““Years ago, Aaron and I were talking with the pastor of a fast-growing church, and another friend, a more seasoned pastor. The first pastor was telling the story of how the church had exploded, how they couldn’t stop the growth, how it was utterly out of their control, an inexplicable, unstoppable phenomenon. The seasoned pastor pushed him gently: “You’ve built this, and it’s okay to say that. You’ve intentionally and strategically built a very large church. It’s okay to say that.” The young pastor kept protesting, preferring the narrative of wild and unexplained growth. “We had nothing to do with it,” he insisted. “Well, not nothing,” said the older pastor. “You kept putting up more chairs.” And then our minds sort of exploded, because it didn’t occur to us that there was another option. We were all raised to build, build, build. Bigger is better, more is better, faster is better. It had never occurred to us, in church-building or any other part of life, that someone would intentionally keep something small, or deliberately do something slow. This””
