When I was a psychology student in college we studied a phenomenon known as “diffusion of responsibility.”  This concept states that as more people are presented with a challenge, fewer see it as their responsibility to respond.  At times few people, or no people, will respond because they feel someone else will or should take responsibility for the issue at hand.  You see this phenomenon at work in a number of notorious cases of crime victims who are assaulted in public places in broad daylight and no one responds to their cries for help.  In spite of, or as this concept would put it, because of, the number of people witnessing the event, no one person feels responsible to do something.  Responsibility is “diffused” throughout the crowd, and consequently no one acts.  Ironically, a victim has a greater chance of receiving help if an assault is seen by a single witness rather than a large crowd.

Can being a smaller church actually be a contributing factor to having impact?  It’s somewhat counterintuitive, but there are reasons to think it may be a helpful factor.  Particularly if a small organization is focused, their impact can go very deep.  Like the proverbial mustard seed, small can result in big.

Check out this article from Ed Stetzer on one church’s ministry in adoption.

This summer Life Covenant Church (the community I’m privileged to lead) passed a major milestone – we planted our third church, and the first one to be started overseas.  It came out of an orphanage and community center we had the privilege of working to found with some Mozambican leaders, and out of our broader commitment to this country over the last several years.  We’ve been working to plant a church there, but didn’t expect it to come through this arm of the ministry.  But lo and behold, our venture into serving women and children at risk led to the birth of a young church who shares our passion to see more churches planted, and to get to the unreached peoples in the north of their country. 

“ . . . work and workplace are not antithetical to grace.  in fact, grace is absolutely at home in work and workplace.  Paul makes sure we get this right by placing the term ‘good works’ in the same sentence in which we discusses grace: not only saved by grace but ‘created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life’ (Eph. 2:10).”

Peterson draws out the wonderful fact that grace is in full operation at all times.  Even as we work, God is at work in, around, and through us.  Our efforts in the workplace, in our relationships, in our churches, are not in contradistinction to grace, but merely another expression of God’s grace at work.  As Dallas Willard has said, “Grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning.”

The only thing funnier than the picture is that my friend Mark the Atheist sent to me . . .

“To call something or someone a gift does not tell us what it is but how it comes to us.  ‘Gift,’ as such, has no shape or color or texture.  ‘Gift’ merely says that it comes to us freely.  It arrives neither out of necessity nor on demand.  It is free.  It arrives in an ambience of generosity, with no strings attached.”

The gift of God is tremendous on two levels.  First, the worth of what we are given.  What can be of greater worth than relationship with God, unceasing life, meaning and purpose as we are invited into God’s good work in the world, love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?  And second, as Peterson reminds us, the manner in which it comes.  The gift cost the Father his Son, the Son an incarnate life and crucified death, and somehow comes to us as gift.  Ours is just to open our hands and receive.

When people ask me what theory of the atonement I hold, my answer is always yes.  Scripture gives us a handful of metaphors to help us understand the work of Jesus on our behalf, from a number of different settings (the courtroom, the slave market, the battlefield, etc.).  To rely on only one of these metaphors is to hold a partial view of God’s saving work.  The atonement is like a multifaceted diamond, each surface necessary to reflect the light from different angles.  (For more on these see John Stott’s masterpiece The Cross of Christ and Scot McKnight’s excellent A Community Called Atonement).