Luke 12:32
“Fear not, little flock; for it is your
Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
In many places in the New Testament we see
small congregations of the Lord's people meeting to worship and to praise Him.
Yet today the ever growing trend in the “religious world” is that the larger
the “church” the more the Lord must be blessing them. But as in this verse in
Luke and in several stories recorded in the book of Acts we see in the early
days of Christianity, as the Apostles and other men were traveling around
preaching the gospel and organizing churches that there were small groups
meeting and worshiping and studying the Word of God. In most of the cases we
are never told of the numbers, we just know they were small congregations.
Many of these were meeting in someones home
or in some cases they were meeting out in the open at different places. But the
fact is not all of the churches mentioned in the scripture were large in number
like the church in Jerusalem or the church at Antioch.
This misconception of how a church is to be
large in number has brought about many false professions and false conversions.
All for the sake of growing the Lord's church.
Folks, the fact is our Lord never promised
us the numbers would be great. He never promised us that there would be great
numbers of people following after a man of God who was preaching the truth. Yet
like the rest of the “religious world” many a good sound preacher/pastor has
fallen into the train of thought that if the numbers are great the Lord must
not be in it. What a shame! So many of God's true churches have been left
without a pastor because of this very thing.
I know of men out there who would rather sit
at home than to go work a small church. In several places in the four Gospels
we see where Jesus often times was teaching only the twelve. We read in John
6:66 that after Jesus preached a hard hitting sermon that “From that time many
of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” Leaving just the
twelve with Him.
A great concern I have is that there is a
large number of true Landmark Sovereign Grace Baptist churches in this nation
of ours who are without a pastor and, because each congregation is small in
number, many pastors and churches have written them off as being “dead”. We
should be ashamed of ourselves if we honestly believe a church is dead just
because the Lord has not provided them a pastor at this time our the number
attending is low. It is obvious the Lord still has a work in those areas were
these small churches are. Are we not to show our faith by example to the world?
What greater statement of faith for a church than to continue the Lord's work
even when they have no pastor or even when the numbers are down.
Remember what our Lord said in Matthew
18:20? “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in
the midst of them.”
As Landmark Sovereign Grace Baptist we
should be very well aware that the truths we teach and preach are not going to
draw the large crowds that so many are expecting today. Yes, there are
large Landmark Sovereign Grace Baptist
churches out there, but for the most part the congregations are very small.
What I have found in my travels is that most
of the time those very small congregations are more loving and more
compassionate to their visitors and to each other and to those other churches
they fellowship with. Because of their lack of a pastor many of them are
starving for fellowship and teaching. Yet I see men who refuse to go preach and
teach because of the small numbers.
I also recognize that the Lord does not seem
to be raising up new preachers. Yes there are some out there but there are far
more churches who are in need of a pastor than there are God called men to fill
the positions.
We need to be in much prayer for these small
churches. Pray the Lord strengthens them spiritually. Pray the Lord gives them
the man they need or that this is another sign that our Lord's coming is soon.
Praise ye the Lord!!!
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