Why Is Ours So Small

She went to her friend's church at Easter.

There was a band, and a proper room for the children with somebody running it, and about four hundred people, and she came home lit up about the whole thing and talked about it for two days.

And then, in the car, she said: why is ours so small?

She was not complaining. That is the part that made it hard. There was no edge in it at all. She genuinely wanted to know, in the way a nine year old wants to know why some roads have lines down the middle.

Her mother had two answers ready and she hates both of them.

The first one is some version of: the big ones have their own problems, or bigger is not better, or it is about depth not numbers.

That is a lie, or near enough. Her friend's church is lovely. She has been. The people are warm, the teaching is good, and there is nothing wrong with it at all, and she is not going to make her daughter suspicious of a good church to make her feel better about ours.

The second one is some version of: we are growing, or one day, or it takes time.

She does not know that. She is not going to promise a child something she cannot deliver, and she has watched other people do exactly that, and the children remember.

And she cannot say it does not matter, because the girl can count. She is nine and she can count, and she counted at Easter and she counted last Sunday.

If your children have started asking, sit down and have some lunch. Nobody at this table is going to ask you for an answer.

What a young man said on the way up a cliff

There is a sentence spoken by somebody about to do something outnumbered, and it is one of the cleanest things anybody says in the Old Testament.

And Jonathan said to the young man that bare his armour, Come, and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that the Lord will work for us: for there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few.1 Samuel 14:6

There is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few.

Read what he does not say. He does not say few is better. He does not say many is a distraction, or that the large army over the hill has got it wrong, or that God prefers a small band.

He says the number does not restrain God. Either way. Many is fine. Few is fine. The thing that decides an outcome is simply not located in that column.

And notice the humility in the line before it. It may be that the Lord will work for us. He is not promising himself anything either.

You are standing on a sentence that refuses to rank many and few and puts the deciding somewhere else entirely. 1 Samuel 14:6 says there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few, and it is the Holy Spirit who kept both words in the same clause without preferring one, which means the answer you have been looking for does not require anybody's church to be criticized.

Why both her answers felt wrong

Now the two answers, because your instinct about both of them was right and it is worth knowing why.

The first one is defensive. It protects your church by making another one smaller, and a nine year old will hear exactly that, and what she will learn is that we are the sort of family that explains other people down.

The second one is a promise. It buys peace now against a future you cannot guarantee, and if it does not happen she will remember that you said it.

There is a third kind of sentence, and Jonathan is speaking it. It does not defend, and it does not promise. It relocates the question.

You are able to answer a child without defending or promising, and Scripture gives you the shape of it. 1 Samuel 14:6 puts many and few side by side and then says it may be that the Lord will work for us, and it is the same Spirit who gives what to say in the hour it is needed, which means the sentence you have been hunting for is one that tells the truth about the number and puts the weight somewhere the number cannot reach.

What she is actually asking

Here is a thing worth turning round before the next car journey.

A nine year old asking why ours is small is not asking for a defense of your church.

She is asking whether the thing she is part of is real. Children ask about size because size is the measure they have, and what she wants to know is whether what happens in that room counts.

That is a question you can answer honestly, and it has nothing to do with numbers.

You are able to tell her the truth about what happens in that room without one word about how many are in it. Matthew 18:20 says where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them, and the number given is deliberately tiny and the promise attached to it is His presence, and it is the same Spirit who makes Him present in a gathering, which means the answer to what she is actually asking is available and is not about the count.