught me was how little I really did know and how very much there was to learn.
Some of the best things that I learned during that time came from outside the official classes. As a young student I was in conversation with my church history prof and he said something that has affected my life ever since. He told me that the history of the church down through the centuries consisted of God doing mighty things through young men and women and then those people growing older thinking that the only way in which God could work was the way in which he worked through them when they were young.
I prayed right then and there that I would never let that happen to me. I was excited that God might work through me as a younger person but when I got older I wanted to be just as excited about God working through young people in ways completely different from how he worked through me.
I am now at the other end of the spectrum. I am the older guy looking back at what God has done in the past. I had a conversation a few days ago with someone with whom I shared a ministry experience some time back. It was fun to reminisce about what God had done but that was then. As I look to the future I want to encourage young people who are serving in very different ways from what I did when I was young. I was a bit of a rebel when I was young and I want to encourage all the young rebels serving today. God will use you in his own special way.
To all of us who are getting older I want to close with this. The future belongs to the young. That is the way it has always been and that is the way it will be in the days ahead. We can be an encourager or an obstacle to those young people in our lives but God will work through them in ways different from what he did through us. Over the centuries God has done some pretty incredible things through young people, people like Billy Graham, John Wesley, Martin Luther, Mary, the Apostles Paul, John, and Peter, King David, and Joseph.
What Happened to Prayer Meetings?
Dr. Ron Johnston
Someone once said that the reason why people don’t go to prayer meetings is because they went to prayer meetings. I identified with that completely when I heard it. When I was a teenager, the church I attended held a prayer meeting every Wednesday night. It was not the highlight of my week. It was boring, repetitive and at least for me lasted too long. If I had written this paragraph back then scores of people in churches all over the country would have identified with what I just wrote.
In the decades since then most evangelical churches have stopped having prayer meetings mostly because the were boring, repetitive and lasted too long. In most cases stopping was a good thing. Certainly as a young person I didn’t miss those meetings at all.
There was, however, a problem. They didn’t replace those ineffective meetings with a different approach to prayer. It wasn’t the prayer in the name that was the problem. For a number of reasons prayer should have remained at the heart of life in the church. It was the meeting that was the problem. It was the way in which the meetings were conducted that made them ineffective.
In most churches it wasn’t just the mid-week prayer meeting that was removed. It was prayer that was removed. There are very few evangelical churches in Canada today that have a strong focus on prayer.
I was in Honduras a few years back and I experienced something that I have never experienced before. Among the Christians that I met there prayer was not what they did. It was who they were. Prayer was at the very core of who they were as Christians. They didn’t pray for each other and for situations because it was the right thing to do. They prayed because it was the natural outflow of their walk with God.
Over the past year or so I have been introduced to Ignite Prayer Canada. I am excited about what they are doing. To quote from their website:
“Their passion is to equip and empower church leaders and churches in cultivating a culture of Kingdom prayer that aligns with God’s heart and purpose.”
Their goal is to see 1,000 churches across Canada develop this deep focus on prayer.
I would love to see many small churches be a part of that number. I would encourage you to look at their website https://igniteprayer.ca/ and to seriously consider if God would have you become part of this movement.
Just as a little aside as I close. If they are going to reach their goal, they have to have small churches come on board because there aren’t enough large churches to reach the 1,000.
Who Has Influenced You?
Dr. Ron Johnston
One of my most treasured possessions is a book signed by the author’s wife.
To explain why it means so much to me I need to go back a long ways to my early years of adulthood. I had been raised in a home in which one did not question the basic truths of Christianity. One just accepted them and believed that they were true. The problem that I had was that God had given me an inquisitive mind. I loved to ask questions and throughout my high school years I had a lot of them to ask. I used to ask my mother for answers that she was in no way able to give. She had a grade eight education and no capacity to answer the kind of questions that I was asking.
Then I came across two wonderful books that changed my life. Paul Little, an American working with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship wrote Know Why You Believe and Know What You Believe. Those books provided me with answers and even more important convinced me that to quote Paul Little, “I didn’t have to commit intellectual suicide to become a Christian and I didn’t have to kiss my brains good-bye.” Those books changed my life.
I am convinced that one of the ways in which God shows his love for us is by giving us small unexpected gifts that usually are a completely surprise. In our first year of marriage Gloria and I lived in Chicago for eight months. We went to a wonderful church there and to my total surprise Paul Little attended that same church. I got to hear him preach and even got to pray with him a few times.
