Small Things

The Irresistible Revolution is quite possibly the third greatest writing that influences my own personal theology. The second and very close to the Irresistible Revolution is Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and of course, far ahead of both these great works is the Bible. What I love about Shane Claiborne’s vision community is how it is not new all. There are a lot of people who claim that Shane has revolutionary ideas about Christianity but if he would hear you say that he would simply say that he has been inspired by the church demonstrated in Acts.

In the video above, Shane is reading from his book. He starts out with quote from Mother Theresa that has just infected my soul of late. “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” It really makes me think about why we do things.

A lot of us like the feeling of giving. How giving to the poor makes us feel better about ourselves but we never really understand the problem, nor do we want to. I have noticed a trend in popular Christian churches. We like to do big mission trips in the summer. We might travel half the way across the world to China or Africa or Calcutta and when we return something amazing happens. World poverty ceases to exist or at least in our minds.

I am not minimizing the good things that happen on these big mission trips but when we just do the big things, who did we do it for? You see it is so easy to detach ourselves from the needy by going far away to help people. What are chances of you seeing those people ever again? It makes it very easy for the needy not to expect things from you. Then you will not have to worry about letting them down.

I want to suggest a new way or should I say an old way to serve. I live in a county that has 380,000 residents in it and our poverty rate is at 8.8%. We need to reach these people, you and I have to reach these people because who else will. The popular church of America likes to go to attractive places to serve people. Westmoreland County is probably not on any churches agenda to be served, so let us put on ours.

When we focus on these big mission trips as our way to serve we miss the heart of the Gospel. The good news is for all. We need to focus on small mission trips. Mission trips that occur on our way to work, in the halls of our schools and in our own community because “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”