Encouragement for Small Churches and Small Pastors

by Hexon J. Maldonado

Today, there are approximately 380,000 churches in the United States with an average church size of about 65 members. And in a nation like the United States, where success is largely defined by size, money, and influence, this can often be discouraging to small congregations. They can wrestle with feelings of inadequacies, wondering to themselves, ‘What is wrong with us?’ ‘Is something wrong with us?’ ‘Are we not friendly?’ ‘Is God not pleased with us?’

The same can be said of pastors who shepherd small churches. They look around at the landscape of churches and everywhere they see large, bustling, and bursting churches filled with people who are loving God, growing in their faith, and making an impact on the world for the glory of God, and they feel small. They wonder to themselves, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ ‘What am I missing?’ ‘Should I be doing something else?’ ‘Did God not really call me into pastoral ministry?’

However, being a large, bustling, and bursting church is not always a sign the church is doing something right. It is not aways a sign of spiritual growth among the people. It is not always a sign God is pleased with the church and that he is blessing the church—think Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, Paula White, and any number of super-mega churches which preach false theology, the prosperity gospel, and a host of other dangerous and heretical teachings. Undoubtedly, the pastor of those churches and their congregations believe they are doing things right. God must be pleased with what they are doing. Just look at how God is blessing and growing their church hand-over-fist. Sadly, these pastors are modern-day Pharisees and their churches modern-day synagogues. To them Jesus said, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Lk. 16:15). The Pharisees thought they were on the right track because the people loved and respected them. They were wealthy and lived well. But these external indicators of success which are “exalted among men” are an “abomination in the sight of God.”

History is replete with examples of men who did much for the kingdom of God and for God’s glory, men we still read about, men whose ministries, from the outside looking in, do not seem like much of a success. Yet, we still read about these men and are inspired their stories. One thinks of Adoniram Judson who, in February 1812, at the young age of 23 and with his young bride of 22, sailed across an ocean to bring the gospel to the people of Burma. During his 37 years of ministry in Burma, Judson suffered horrific trials and personal suffering. In June 1824, he was accused of being a spy and was placed in prison for seventeen months under the most tortuous conditions. All the while, his pregnant wife walked two miles each way daily to care for him and tend to his needs. One year after his release from prison, his wife, at age 36 died. And six months later his daughter died.

Judson then struggled with doubt, wondering “if he had become a missionary for ambition and fame, not humility and self-denying love.”[i] The Lord eventually pulled him through that struggle and he continued on, but not without more struggles and trials. He remarried in April 1834, and had eight children with his second wife. It was a wonderful marriage and she was a great helpmate to him in the ministry. However, in 1845, while on their way back to the United States for the first time in 33 years, she became ill and died, leaving him with eight children. To everyone’s amazement, while in the United States, he married for the third time in June 1846. The Lord granted them four very happy years, until Judson’s death in April 1850.

Amid all these years of struggle and suffering, it was six years before Judson saw his first convert. And after twelve years his church grew to a whopping number of 18. Yet, we continue to read about him because of his amazing faithfulness to persevere under the most grueling circumstances, because of his commitment to serve God and reach people with the gospel. Today, there are over 200,000 confessing Christians in Burma (now Myanmar), and Christianity is the second largest belief system in the country.

We can think of Primitive Baptist Churches who officially date back to 1827, yet remain among the smallest congregations in the U.S. This is largely due to the fact that they have held fast to their biblical convictions of teaching and practicing those things they see clearly taught or practiced in the New Testament. For this reason, while they are Calvinistic in soteriology, they also practice foot washing, use wine in the Lord’s Supper, only permit men to teach the Bible, do not have Sunday school classes or youth ministries, and do not use musical instruments in worship. All this because they do not see these things in the New Testament. While this is not an endorsement of Primitive Baptist theology, one must applaud them for not changing with the times, for holding to their biblical convictions, and not simply jumping on the latest bandwagon.

