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You're tuned into Everyday Theology in Plain English, making sense of God's truth for your everyday life. Here's your host, Charlie Miller. Hey there. Welcome back to Everyday Theology in Plain English. I am so glad that you're here. Season two is officially in the books, but I'm using a few of these August weeks to talk about something close to my heart. A new book that I've written called Strategically Small: Why a Bigger Church Was Never the Point. No studio today, just me sitting here at the kitchen table yet again. And this week I want to talk about the question underneath the title of the book. Here's the question: if you've spent any time in a small church, maybe you've heard it. Maybe if you maybe you've asked it yourself quietly on a Monday morning. Why aren't we growing? It shows up at business meetings, it hangs over the parking lot conversations, it sits in the back of a pastor's mind when he looks out on a Sunday and counts the number of people in the room. And underneath that question is an assumption that most of us have never stopped to actually examine. The assumption is that small is a stage, it's a phase. It's like a waiting room that you're supposed to grow out of. We treat small the way a caterpillar treats the cocoon. It's something temporary, something you pass through on your way to becoming the real thing. And so a church of 50 starts to feel like a church that's failing to become a church of 500. Like you're stuck, or you're behind, or maybe you're not there yet. And I want to gently push back on that because I don't think the Bible treats small as a stage at all. I mean, think about Jesus. He could have built the biggest thing anyone had ever seen. The crowds were there. By the end of his ministry, he was feeding thousands on a hillside. If bigger was the goal, he had every opportunity to chase it. And instead, he poured his life into 12 men. Not because 12 was a stepping stone to 1200, 12 because those 12 were the point. He wanted people he could actually form, people he could know, people he could send. That's not a man settling for small, that's a man choosing it. So here's the reframe that's at the center of this whole book. What if your church being small was never the problem to be solved? What if bigger was never actually the point? Now, I'm not saying that big churches are wrong. Some churches are called to be large, and God does real and beautiful things in them. I mean that. But I am saying that small is not automatically a failure. It might be a strategy. It might be the very thing that lets your church do what it does best, which is to go deep instead of wide. To know people instead of just gathering them. To be a family instead of an audience. Small on purpose. That's the idea. Not making grudging peace with your size while you secretly hope it changes. Actually seeing that the size of your room might be exactly what makes the good stuff possible. And if that's true, it changes how you feel on Monday morning. That ache, that sense that you're behind, that you should be bigger by now, that you're somehow not measuring up. What if that was never from God in the first place? What if you're not behind at all? What if you're right where you're supposed to be, doing something the big room can't do as easily? Small is not a stage you're trying to escape. It might just be the strategy all along. There's a whole chapter in the book on that topic, and it's the one that gives the book its title. If that lands with you, I'd love for you to read the rest. Strategically Small is out right now on Amazon in paperback, hardcover, ebook, and audiobook versions. And the link is right there in the show notes. And if you want more, go to strategiclysmall.com. You'll find information on the book, you'll find resources for taking your small group through it, and you'll find free tools to help your whole church work through it together. Thank you for being here. I appreciate it so much, and I look forward to seeing you next week.