There’s a tendency among fallen humans to believe that the larger an institution is, the more successful it must be. We think that, of course, because it’s often true.
In the ubiquitous realm of technology, Apple and Microsoft are giants, their success gargantuan. In the world of fast food, McDonalds rightly boasts billions served and Chick-fil-A invented the chicken sandwich — if not the chicken, though Colonel Harlan Sanders of Kentucky would no doubt dispute both points. In air travel, Delta is ready when you are because they can take you fairly close to any point on planet earth worthy of a visit.
In the world of evangelical church ministry, large can mean faithfulness. God built Grace Community Church into a significantly large ministry through John MacArthur’s expositional preaching. My dear friend and pastoral mentor, the late Harry Reeder (and the wonderful Frank Barker, founding pastor, before him) preached the Word faithfully and made sure every new member was equipped to win lost souls, an effort the Lord used to build a large, Christ-centered congregation in Birmingham, Ala.
But large can also mean compromise, as in man-centered or entertainment-driven — or both. It can grow into a kind of pseudo-flourishing with unprincipled pragmatism as the driving force. For evidence, look no further than enormous prosperity gospel churches, particularly those that populate certain Christian broadcast networks. They traffic in tickling ears, peddling false promises and toxic, unbiblical doctrine. These teachers butcher Bible texts to sell the American dream, appealing strongly to fallen man’s inherent self-idolatry. Weighed on the scales of Scripture, there is no faithfulness, and, therefore, no success there. But here’s the sad reality: When the cameras pan back, pews are filled with thousands of precious souls that need to hear the unvarnished truth of God’s Word.
Without question, I’ve been impacted deeply by well-known pastors (both living and dead) and ministries with worldwide reach — “famous” within the evangelical constituencies they serve. John Piper taught me to find satisfaction in Christ alone. John MacArthur taught how to unleash God’s truth one word at a time. Martyn Lloyd-Jones still helps me unpack the doctrines of Scripture, and his sermons edify my soul. These men and other faithful heroes led large churches and even larger ministries, so the problem is not size or reach, but faithfulness to God’s Word.
This is not to denigrate larger churches or larger ministries. Many large churches exist in South Carolina and, beyond that, do excellent gospel work — and, energized by God’s grace, do yeoman’s work in building Christ’s kingdom. I’m thankful for them all. I’m well aware that some churches are small for a reason — they are cliquish, oddly fixated in third-tier doctrines, and are proudly anachronistic, stuck in an SBC time warp that peaked around 1975.
But what about the smaller churches? What about those pastors who spend decades laboring for Christ in anonymity, whose social media presence is nominal or nonexistent, who write no books or articles, who labor tirelessly for Christ in a rural Siberia for decades? Is their impact felt in the denomination? Felt in glory?
Small Churches Made Me
The Lord saved me in March of 1977 at my childhood church in north Georgia. Membership rolls numbered around 125, the largest total before or since for a church launched in 1838. My family numbered among the early settlers in the Ivy Log community, near Blairsville — my hometown. Today, that church continues to proclaim the gospel faithfully with less than 100 members, and my brother remains among her leaders, a member of more than 60 years.
Missiologists define a small church as one with 100 members or less. Ivy Log, which nurtured my family for decades, is in the size majority among SBC churches — 60 percent of which meet each Lord’s Day with rolls totaling less than 100.
I’ve served two small churches — one in rural Indiana with 20 members during my seminary years, and another with around 100 members for the better part of a decade in Louisville, Ky.
In both, I knew every member and every family — their losses and crosses, their woes and wins. To this day, many of them remain cherished family friends. Small churches and their pastors have shaped my life and ministry in myriad ways.
Small church pastors are often bi-vocational, which makes a difficult calling doubly dangerous at every level. Many are unable to attend seminary and must prepare sermons and shepherd hearts when the other vocation allows. God uses many of them to reach people who would never listen to a seminary-trained pastor, so the Lord stocks His proclamational arsenal with a variety of weapons — one more useful to a given audience than another would be.
One dear friend serves as “Exhibit A” as to why I have such affection for faithful small-church servants.
Small Place, Massive Impact
Mark McCullough has served since 1990 as senior pastor of FBC of Frisco City, Ala., a town numbering some 1,200 citizens, sitting slightly north of Mobile. Membership rolls perennially hover at just under 100.
It is doubtful brother Mark will ever be nominated for SBC president, and I’m not sure he’d accept even if asked. He doesn’t blog, have a podcast, or post on a single social media platform. I had to talk long and hard a few years ago to get him to write what is now one of my favorite book chapters ever to appear in a volume aimed at pastors. When I first sat down to read and edit that chapter, his devoted love for the people of FBC Frisco City moved me to tears.
Would that I become such a servant.
Here’s what Mark has done: He has preached verse by verse, book by book, through God’s Word each Sunday for 36 years. He performed weddings, funerals, sat fully engaged at the bedside for births and deaths, watched young couples become parents, then grandparents, and has watched those children and grandchildren become parents themselves. Faithful endurance. Moving in the same direction as an unsung godly man for decades, still going strong today.
Not to mention that Mark and his wife of 48 years raised six kids — homeschooling them all — and now have 14 grandchildren with a 15th arriving soon. It is a delightful, close-knit family.
And, oh yes, there’s Mark’s son, Matt, and his son-in-law Scott, longtime personal friends who’ve been pastoring churches faithfully for years — the legacy of a faithful man.
In that book, Faithful Endurance: The Joy of Shepherding People for a Lifetime (see New & Noteworthy Books), Mark contributed a chapter on pastoring a small church in relative obscurity. In it, Mark named the names of cherished church members, how shepherding them through the years brought him such joy and contentment. Well-known pastors who populate the conference circuit make fans, and some even become cursed by their own fame. Mark McCullough has made friends.
One friend/church member he wrote of was Jesslyn. Mark remembers her birth. Years later, Jesslyn had kids of her own. Mark was present for both. He wrote of Gerald, a once-hardened “man’s man” whose heart God softened and drew savingly to Himself more than 30 years ago.
“I’m convinced that the opportunity to know people like Jesslyn and Gerald — and to walk the long journey with them and their families — has brought me far more joy and contentment than any amount of notoriety ever could,” he wrote.
“In nearly 30 years of belonging to my beloved church family, I have found my heart closely knitted to theirs. We have shared so many experiences. They have grieved with my family in our losses, and we have felt theirs. The losses my people absorb are my losses. Their gains, my gains. We are truly one in heart. One people. One family — in Christ.”
That’s faithfulness. That’s ministry for an audience of One. That’s why I’m privileged to know Mark McCullough and other humble, godly small-church pastors like him. That’s why I count him as one of my ministry heroes.
As a journalist and a pastor/professor, I’ve been privileged to cross paths with hundreds of good people — including some famous people — over the years, but Mark is one of my absolute favorites. Such faithfulness and humility are rare, strikingly at odds with an age intoxicated by expressive individualism.
Do small churches and obscure pastors count for God’s kingdom? Only eternity will measure the vital role they play as a means of God sowing His seed and nurturing His kingdom.
Mark put it powerfully:
“I’m incredibly grateful that God has allowed me to stay where I am all these years. Incomparable delights result when God gives us such a love for a people and such joy in knowing them that we grow oblivious to the fact that no one outside our church will ever know our names.”
Ten thousand amens.