About ten years later Paul’s son enrolled at bible college in Toronto and attended the church in which I was serving. He was going through a difficult time and I got to work with him in the struggles that he was having. His father had died in a car accident prior to this but I was in contact with his mother Marie as we tried to work through the problems. When Paul Jr. had moved back to the U.S., I received a copy of Paul Little’s books with an inscription in the front signed by Marie. It simply read “With warm appreciate Marie Little.”
Paul Little had played an important part in my Christian development. He had met a need in my life when I most needed it. I have always been grateful for that. Then I got to play a small part in the life of his family and for that I am grateful as well.
There have been a number of people who have helped to shape my life. Some I knew personally. For some it was what they wrote or said that made the difference. I some times joke with my wife that when I die if one person comes to her in the visitation and tells her that I made a difference in his/her life then my life will have been worthwhile.
I leave you with these two questions. Who were the people who made a difference for you? Who are the people for whom God used you to made a difference for them?
The Character and Servant-hood of Jimmy Carter
Dr. Ron Johnston
I just finished listening to some of the tributes that have been paid to President Jimmy Carter over the past few days as America and the world celebrated his remarkable life. What has struck me has been the fact that while his political success is up for debate, there is almost universal agreement that he was a man of character who lived out his Christian faith for everyone to see.
Vice-President Kamala Harris shared a story that should be a challenge to all of us, especially to all who are in a position of leadership. After leaving office President Carter and his wife were actively involved in Habitat For Humanity, an organization dedicated to providing housing for those who can’t afford it. On his very first trip to build a house he and his wife rode on the bus with all of the other volunteers. When they arrived at the church where they were spending the night, the Carters asked that the private room that had been set aside for them be given to a young couple who had postponed their honeymoon to be part of the building team. The Carters then proceeded to sleep on the floor of the church along with everyone else. The remarkable thing is that this was not a one off. This was who the Carters were, a President and First Lady who truly knew what servant leadership was all about.
N.T. Wright in his book After You Believe says something that explains Jimmy Carter’s actions in this story and gives all of us who aspire to leadership something to think about.
The way this works out is that it produces, through the work of the Holy Spirit, a transformation of character. This transformation will mean that we do indeed “keep the rules”-though not out of a sense of externally imposed “duty,” but out of the character that has been formed within us. And it will mean that we do indeed “follow our hearts” and live “authentically”- but only when, with that transformed character fully operative (like an airplane pilot with a lifetime’s experience), the hard work up front bears fruit in spontaneous decisions and actions that reflect what has been formed deep within. p. 26
As Christian leaders we need to be servants. We don’t need to act like servants. We don’t follow a set of rules that outline what it means to be a servant. We need to become servants so that when confronted with an opportunity to serve, it is the only response that we can give. Love needs to become so much a part of who we are that we can only respond in love. Humility needs to define us so that we can only respond to others with humility. The secret of living as Christians is not to follow a set of rules that define what a Christian is but to allow the Holy Spirit to so shape us that displaying his fruit is as natural as breathing because in our innermost core that is who we are.
In the story above I believe that this was true of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. They were a small town couple from Plains Georgia who never forgot those humble beginnings. I am so thankful for the example of leadership that they have given to the world. I have to think that somewhere in the United States there is a couple still shaking their heads in wonder when they think about the time when the president and first lade gave up their room to them.
Thoughts About Christmas
Dr. Ron Johnston
This is a special Sunday at the church that I attend. What makes it special? It is the third Sunday of Advent and if you love Christmas as much as I do that always makes it special but there is more to it than that. There are four things that, Lord willing, will happen that can only happen in a small church. It would be next to impossible for a large church to duplicate these things.
A few years ago during Covid my wife wanted to do something unique to let the people in our church know that she was thinking about them. She decided that she would bake a small cherry pie for everyone in the church. She didn’t just do it for every family. She did it for every person young and old who called our church home. We then put them in our car and delivered them to every home. She will spend Saturday this week baking cherry pies. It is fun in that every counter and table in our kitchen will be covered with pies. We don’t deliver them any longer but every person will receive their own personal pie when they arrive at church. I should say that my wife is an amazing baker and so these really are a treat.
Instead of our regular Sunday morning service, this week we will have a carol sing. We will gather around the piano and spend the first half of our time singing whatever carols people call out as their favourites. For this one Sunday we resort to using the hymn books which means that people can even sing parts if they wish.
Every Sunday we have a prayer time in our service during which people can share blessings and requests. My wife, who is the pastor, then comes up and prays for those things that have been shared. This gives a different touch to the traditional pastoral prayer.