In the end, it is not really that difficult to grow a large church, simply keep the sermons to under 30 minutes (15 minutes is best), offer the best modern worship experience possible (hire professionals musicians if needed), do not preach on any topic that may offend, provide the most entertaining Sunday school and youth ministry experience possible, and provide a Bible study directed at every possible social-economic class imaginable—college group study, senior’s study, women’s study, men’s study, young professional’s study, young married professional’s study, African-American study group, Hispanic-American study group, couples with children’s study, couples without children’s Bible study, so on and so forth, ad nauseam.

Pastors and churches who adopt this approach to ministry will grow large and fast, will be bustling and bursting with all kinds of activity, but will most often be a mile wide and an inch deep. Over the years, I have had many conversations with Christians who came to the church I was ministering at from nearby large “Bible-believing” churches. These Christians attended these “Bible-believing” churches for years, yet somehow had never heard of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone and have never been taught the biblical roles and responsibilities of husbands and wives. I have met Christians who have attended large “Reformed” churches for years, but never heard the word Reformed used by their pastor or in their church and have no understanding of the sovereignty of God over all things. Often in these churches, because the pastor personally holds to Reformed theology, he considers his church to be a Reformed church, yet a majority of the church members have no idea what Reformed Theology even means.

Ultimately, it is not difficult to grow a large, bustling, and bursting church. What is difficult—extremely difficult—is to faithfully and unashamedly preach the whole counsel of God and practice biblical church worship and church polity, and then trust God with the results. What is difficult is to resist the urge to buy in to the latest church movement in order to appear successful. What is difficult is to be faithful to scripture and to worship and serve God in the way in which he has prescribed and not look to the surrounding megachurches to see what they are doing so we might do the same and worship the Lord in that way (Deut. 12:29-32). What is difficult is to fully, accurately, and forcefully proclaim all of God’s Word in a culture where “people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Tim. 4:3-4).

What must ever be remembered by small churches and small pastors is that the goal is not to keep up with the Joneses. The goal is not to be successful in the eyes of the Evangelical world, but to ultimately hear the words: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant! Well done!” (Matt. 25:21). Thus, let us run the race with endurance, “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). Let us keep our eyes fixed upon the prize, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” Let us “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13-14).

Photo by Virooshan Theva

[i] John Piper. “He Died a Thousand Times—and Lived.” Desiring God.org. <https://www.desiringgod.org/ articles/ he-died- a- thousand- times-and-lived>

Burial or Cremation: Does It Matter?

by Hexon J. Maldonado

Photo by Diogo Palhais

I recently completed preaching through 1 Corinthians. After walking through 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul spends an enormous amount of space dealing with the reality and importance of the future bodily resurrection for all believers, many questions were raised among some of our church members regarding those who do not have a body. What about those who have been blown to smithereens from some massive explosion? Not only that, but what about the simple fact that the human body decomposes so that the only thing left are bones? What body is to be resurrected on the last day? Paul’s answer is that God is able to give each person a body as he has chosen (v.38), and that body will be a glorified body—a body that is similar to this body in some ways and dissimilar in other ways. With regards to our resurrected bodies, there is both continuity and discontinuity.

However, all of this raises the question: if God does not need a body to start with in order to raise us from the dead, then does it matter whether we bury our dead or cremate them? Afterall, cremation is much less expensive and complicated. What to do with the jar can be much less confusing than where to purchase a burial plot? One can take the jar home and set it on the mantle or scatter the ashes at sea. When grandma or grandpa dies, his or her jar of ashes can be brought home and set on the mantle next to the other one. With cremation, one does not run the risk of buying a burial plot, only to move to another state ten years later due to unforeseen circumstances.

Very likely, all these reasons are what has contributed to the rise in the percentage of Americans choosing to cremate their loved ones rather than bury them. In 1975, 5.69% of Americans chose to cremate their loved ones. As of last year (2023), 60.5% of Americans chose to cremate their loved ones rather than bury them. At this current trend, by 2045, 81.4% of Americans will be cremating their loved ones.[i] But are finances and convenience the only reasons more Americans—and more Christians—are choosing cremation for themselves and their loved ones over burial? And does it really matter? Does God care whether we have ourselves cremated or buried? Afterall, God does not need a body in order to give us a body in the resurrection.

