Often times, when we wrap up a Sunday evening together as a community, I begin to wonder. I wonder if those who stood before an audience of 200, 400, 1000 would feel the same excitement sitting around a table with 20? Now before you get your church growth panties in a wad, do not hear what I am NOT saying. I am not saying that large churches are un-biblical and that small church communities are the only biblical way to “do” church. I am NOT wising I was more like [insert celebrity pastor here]. What I am saying is that I know the sheer adrenaline rush and energy that is created when large groups gather. I know it how it feels to be on the stage and in the middle of a large audience and feel like God is somehow moving. I have also been guilty of believing that unless a large crowd gathers then somehow God is absent. In other words, the more people equaled God’s blessing with the opposite being true as well. This line of thinking, however, feeds the beast of bigger = better causing an unhealthy obsession with numbers. Just ask a pastor sometime about Sunday. You will probably here something like: “We had a great service with 400 in worship.” This is especially true around holidays like Christmas because more people go to a church building.

Alan Roxburgh reminds us that the Christmas story should cause us to pause and reflect on the ordinary. Even though Jesus was immaculately conceived, the characters are very ordinary. There is Mary - a young virgin, Zecharias - an old, retired, shamed priest, Simeon - an old man awaiting God’s action after most others had given up on that story, Anna - a forgotten old woman hidden inside the world of a religious building thinking of God’s future, and shepherds wandering in the dark of the hills. All of these names of people who would never appear on the cover of a magazine or be featured at the latest conference. These are the nobodies, the regular, the ordinary people living in regular ordinary places. They are neither powerful nor influential. However, these are the people full of anticipation; these are the ones expecting the intervention of God.

But we forget that God’s story is continually breaking out in the midst of the ordinary and unexpected. This cannot be said clearly enough, because in our time, this is precisely what is discounted, discredited and overlooked. There is almost a disdain for these little places of ordinariness. Yet, ordinary is at the heart of Advent. I’m glad my church community is ordinary, often overlooked, and dismissed. I’m am glad I get the same rush, feel the same excitement, and know that God is present in each of the faces I see as I look around the table. I see God in the ordinariness of their stories and in their everyday lives in a way that could never be seen standing on a stage before an audience of 200, 400, 1000. Seeing God in the ordinary – sharing a meal with 20 people on a journey with God – is what the local church is about.