March Madness 2011. Basketball fans submitted their picks and waited, glued to the TV, to see if their choices validated their expertise.
A strange thing happened this year. Almost 6 million fans submitted their “brackets” to the ESPN Tournament Challenge to predict the Final Four. This year, only two — that’s TWO — out of six million got it right. The eighth seed, Butler, and the 11th seed, VCU, toppled teams expected to win.
The Church has its own system of bracketing. Congregations are labeled. Churches with good labels have an edge in attracting leadership talent and status within their denomination. Others, labeled “small,” or “struggling” have fewer opportunities and over the years learn to fend for themselves. If, heaven forbid, a church should experience conflict, it will be recorded in the annals of the hierarchy as “trouble.” No matter how many decades pass or how the demographics of the church and community change, clergy interested in serving will check first with the hierarchy and be forewarned.
One small church met with a new bishop for the first time, a decade after its last visit with a previous bishop. The meeting opened with the bishop telling them churches have personalities and she had checked, and theirs was “adversarial.” She used this word repeatedly as the meeting opened, before the members in attendance — all but two of whom had joined in recent years — had an opportunity to say a word. It should not surprise you to learn that this bishop’s relationship with this congregation slid quickly downhill.
Christianity believes in rebirth, forgiveness, reconciliation, atonement, and above all, in the value and talents of each community and member in the community? Brackets and labels go against our professed beliefs, yet still play a huge role. How do we stop? How do small churches outgrow labels?
Perhaps we begin by remembering the great things that have come from small places:
- A baby born in a stable.
- One leader and 12 small town disciples.
- A ministry which concentrated on the small, did well, and grew and grew.
And we could remember that all of this happened bracketed by tumult.