Old Testament Practice

Throughout the Old Testament, we consistently see the patriarchs and prophets practicing burial as opposed to cremation. When God speaks to Abraham about his future, he says to him “you shall be buried in a good old age” (Gen. 15:15).[ii] God is very specific as to what will happen to Abrham once he dies—he will be buried. When Sarah dies (Gen. 23), Abraham immediately asks the locals for a place to bury her. The thought of cremating her never crossed his mind. It is not as though Abraham would not have known about cremation as a way of putting the dead out of sight (Gen. 22:4). The Pre-Canaanites practiced cremation for the dead as early as 2500 BC,[iii] and the Greeks introduced the practice to the Western world as early as 1000 BC.[iv] Yet, consistently, we see the patriarchs in the Old Testament seeking to bury their dead and not burn them. We see this with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, Sarah, Rachel, Rebekah, and Leah (Gen. 25:9; 35:19, 29; 49:31; 50:14, 26).

We also see God specifically commanding that when someone is put to death for a crime and hung on a tree, their body is not to be left hanging, rather the people “shall bury him the same day” (Deut. 21:23). If God commands that a criminal be given a burial, how much more those who are not criminals? God does not tell the people of Israel to do what they want with the criminal’s body, and he certainly does not grant them permission to burn the body. Instead, he commands the Israelites to bury him. For this reason, many first century rabbis believed God had clearly commanded burial over cremation.[v] Jews still follow this practice today.

What is worth noting is that God does command certain individuals be burned and not buried. Burning someone’s body instead of burying them was reserved for those guilty of committing some of the most heinous sins (Lev. 20:14; 21:9; Josh. 7:15, 25). For this reason, not having one’s body buried was considered by the Israelites to be the height of humiliation. Thus, David goes and takes down the bodies of Saul and Jonathan, whom the Philistines had left hanging in the open for days, and buried their remains (2 Sam. 21:10-14). The Psalmist, writing after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, laments the fact that many in Jerusalem have been slaughtered and “there was no one to bury them” (Ps. 79:3, cf.; Jer. 8:1-2; 16:4, 6). Not being buried was a horrible thought in the mind of Old Testament saints.

New Testament Practice

Throughout the New Testament, we continue to consistently see the practice of burying those who die. In the Gospel of Matthew, a man who desires to follow Jesus, says to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father” (8:21). After John the Baptist is beheaded, we read that “his disciples came and took the body and buried it” (Matt. 14:12). When Jesus tells the story of Lazarus and the rich man, he tells us that the “rich man also died and was buried” (Lk. 16:22). Lazarus, whom Jesus rose from the dead was buried (good thing, too). Stephen was buried (Acts 8:2). Even Ananias and Saphira were given a decent burial (Acts 5).

Throughout both the Old and the New Testaments there seems to be this “biblical insistence upon proper burial, as well as its general opposition to cremation,” which bears “testimony to the continuing significance of the human body after death.”[vi] The saints in both the Old Testament and the New Testament understood that the human body had value, not just during life on earth, but even after death. The human body has inherent value. We burn things that have no value. We carefully store things that have value, even if they are no longer useful.

Extrabiblical Literature

According to Tacitus, the first century Roman historian and senator, the Jews were a very peculiar people in that, contrary to the practice of the Greeks and Romans, they would “bury rather than burn [their] dead bodies.”[vii] This is particularly telling when we consider that the region in and around Jerusalem was very rocky, it would have made much more sense to burn dead bodies rather than bust rock to dig a hole or cave, but burial was the only thing that made sense in light of their belief that men and women are made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27), and their belief in a future bodily resurrection (Matt. 22:23-32; Acts 23:6). Whereas the Greeks believed our bodies are a prison that traps our soul, the Jews believed that our body is part of what it means to be made in God’s image.

