So quaint!

Having grown up in a church where the weekly attendence was more than the permanent population of many decent-sized suburbs, there are often things at our little 900 attendees church that strike me as being so quaint and traditional. Case in point: the photo directory. Dan and I just got back from having our picture taken for the directory, and Dan laughed at me when I mused about how fun it was to be in a small church. (Talk about relative: to Dan, this is a big church.) But honestly, to be able to print an entire church's membership in a booklet smaller than the Yellow Pages is such a foreign concept--and I LOVE it. I won't ever knock my church upbringing, despite how much I may disagree with certain aspects of it--bottom line is, my family is where it is because of that church, and I can't be grateful or thankful enough for it--but I have to say that the small church community is way more my speed. I love being able to recognize faces week after week, although it helps that I'm up on stage every other Sunday singing and can look at all those faces head-on, since otherwise my poor observational skills wouldn't remember half of them. I love it when the pastor can refer to a member by name and not have to give s hort biography of the person to give the name context--everyone already knows who he's talking about. I love that we have a Fellowship Hall, and that I've attended two birthday bashes there, because why not have your birthday party at the church? Everyone knows how to get there, and there's a kitchen and a sound system for the karaoke machine. I love that, when our child is born, we'll be able to appeal to the entire church body for their prayers and encouragement as we embark on first-time parenthood--and then know that people will actually come up and ask us how things are going and coo over our little bundle of joy.

The small church setting has its drawbacks, but I'd take those limitations over the endless resources of the megachurch anyday.