Thirteen years later, the church has grown, and so have the people. I sat with the pastor and listened over coffee to what God has been doing. It’s still messy. It’s still an almost invisible church. The room can hold a hundred no matter how they configure the church. You would probably never visit that church or town except by accident. And yet God is there.

I love this paragraph from James K.A. Smith’s new book On the Road With Saint Augustine:

Let your eyes skate past the megachurch industrial complex and take note of the almost invisible church in your neighborhood that you’ve driven past a thousand times without noticing. Check on it some Tuesday night, and see if there aren’t lights on in the basement. Maybe the food pantry is open. Or the congregation is offering financial management classes or marital counseling for couples who are struggling. It might just be the choir practicing, giving some souls an appointment to look forward to each week that pulls them out of their loneliness.

I drove past one of those churches last week in a small town in Ontario. I first knew the church when it was small (around 30) and relatively unloved, a group that resembled David’s early followers: “everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul” (1 Samuel 22:2).

Thirteen years later, the church has grown, and so have the people. I sat with the pastor and listened over coffee to what God has been doing. It’s still messy. It’s still an almost invisible church. The room can hold a hundred no matter how they configure the church. You would probably never visit that church or town except by accident. And yet God is there.

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