<\/a>I am so grateful for the diverse people I interact with online. The Biblical Leadership Principles group on LinkedIn gets a special shout out for having a great conversation with me as I wrestled these last few posts (What should church look like?<\/a> and Is smaller church better?<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I am also extremely grateful for a dear friend who seems to know just what is on my mind and sends me great data to fill in my voids.<\/p>\n

So here are the pieces I put together today:<\/p>\n

1. Dale Harrison<\/a> reminded me that not every community can hold a large church.<\/p>\n

2. Howard Nason<\/a> pointed out that many small churches grow to be big churches (does this mean they are bad? I had to ask myself.) – This is where my conversation started toward a solution.<\/p>\n

3. Dale shared of a baptism they are having this week – a middle aged woman coming to Jesus – that is seriously powerful! His church runs 30 people.<\/p>\n

4. A friend forwarded an article to me on the lack of trust in the US<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>. Actually, it is an article called The Leaderless Doctrine. Turns out, the younger generation doesn’t trust anyone in leadership – and since I’m currently working through a developmental class, I can tell you that trust and mistrust are developed in the first years of life, but can be sidelined anywhere thereafter. In a world where 9\/11 created a lack of security, where families split up more than they stay together, where the economy is at best unpredictable – do we doubt that our kids have a deep seated vein of mistrust?<\/p>\n

5. I am reading The Me I Want to Be<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>by John Ortberg. Today I hit a part about the importance of connection<\/strong>. As leaders, we often think of community. <\/strong>We become experts at human interaction as it pertains to community development. But it is easy to miss the basics – we need each other. We need to make soul connections with other people.<\/p>\n

The Rich Young Ruler, and the Pharisee (by the Tax Collector – \u00a0the parable) both thought they had it made – but the problem was that they saw life through the lens of accomplishment. If I do A, B and C, then I’m acceptable to God, to myself and to others – I’ve got it made.<\/p>\n

I don’t want to be that way, even when it comes to building community. I don’t want to “look right” and miss the whole point. It is possible to do small groups and not develop human connections – you know, the kind where you are loved unconditionally, where others want your best for you, and where they will speak God’s perspective into your life.<\/p>\n

Just like larger churches, smaller churches can get so focused on process that they miss the purpose. Ortberg points out that Paul “paints a picture of connectedness in writing to the church in Ephesus that they are ‘being rooted and established in love'”<\/p>\n

This is key – our churches, no matter their size, need to be rooted and established in love. We need to be so engaged with the Gospel as a connection to God and to others, that we are able to look beyond our measures of performance, and work from the heart.<\/p>\n

Human relationships aren’t easy. We can’t do this without the Holy Spirit. Dare I be authentic with you? What if you have a bad day and decide I’m off the wall? What if I have a bad day and feel like everyone is against me? (I do that sometimes.) Could we dare to be genuine with one another, and develop beyond community to connectedness?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am so grateful for the diverse people I interact with online. The Biblical Leadership Principles group on LinkedIn gets a special shout out for having a great conversation with me as I wrestled these last few posts (What should church look like? and Is smaller church better?). I am also extremely grateful for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transition","category-ministry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1qCXF-P4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deepimprints.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deepimprints.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deepimprints.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deepimprints.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deepimprints.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3166"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/deepimprints.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3180,"href":"http:\/\/deepimprints.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166\/revisions\/3180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deepimprints.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deepimprints.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deepimprints.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}