Forty-one on a good Sunday and he can tell you every one of their names and most of their birthdays.
The roof has needed doing since before he came. There is a bucket arrangement in the back corner that has become a joke, and the joke is now eleven years old, and last winter it stopped being funny for about a fortnight and then went back to being funny.
He is not discouraged. That is the thing he would want understood first, because there is a version of this article that assumes he is and it would be wrong.
He loves that place. He has buried nineteen people out of it. There is a man who comes now who spent two years in the car park before he came inside, and he can point at the exact spot.
And he has developed a habit and he does not know when it started.
He gets the apology in first.
Anybody comes, a visiting speaker, a man from the district, somebody's cousin down for a weekend, and before they have said one word he has said: we are only small, mind.
Every single time. Before they ask. Before they have had a chance to look round or say anything at all.
His wife pointed it out in the spring, not unkindly, in the car. She said: you say that before they can. And he laughed and said something.
And he has heard himself do it four times since.
The treasure is in clay pots on purpose
Let me say what the habit is, because your wife named the mechanism in six words and neither of you went on with it.
You say that before they can.
It is a pre-emptive strike. If you supply the verdict first, nobody else gets to deliver it, and you never have to stand in a room while somebody else decides what forty-one people amounts to.
That is not humility. Humility does not need to get there first.
Now hear this, and take it as settled rather than as comfort: the container was never supposed to be impressive, and the account says so outright and gives the reason. That is not my kind reading of eleven years, it is what stands written in the fourth chapter of Second Corinthians, and the same Holy Spirit who carried that line has been in that building on every one of those Sundays.
Read it, and notice that the plainness is deliberate.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.2 Corinthians 4:7
To show. That is a purpose clause.
The ordinariness of the container is not an unfortunate circumstance that God is working around. It is doing a job. It is what makes it obvious where the power is coming from, and a container that impressed anybody would obscure the very thing it exists to carry.
Clay pots were the cheapest thing in that world. They were what you kept oil in. Nobody wrote poetry about them.
So this is yours right now rather than pending a roof fund: the size of that building is not something to be got in front of, because the written word puts the treasure in the cheapest available container for a stated reason, and the Spirit of God is the one who has been filling a place with a bucket in the back corner for eleven years.
And the guard, because I am not going to hand you a comfortable story about smallness.
Nothing here says a roof does not need doing. It does. Nothing here says a small church is holier than a large one, because it is not, and the men and women running large ones are mostly working themselves to pieces the same as you.
What is written simply never treats the container as the point, and the Holy Spirit has never once needed a building to be impressive in order to work in it.
So stop getting in first.
Not by boasting. Nobody is asking you to say something large about forty-one people and you would sound ridiculous and you would hate it.
Just stop supplying the verdict. When somebody comes, say hello, and then say nothing about size at all, and let them look round and make their own mind up.
You can do that this Sunday rather than after the roof, because Scripture puts the treasure in clay pots for a stated reason and never once apologizes for the pot, and the Holy Spirit has been doing His work in that room without waiting for the container to improve.
And know what the silence will do, because it will feel wrong for about three visits.
They will look round. And what they will actually see, if they are worth anything at all, is a man who knows forty-one names and most of their birthdays, a bucket that has been a joke for eleven years, and nineteen funerals' worth of people who came back afterwards.
Nobody has ever been unimpressed by that. They have only ever been handed a reason to be, by you, at the door, before they got the chance.
And say something to your wife about the spring, because she said six true words in a car and you laughed and said something, and she has watched you do it four times since and has not raised it again. You are able to stand at that gate and say nothing about size, and you have forty-one names and nineteen funerals standing behind you while you do it.
Declare this over yourself
Then say these out loud. Know what they stand on: this authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King and not as a man getting a verdict in first. Every line rests on what is already written, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it, never the sound of your own voice. You speak under His will, never over it, and however He answers, the outcome is His.
- Apology I get in first, you are stopped at the door. Scripture puts the treasure in jars of clay to show that the power is from God and not from us, and the plainness of the pot is doing a job.
- Fear that if I do not supply the verdict somebody else will, get out, in the name of Jesus. Humility does not need to get there first, and forty-one names and nineteen funerals have never once left anybody unimpressed.
- Lord, You have been filling that place with a bucket in the back corner for eleven years. On Sunday I am saying hello and nothing about size, and I am telling my wife she was right in the car.
2 Corinthians 4:7
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