Christians who want to question the effectiveness of a church sometimes jokingly ask if a church disappeared from a community, would anyone notice. The answer in this case is no.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A church has vanished from the Russian village where it stood for almost 200 years, the local diocese said Tuesday.

The Church of Christ’s Resurrection, in the central Russian village of Komarovo, was built in 1809 but in early October someone took it away brick by brick, Father Vitaly a spokesman for the local Russian Orthodox Church, told Reuters.

“We have sent a letter to local prosecutors,” he said. “Who exactly did this, the investigation will show.”

The church was in an isolated area only occasionally visited by clergymen, so the disappearance was not immediately noticed.

The church was in an isolated area only occasionally visited by clergymen, so the disappearance was not immediately noticed.

Komarovo is in the Ivanovo region, about 300 km (186.4 miles) north-east of Moscow. The church was not in use but clergy had been considering resuming services there, the Ivanovo-Voznesenskaya and Kineshemskaya diocese said in a statement on its Internet site.

A survey of the large, two-storey church a few months ago found that it was structurally sound, but now all that remains are the foundations and sections of walls, the statement said.

Thieves routinely make off with church property in rural Russia, where unemployment, petty crime and alcoholism are widespread.

Criminals target religious icons stored in churches because they can fetch a good price, and church buildings are dismantled to provide building materials.

“This is not an isolated case,” said Father Vitaly. “In many villages in central Russia sites of historical interest are being dismantled and people suffer by being deprived of their cultural heritage.”

What could be gained by having smaller churches:

1. More intimate fellowship. Everyone instantly becomes more accessible because there are far less of you.
2. The giftings of each member would more readily find output. In a larger church, the math says there will be numerous people with the same or similar giftings but the opportunities for gift exercise within that local body will not be proportionally increased.
3. Accountability comes with more intimate fellowship.
4. Church discipline is more realistic because of familiarity though by no means easier.
5. Increased percentage of undesignated giving freed up to be forwarded to the Cooperative Program.

Because of the Southern Baptist Cooperative Program the amount of money given to missions should in no way decrease if churches were to be constituted around a smaller number. In fact, with smaller churches with presumably smaller operating budgets a higher precentage of the church’s offerings could be dedicated to the Cooperative Progam.

Example, a church of 50 members giving $10 weekly, 10% percent of which is forwarded to their State Convention (i.e., $1 per person or $50 collectively) who then forwards 35% to the Cooperative Program, in the end gives $17.50/week to missions collectively. Split that group of 50 into two groups of 25 whose churches are able to give 20% of their undesignated receipts to their State Convention of which 35% still makes it to the Cooperative Program, ends up giving twice as much (half the group, but double the percentage times two).

All this to say that while one may assume that a larger church is able to give more to missions, the reality is rather the opposite due to the operating costs associated with large buildings, properties and staffs. A smaller church is freed up to give a greater percentage provided monetary cooperate responsibilities are at a minimum. A larger church is not able to give more, but requires more to keep the operation running.

What is gained by having larger churches:

1. Attendees can remain anonymous, avoid confrontation and remain uncommitted much like a movie-goer.
2. More money may secure greater amenities for the members (big screens, coffee shops, bookstores, etc).
3. Less impetus for members to exercise spiritual gifts in a congregation that has professionalized the ministry.

The benefits of a smaller church far outweigh the superficial, comfort-lending benefits of the larger.

photo credit: Mc Morr

Charles Latham in his antifolk song My Perfect Church offers this bit of truth-in-jesting cynicism concerning spirituality:

I pray from my toilet seat, “Make my holy life complete”

My god hears me when I speak, can yours say the same? My god lets me have my way, I can pray for it not to rain today, I can chant cars off the motor way when I’m late for work. My god grants financial miracles and the rules are always flexible, my god watches my vehicles when they’re parked in the street.

My perfect church is built only for one: where I am the priest and the congregation, my one regret is that no one can come, it’s gonna be awful lonely in this private heaven.

My god likes human sacrafise, his services demand a price and mine’s the only blood he likes, no virgin’s will do. He can’t heal me should I go blind, he can’t burn a bush or absolve my crimes, he can’t turn my water into wine but he can point me to the bar.

My perfect church is built only for one, where I alone experience salvation. My one regret is that no one can come; it’s gonna be awful lonely in this private heaven.

He gives me no creation myth, the commandments end with the fifth, the prophesies are pretty hit or miss but I don’t give a damn because every day’s a holy day and you can’t work on a holy day, my god wants me at home to pray, begging for more things.

My perfect church is built only for one, where I am the priest and the congregation, my one regret is that no one can come, it’s gonna be awful lonely in this private heaven.

There’s an MP3 of the song available on what looks to be a legit (i.e., not illegal) site.

Being a member of a church–a local body of believers–implies that you are a part of the church, as a body part is part of a body. We call it a part because it’s attached in meaningful way to the larger unit, the body. So then are “members” of a church really members if they are detached from the body?

I want to leave the analogy of the body for a moment and just explicate (read: vent) that there are those members of churches that are members because once upon a time they walked down the aisle and the church “voted” for them to become members, and have since disappeared; but they still hold membership. What is membership but that you belong to the larger unit? It’s impossible to belong if you don’t go, nor is spiritually healthy.

Mark Dever notes in his contributing chapter in A God Entrancing Vision of All Things points out that in 1996 “the average attendance on Sunday morning among Southern Baptist churches was…seventy… [and]…the average U.S. Southern Baptist church has 233 members” (p138). One-third of the members show up on Sunday!

In reading A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, I’ve come to a striking observation of the church that was true in 1846 and finds relevance today as well. The quote is by a gentleman with whom, before reading this book, I was unacquainted, J. H. Thornwell, “the great Southern Presbyterian theologian of the nineteenth century.” He’s recorded here regarding the church as saying,

Our whole system of operations gives an undue influence to money. Where money is the great want, numbers must be sought; and where an ambition for numbers prevails, doctrinal purity must be sacrificed. The root of the devil is in the secular spirit of all our eccelesiastical instituions. What we want is a spiritual body; a Church whose power lies in the truth, and the presence of the Holy Ghost. To unsecularize the Church should be the unceasing aim of all who are anxious that the ways of Zion should florish. (p137)