Church in a small town
[Disclaimer: I always hotly oppose people who say Ipoh is a ulu small town. “It’s just spread out,” I always say. That is still true and I stand by it 😤. But obviously Ipoh is smaller than KL/PJ. And it does have the slow, small-town feel. So I’m calling it a small town here.]
I grew up in Ipoh and I absolutely adore it. I’ve also been thinking, though, about how doing church in a small town might be different, compared to a big city. Do we bring our sleepy, slow, anything-goes, don’t-need-so-hype-la small town mind and heart to church? Is that how church should be?
Not an Areopagus
Having experienced bigger cities than Ipoh now, I think the most striking contrast between big cities and small towns is its likeness to the Areopagus in Acts 17:19-21
“Then [the philosophers] took [Paul] and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, ‘May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.’ (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)”
Ipoh is a melting pot of many things, but especially a melting pot of kai see hor fun. It is not quite a melting pot of new political ideas and rebellious propositions; not quite the Areopagus in which Athenians and foreigners got together to discuss cutting edge ideas.
Being excited disciples
I think we might feel less “exiled” in a small town (1 Peter 2:11), less separate and set apart. Ipoh doesn’t have many big paradigm ideas competing for our attention, or people opposing us as Christians all around, left, right, centre. Often the greatest opposition we face is simply the automatically charged “pao” (bribe) in our driving lesson invoice. We aren’t so starkly confronted with the prevailing liberal worldviews of a more urban, millennial city like KL. We believe the Gospel but we live in an environment where we easily forget how socially distinct it is (or should be) to do so. We forget the offense of the Cross (Galatians 5:11), the table-turning fact of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:54), and the resurrecting, victorious power of the Gospel (1 Corinthians 15:57), all ideas which—properly understood—are so radical and wonderful we can’t sit back and let the Gospel be a boring “normal”.
But that’s what we’re so susceptible to doing. We feel like we’ll come to church each Sunday, sing the same songs, go out to the same hawker stalls and tell the same hawker “oh ya I just came from church”, and think or say nothing more because church is “normal”, and the Gospel is too normal for us to excitedly tell those around us. “Ya, Jesus rose from the dead, uh huh, they’ve been telling me that since Sunday school.”
We forget that the Gospel is crazily powerful and earth-shatteringly beautiful (literally, the earth shook and rocks split when Jesus died: Matthew 27:51–52). I’ve felt that, in times when I feel most intellectual opposition from my friends who think I’m insane for being a Christian, those are the times I get most excited and sing all the more loudly, “Then on the third, at break of dawn, the Son of Heaven rose again, oh trampled death—where is your sting? The angels roar for Christ our King. O praise the Name of the LORD our God.” Because it is then that I realise most acutely that the Gospel is outside the bounds of our human brain to comprehend. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)
Being excited witnesses
Being disciples isn’t a personal, internal church affair alone. We’re commissioned to go out and make disciples (Matthew 28:19–20). What might that mean for us in a smaller town like Ipoh?
The Gospel is such a radical message. In a big city that is bursting with different worldviews and new ideas, the Gospel fits easily into the already dramatic landscape of discussion and conversation. When our city is not an Areopagus (Acts 17), there’s no existing “hype” to ride on when we proclaim the Gospel. What results is perhaps lukewarm witnessing.
Being salty isn’t just about being a “good influence” on society, or about dispensing the evangelistic tracts which are few and far between. No; being salty—especially in a small town—is about being radically jarring against the blandness of life elsewhere. It’s taking the Gospel to kopitiams and mamaks, speaking of the Gospel not just as a fun and fluffy yumcha story if the teh tarik is still too hot. It is, rather, taking the Gospel to turn over mamak tables and blow the hats off kopitiam mates more than the cili padi will do. The Gospel should be spicier news than the fact that the famous noodle man moved to another kopitiam. We should be proclaiming the Gospel more zealously than we proclaim our favourite hakka mein. What can be more amazing than that the Son of God died and rose again to bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18)!
Where can we take this excitement to witness to the Gospel? When Paul entered towns and cities, he went to the public spaces. In Acts 17 the first place he went to was the synagogue and marketplace, to “reason” with “those who happened to be there” (Acts 17:16-17) Let’s forget the sleepiness of Ipoh and go to our public spaces; there, let us live and speak so zealously and full of life, in jarring contrast to the people around us. Let’s be syok sendiri in the Canning market, in Kinta City, in the post office. Let’s reason humbly but pressingly with those around us. Let’s put on display to them the life that Jesus brings, so different to the day-in day-out routines that Ipoh yan know too well: let’s put on display, life to the full (John 10:10).
So my central point is that we should take care not to be more excited by local rumours and new food openings than we are about the Gospel of Christ, the power of God for the salvation of those who believe (Romans 1:16). Our personal timeless adoration for the Gospel should then flow into zesty hyped-up witnessing, never tiring from having those deeper conversations about the Gospel, even when there’s no perpetual city-like syok atmosphere to ride on. May we be salty exiles everywhere, amazed by God and challenged to witness, in the cities, in the deserts, in the villages, and in the towns. I’m certainly very, very far from this ideal but I’m working towards it. I also see some of this ideal in admirable people I know from home, and I hope to imitate them. May we turn over the tables with the Gospel wherever we go!
**Related recommended reading: Evangelism as Exiles: Life on Mission as Strangers in our Own Land by Elliot Clark is a good short read!
