Monday’s Musing: The Big Deal About Small

I just recently got the latest issue of Forefront, magazine that gets sent to Cal Engineering alum (go bears!), and I noticed this article titled, “The Big Deal About Small.” It’s a fascinating read about the future of nanotechnology and how future research in the micro, no, nanoscopic realm is going to transform lives. In short, “nano research isn’t just going smaller. It’s using unique nanoscale properties to create materials and devices that have the capacity to do the previously impossible.” As things get smaller and smaller, they’re able to affect technology and medicine in ways that 10, 20 years ago could have only been a dream. I’m no nanotechnologist, but it sounds awfully exciting.

There’s a similar idea in the computer world (more in my neck of the woods), Moore’s Law, which states that the number of little transistors you can pack onto a chip doubles about every 20-24 months. That’s why my previously super cool Core 2 Duo chip I bought a few years back isn’t anywhere close to top of the line any longer (although it still works just as fast as it did when I bought it: similar to, “Just because a new digital camera came out doesn’t mean yours all the sudden can’t take pictures anymore”). The way processors get faster and more powerful is they get smaller, thus reducing the distance data has to travel and increasing the capacity of the chip itself. Or something like that. Now, instead of just one “brain” per chip, it’s quite commonplace to have two, four, or even six per chip. Engineers figure out a way to pack more and more capacity onto an object of the same size, or even smaller.

Think of another example – the venerable iPod. I recently read an article about the birth of the iPod, and I remembered what that original device looked like. Large, chunky, and underpowered by today’s standards. Five gigs. Nice and thick. Compared to the nifty models they have out now, that thing is a beast. Plus, the newest ones can surf the net, watch videos, and take pictures. But even when that first model came out, it revolutionized the music scene, harnessing the power of the MP3 (another example of going “small” – digital music files) and putting an entire jukebox into the palm of your hand.

Why am I writing about this? There’s so much talk these days about church models and methodology, and a fair bit of it revolves around a concept of small or big. Go big to make a big impact. Go small to make a big impact. Either way, the underlying pulse is big impact. Lives transformed. Communities restored. Nations redeemed. And just like each part of the body is necessary (1 Cor. 12:20), I think all the various expressions of the church have a significant role to play in what God’s doing on this planet. (And the most important thing is not models, but obedience to Jesus regardless of particular implementation). But church paradigms aside, I do think it’s important for the Church to consider what the big deal is about small.

You see, there will always need to be small things. It’s why most churches  have small groups, so people can connect to one another in a real way that doesn’t get wiped out by overwhelming masses. It’s why in education the conversation is frequently about lowering class size. It’s why borderline introverts like me thrive in small settings of three or five people. Jesus certainly spent a lot of time serving and blessing the multitudes, but he also devoted some of his best hours to his twelve buddies, the disciples. When we talk about life transformation, I’m convinced a whole lot of it happens in community, and small ones at that. There’s so much more room for real conversation and growth that happens on a small scale, and when it’s replicated over and over in these intimate settings, before you know it multitudes have been transformed.

From that launching point, the whole idea is to think about the aggregate. Small bands all moving together toward a common goal can accomplish a lot. For contemporary technology examples, consider Kiva, Twitter, or Wikipedia. Even thinking about software programming paradigms, there are advantages to having plugins and modular code (think: Facebook apps, Firefox plugins, and the like) compared to one monolithic piece of code. When you add up a lot of these relatively small things together, you’ve got a lot of traction moving toward something bigger than each of the individual parts. The church, as it submits to Jesus in precisely the way he has designed each part (which, by the way, will look different depending on how each local church is wired), operates like this as it plugs into the core (the vine) and pursues kingdom stuff. When it comes to spiritual life, one of the traits that comes to mind when thinking small is agility. With small, tight spiritual bands, there is a higher capacity to respond quickly to needs in a meaningful way, as well as enter into spaces that previously might have been out of reach.

I’m reading Church Turned Inside Out by Linda Bergquist (a mentor and friend) and Allan Karr, and I just got to the section that talks about fractals. They suggest that these self-similar repeating patterns (think cauliflower – each little piece looks like the larger whole) provide tremendous insight into the church and the kingdom of God. Each part represents and patterns itself as the whole, but is not the whole. Every follower of Christ is patterned after Jesus, and contains Christ-like DNA as such, but is not the entire church. Life transformation is grounded in the individual level, and societal transformation hinges on a vast movement of multiple parts. We need to dream big when it comes to serving and loving God, because we serve an infinite one. So yes, by all means, every part of the church should be valued and actively serving God in its own unique way, congruent with God’s call. The “right” way to be a church is ultimately obedience to Jesus. But what I do think requires more focus is how small things can make a big impact, or, in the words of the nanotechnology article, “do the previously impossible.”

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