So also, within the early church we see theologians like Tertulian and Augustine making the argument that while cremation is nowhere explicitly forbidden by Holy Scripture, being buried in the earth is to be preferred and practiced by Christians.[viii] The early church believed and understood that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), and rightly understood from Scripture that Christians who stop breathing are not dead but are only asleep. This is the biblical language that is consistently used in the New Testament to talk about Christians who have died. The New Testament uses “fell asleep” or “fallen asleep” eleven times, and in each instance refers to believers whose souls have departed. When speaking about unbelievers who have died, the New Testament uses other language, such as “struck down” (e.g., Herod in Acts 12) or “breathed his last” (e.g., Ananias and Saphira). It is for this reason the early church would bury their dead next to church buildings and would call these places coemeteria (Latin for cemetery), which literally means “resting place.”[ix] The saints are not dead; they are merely asleep and waiting for the Lord to wake them upon his second coming. Thus, in the mind of the early church, it seemed cruel to burn someone who was merely sleeping, and it also appeared to be a practical denial of the bodily resurrection.

For these reasons, the early church (as late as the 4th century) would celebrate the death of the saints by wearing white robes and singing praise songs as they carried the body of their loved one to their final “resting place.” However, by the 8th century, the church was being influenced by her secular surroundings and began wearing black to funerals and taking a more somber and mournful approach.[x] Since the 8th century the church has continued to come under the influence of secularism more and more. This is reflected in both our society’s and the church’s increasing acceptance of cremation as opposed to burial. The more we devalue the God of creation the more we devalue this body that is made in the image of our Creator.

In the Image of God

When God created man in his image and likeness (Gen. 1:27), it means more than just being made a spiritual being. We know this because God does not make man a spiritual being and then create for him a body. Rather, we see that “God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and [then] the man became a living creature” (2:7). That is, to be made in the image of God is to be made both body and spirit. In other words, being made in the image and likeness of God means that the “physical design of man was not chosen at random by God, but in some way is representational of the characteristics of God. But this point must not be pressed too far. Suffice it to say that the phrase, ‘Let us make man as our image, after our likeness’, is to say that God made man as a representative that in some say is also representational.”[xi] It is for this reason there must be a future bodily resurrection. Jesus did not come into the world simply so save our soul, but to save our body and soul—to save the whole of who we are. It is also for this reason that unbelievers will be cast into hell in both body and soul (Rev. 20:12-13).

It is not just our spirit that makes us who we are. A common misconception is that the real us, who we really are, is our spirit, and our body is simply the case that houses the real us. Our bodies are as much a part of who we are as our spirit. Our body and spirit go together, they belong together, and together they fully make us who we are. Thus, viewing the body as insignificant once our spirit departs from it, simply because we no longer have a use for it in this world, is like taking your great-grandmother’s wedding dress that she made and formed with her own hands and was married in back in 1925, and burning it simply because there is no longer a use for it. It’s outdated. It’s old. No one is ever going to wear this dress again, so let’s just get rid of it by burning it. No one in their right mind would do that. Even though this one-hundred-year-old wedding dress is no longer useful, is worn and frayed and a bit tattered along the edges, most would carefully and respectfully store it because it still has value. It has value because it was carefully made by someone you love dearly and respect greatly. David understood this when he wrote: “For you [O God] formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:13-14). God did not just speak you into existence like the birds and the fish, he carefully knit your body together, making you a unique work of art that is extremely valuable to him, that is a reflection of himself. And even when this body is worn and frayed and a bit tattered along the edges, even when we are done with this body and no longer have a use for it, it should still have value to us and to our loved ones because of our great love and respect for the one who made it—the one who “knitted me together in my mother's womb.”

[i] “Cremation Rate in the United States from 1975 to 2023, with a Forecast for 2027 and 2045,” Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/251702/cremation-rate-in-the-united-states/.

[ii] Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotes are from the English Standard Version of the Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Publishing, 2008).

[iii] William Devlin, “Cremation: Custom of Burning the Bodies of the Dead,” Catholic Answers, https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/cremation.

[iv] “Cremation: Funeral Custom,” Brittanica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/cremation.

[v] G.A. Turner, “Cremation,” The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979), p. 813).

[vi] J.B. Payne, “Burial,” The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979), p. 560).

[vii] Ibid., p.556.

[viii] R.A. Peterson, “Burial, Christian,” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1984), p.195.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Ibid.

[xi] Hexon J. Maldonado, “The Image of God in Man,” https://www.hjmaldonado.com/articles/the-image-of-god-in-man.