Present Over Perfect

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 conversation happened more than a decade ago,
before slow food and artisanal everything, before a cultural
return to handmade and homemade, toward limited editions
and small-batch cooking.
And even though small-batch cooking is now all the
rage, for those of us who came of age in the “more is more”
mentality, it can be hard to grasp the idea that we have some
say over the size of our own lives—that we have the agency
and authority and freedom to make them smaller or larger,
heavier or lighter.
We were playing Legos a few weeks ago, and Aaron and
I asked Henry about what he wants for our family in the
next year. More adventures? More trips? Does he want to