A Big Gospel in Small Places
Jesus loves small, insignificant places.
In recent years, Christian ministries have increasingly prioritized urban areas. Big cities and suburbs are considered more strategic, more influential, and more desirable places to live and work. After all, they're the centers for culture, arts, and education. More and more people are leaving small places and moving to big ones. As a ministry strategy, focusing on big places makes sense.
But the gospel of Jesus is often unstrategic. In this book, pastor Stephen Witmer lays out an integrated theological vision for small-place ministry. Filled with helpful information about small places and with stories and practical advice from his own ministry, Witmer's book offers a compelling, comprehensive vision for small-place ministry today.
Jesus loves small places, and when we care deeply about them and invest in them over time, our ministry becomes a unique picture of the gospel—one that the world badly needs to see.
"In an age when we tend to lionize big strategies, big churches, and big cities, Stephen Witmer movingly calls us back to faithfulness, not least when the sphere to which we have been called is small and unknown. Of course, it is not a question of either-or: either big cities or small towns and rural villages. Dr. Witmer does not try to force us into mutually exclusive worlds, but at a time when agendas favor the big and the urban, he patiently summarizes the biblical and theological evidence for underscoring the small and the overlooked. Read Witmer and (ironically) expand your vision."
"Francis Schaeffer observed that there are no little people in God's sight and no little places: 'To be wholly committed to God in the place where God wants him—this is the creature glorified.' There is a tendency these days to quantify the value of ministry. This thinking assumes that bigger is better. The larger the population is, the greater the need. Such a view tends to rule out small places. Stephen Witmer helps us to correct this by showing us that small places are much like everywhere else. They are also different. Witmer makes an informed and winsome case for the importance of doing ministry in the places that many of us are inclined to overlook. A Big Gospel in Small Places will help you to understand not only the need but the unique nature of today's forgotten communities."