Building Bethlehem – Reflections from a Microchurch

As I sipped my coffee in the parish hall after mass yesterday, the leader of the Knights of Columbus came over and asked, “Can I grab you for a few minutes?” He needed a little help setting up the nativity scene out in front of the church. A few other men joined us as we walked up the stairs to get the pieces out of the choir loft.

Setting up the figures only took a few minutes. Many hands make light work, and all that. But I realized at the end what a gift it is to be a part of a microchurch.

A church in the boonies.

You’ve probably never heard of a microchurch. That’s because the other kind, the megachurch, gets all the press. Megachurches have marketing departments and audiovisual teams. Some broadcast their services through direct satellite feeds. Microchurches have part-time church secretaries. They might use an iPad to broadcast the service through Facebook Live. The microchurch isn’t exactly a different species from the megachurch, but it’s definitely a different breed.

I’ve never spent much time in a megachurch, and so I don’t have anything particularly negative to say about them. I personally love beautiful architecture, and so massive cathedrals with classical styling delight both my soul and my senses. But for the bulk of my churchgoing life, I’ve been going to little country churches with smallish congregations.

As a little kid, I attended a church called St. Mary’s in Edgefield, SC. The Catholic’s in Edgefield built the church some time before the Civil War, and it’s been running ever since. My family started attending because they needed an organist, and my older sister was a talented pianist. She went off to college when I started my freshman year of high school, and I took over on the organ. Not because I was particularly talented, but because my modest talent and training put me at the top of the list of people to ask.

Now I attend Queen of Angels Catholic Church in Thompson, GA, and the feel is remarkably similar to the church of my youth. It’s a small church, with a little more than 100 families. I don’t play the organ… another parishioner with greater skills takes that role. I appreciate that and so does my wife. It allows me to help wrangle the hooligans in my pew.

All hands on deck.

Even though I’m not responsible for the music, I am definitely more involved than I might be if I attended a megachurch. At the megachurch, the temptation of, “Oh, (insert name) can handle (insert task name)” abounds. It’s easy to be a bump on the back pew in a big church. Sometimes, it’s harder to even feel like you belong to something when you attend with thousands of other families. You can feel anonymous in a crowd.

Not so in the microchurch. ‘Nathan, you’re my lector today,” says my pastor, Fr. Stephen, as I walk in on a Sunday morning. Notice two things. He knows me by name, and he knows that I can lector. Three things… the third being perhaps most important. He calls me into service. He doesn’t do it all the time, but he does it.

Same thing with the parish Knights of Columbus council. I’m the Financial Secretary because I’m willing to show up to the monthly meetings and I have some level of skill with completing paperwork on time. I enjoy the knights because it gives me the opportunity to serve and to build relationships with the other men in the parish. But it’s not my skill that gives me a role of responsibility. There’s just nobody else who’s willing and able to do it.

In a microparish, I think it’s almost hard to go unnoticed long enough to avoid being called into service. The same thing happens to my wife. She runs the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd atrium and does Sunday School for the 3-6-year-olds. She enjoys it and is gifted in doing it. The only other person who’s trained to be a catechist in the parish is her mother. So, they work together.

The Body of Christ – in Miniature.

I feel like I’m a part of making my parish what God wants it to be. God wants me to be there, and it will be less than it should be if I don’t engage. This is both humbling and inspiring.

St. Paul talks about people with their different gifts being the organs of Christ’s Body. If I’m supposed to be a hand in this small body present at Queen of Angels, and I’m withered and useless, then the church isn’t going to be able to do what God has called it to do. I have to step up and take responsibility.

Bethlehem also points to a beautiful reality. Christ was born in a humble, country place surrounded by a bunch country folks. Shepherds are about as country as it gets. So, this simple church setting with the modest building and smallish congregation is not a barrier to Christ being born in our hearts. It may even be a slight advantage.

The key for me and my family is to be where God wants us. He wants me at a microchurch, a Bethlehem.

To read more about my conversion, check out Demoniac, now available on Amazon.