Finally we finish off the morning off with our traditional dessert Sunday. People are encouraged to bring Christmas goodies and after the service we go downstairs and enjoy these sumptuous delights. We don’t have a meal, just desserts and fellowship.
All of these things work better in a small church. In fact most of them would be impossible to do in a large one. In a church of five hundred if only half the people shared a prayer item and only took fifteen seconds to share it, it would take a full hour for them to share and the pastor would have two hundred and fifty items to pray for.
All of this to say that we need to find those things that work in our small churches and there is an endless list rather than wishing that we could do the things that large churches do and that we could never do well.
Quotes That Changed My Life
Dr. Ron Johnston
There are few things that I like more than to come across a good quote when I am reading. It may be how the quote is written. It may be that it provides me with a new way of looking at something. It may just be a thought that I needed at that particular moment in my life. Whatever the reason, it is an exciting event that I try to savour.
There is something, however, that is even more exciting and that is when I come across a quote that changes my life. Usually I read it, ponder what it says and then allow it to shape my whole outlook on life. I have a list of about twenty of these and I am thankful for each one. I want to share just three of them with you in this article. We are all different so they probably won’t impact you in quite the same way as they did me but I hope that you find them both interesting and challenging.
The first comes from a book called Integrity written by Dr. Henry Cloud.
“No matter how difficult it is to hear, reality is always your friend. The reason is almost a truism: everything else is a fantasy.” p. 106
Too many small churches live in a fantasy world of what used to be or what they wished was. We all need to live in the reality of what is now.
The second quote comes from Effective Small Churches in the Twenty-first Century by Carl S. Dudley.
“Members of the small church want from their pastor what they find most satisfying in belonging to the small church. . .The small church wants a lover. p. 80
I hesitated to use this quote because of the physical connotations of the word “lover” but it is too good to leave out. As a young pastor I wanted to be a good preacher. I read everything that I could get my hands on that dealt with growth in the church. I did my best to cast a vision for the future. When I read this quote, I realized that while all of these things might be important, they are all secondary to loving my people.
The third quote comes from a small book entitled Your Mind Matters by John Stott. It is an important book but one that some would see as somewhat out of date today. I believe that it still carries a message today. I read it first as a young student in Bible College and it has impacted my life ever since.
“I am not pleading for a dry, humourless, academic Christianity, but for a warm devotion set on fire by truth.” p. 11
There is nothing more important for a pastor than a heart set on fire by the truth about Jesus Christ.
If you have a quote that has changed your life, I would love for you to share it with me. I still need more life-changing quotes to become all that God wants me to be.
The Importance of a Trust Account
Dr. Ron Johnston
Every once in a while I read an author who says something that I have been saying for years. Whenever this happens I jokingly comment on the author’s intelligence. Actually it makes me feel good that someone thinks the same way that I do. It happened again a few weeks ago in a book entitled The Speed of Trust written by Stephen R.M. Covey. If his name sounds familiar it is probably because his father, Stephen R. Covey, wrote a very successful book entitled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
At the heart of leadership in any church, whatever its size, must be trust. If there is trust between a pastor and the church or between the leadership team and the church that church is in a positive place to move ahead. If that trust is lacking, it is difficult for leadership to do anything.
I often talk about the importance of what I have called a trust account that exists within every church. Every time that leaders do something positive they make a deposit into that account. It may be walking through a time of loss with someone in the church. It may be recognizing the contribution of people at a Sunday morning service. It may be the time of quiet prayer when someone is going through difficulties. It can take many different forms but each one makes a deposit in that trust account.
On the other hand every change that is made is a withdrawal from the account even if the change is positive. Every idea that doesn’t work results in a withdrawal. Every disagreement over direction for the church constitutes another withdrawal. If the trust account is full to overflowing, leadership can make almost any change that they wish to make and the church will go with them. If the account is almost empty, they may have trouble making even the simplest of changes. It all comes down to trust. With this in mind there is no such thing as an insignificant action on the part of leadership. Even the simplest thing will either make a deposit into the account or a withdrawal from the account. When the withdrawals outnumber the deposits, the result is that there are insufficient funds to make a change.
What does all of this have to do with Stephen M.R. Covey’s book. Here is the quote that got me excited and made me think that the author was a pretty sharp person. As you work on behaving in ways that build trust, one helpful way to visualize and quantify your efforts is by thinking in terms of “Trust Accounts.” These are similar to the “emotional Bank Accounts” my father introduced in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. By behaving in ways that build trust, you make deposits. By behaving in ways that destroy trust, you make withdrawals. The “balance” in the account reflects the amount of trust in the relationship at any given time. p. 130
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.
I