First of all thanks for this article Bob. I agree with many of the things you said but I think we need to balance this a bit. I am a pastor at a very large church. Yes it is true I don’t know everyone who comes to my church. I see my role as one of pastor/shepherd/equipper. But I don’t think that I am the one who has to minister directly to each person in the church as I believe that every member of the church is a minister and I need to equip and facilitate that. So spiritual nurture is not limited to my ability to know the spiritual lives of every person in my congregation. That would definately make the whole ministry dependent on me and put a cap on the number of people that could join the community. Rather, I believe that as I build into a few they build into a few, etc. and spiritual nurture happens through smaller groups of people.

Customized Spiritual Growth
I am so thrilled you mentioned the fact that everyone grows in different ways and we are all different “sizes.” I could not agree more!! Too often we assume that there is one path for everyone. Where I do want to push back though is this idea that seems to be creeping up in emerging movements as a reaction against modernism and that is that all programs are evil or bad. I don’t agree. How are we to nurture someone’s spiritual health without laying out the elements of what health looks like? Is it merely a feeling? Or are there characteristics or elements that should be balanced in someone’s life so they will know how to grow? No matter how you define it or categorize it, it is a program of sorts. So I think the reaction is not against all programs but against bad programs. You mentioned the bases and Class 101-401. The big misunderstanding here is that those classes are the discipleship “program.” They are not. They are a way to educate people on what the purposes are as a way of helping people see how they are lived out in the life of the church. To help people grow spiritually after that, they get involved in a small group, do life with other people and receive tools and resources that they can tap in a customized fashion to help them balance those five things in their lives. All that to say, I agree that spiritual health is different for each person, but I think there are some common things we are growing toward and no matter how you define them, you have to put some definition to those things.

Church Planting
I do agree with you that church planting is an important part of how churches should grow and I think we can get too focused on how many attend on a weekend and make that the main goal. And you are right about people not being able to really connect and be spiritually nurtured in a crowd like that. I do think, however, we need to get away from viewing church planting as something that involves a trained pastor who does all the teaching live, himself and then he personally gets to know 200 people (way too high of a number if you are talking spiritual nurture). I think any member of the church plants a church in their home when they decide to lead a small group and take the dna of the church into that group. We have to get away from thinking the gathering on a weekly basis is what church is all about. That is a part of it and corporate gatherings are important for people to catch a bigger vision and move in the same direction (and as you said have a bunch of churches come together and make a bigger impact together than they would apart). But, the small groups or churches is where life change takes place and where care and spiritual nurture take place. I think pastors need to do more to equip and get out of the way then have all spiritual nurture come through them. If I can equip 1,000’s of small group churches to care for and nurture each other spiritually, then I don’t limit growth to how many people I can handle. Just a thought.

Thanks again for this article. One thing I want to make clear: size is not the issue in any of this. It is the health of the people and the church that should be our focus. Then if God decides to grow the church numerically so be it but that should not be the main focus. If you grow a healthy church you grow healthy people who reach other people. You definately stimulated my thinking and helped to crystalize some things I have been thinking about. Thanks again for posting this.