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.

Hi Bob,

You make a good case for intentionally keeping churches small through multiplication, and I agree with much of what you wrote. I just want to offer some rhetorical support for larger churches, since “one size doesn’t fit all” applies just as well to small as to large.

First, I for one am not bothered if a megachurch spends $75M on a facility. Assuming that’s a church of about 25,000 people, it’s equivalent to a church of 200 people spending $600,000 on their building. That sounds reasonable to many people. The issue here, if anything, might better be whether churches “should” have dedicated buildings at all. If it is legitimate for a church to have a building to enhance its ministry, then it is reasonable to expect a church of 25,000 souls (entire towns are smaller) to need a more extensive facility.

Second, while recognizing that programs can be used in insensitive and cumbersome ways, I would highlight what you have already acknowledged—that large churches can offer programs that are beyond the means of smaller churches. A new church is often limited to just one “professional” of any kind, and must rely on a small pool of members for such things as teachers, musicians, or janitors. Many church planters prefer teams for this reason, but then “have to” reach a certain size to be “viable,” or else deal with other limiting factors. A small cell group can make sure someone carries a handicapped person upstairs to the Bible study, and a megachurch can install all the elevators and special facilities people in wheelchairs need, but many churches in between have areas that are just inaccessible. A small cell group can reach the neighborhood; a megachurch can reach people groups.

10 churches of 200 working together can do a lot that any one couldn’t do, but I think there’d still be more overhead between them than a single church of 2,000. If each 200 church had a preacher, a secretary, and one other staff member, that would be 30 paid positions for 2,000 people; that church of 2,000 might have 25 paid positions, but they’d probably include a wider variety of specializations. Also, once the smaller churches are working together, we’re right back at the problem of the pastors not knowing all of the 2,000 members (of the 10 churches) working together.

Third, rather than having a harried pastor who has no chance of connecting spiritually with thousands of members, large churches just as often have dozens of pastors who can focus on shepherding groups of people that they can name. The preacher may even be one of them. In fact, quite often it is easier for a pastor in a large church to engage in spiritual care/nurture/teaching than for the pastor of a small church. That large-church pastor has a personal secretary, a staff person to worry about the bulletin, a maintenance team to change lightbulbs, a nursery to look after the baby, and a facility designed to enhance whatever ministry task he faces. Many small-church pastors must engage in spiritual care/nurture/teaching after working an 8-hour day, calling around to let everyone know the meeting this week is at the Smith’s because Mrs. Jones is sick, making sure George gets a ride, and filling out some sort of form the government is sure to require.

You mention your calling in this regard—I think that’s a separate issue than programming or church size. Of course, if you’re called to minister to people personally church-wide, then it doesn’t make sense to retain control of a church that keeps growing and growing—but it could still make sense to have a restricted role within such a community if you could look at those you don’t know in the same way you’d look at those you don’t know in 9 other churches of 200 with whom you’d network.

You mention a friend who had to wait two months to get a meeting with his pastor. I would just say I doubt that pastor was “his” pastor—it looks like a case of confusing title with function. “Senior pastor” is not a biblical term, but rather a reflection of one cultural expression of “church.” Using “pastor” they way many do, to refer to the guy we pay to preach and lead (or the guy we found preaching and leading) is also a cultural use. We tend to equate “trained professional church person” with “pastor.” I think that if we equate “spiritual shepherd” with “pastor,” we’d find many unrecognized, not formally trained, unpaid pastors at churches large and small.

Fourth, while people fall through the cracks in large churches, they’re often just different people than those who fall through the cracks in smaller churches. In a home church, it may be a certain age group that can’t relate to what everyone else is doing. In churches of 100, it may be teachers burning out or always giving care and not as often receiving it. In churches of 200, it may be people who work on Sunday mornings. One could make the case that there are more “slots” a person could get plugged into in a larger church, more potential friends, etc.

Regarding the measure of health, many proponents of larger churches define health, in part, by the involvement of their members in small groups where they can get their individual spiritual issues addressed. Numerical growth is also often considered a measure of health, under the theory that churches should naturally grow. (Hiving off members to start new churches, or sending out members as core groups, would factor in here.) Bigger churches are more susceptible to some health risks than smaller churches, but the reverse is also true. It is best to compare ideal big churches with ideal small churches, or dysfunctional big churches with dysfunctional small churches, rather than dysfunctional big churches with ideal small churches.

In conclusion, I probably agree with you more than this response seems to indicate. I led one church-planting team when several of us were feeling pretty burned-out, and our way of dealing with that was to reject being program-led. We vowed not to have any program (be it Sunday-school, worship team, youth group, etc.) unless God provided workers and ministry leaders. I’ve networked with other church planters to pool resources such as trained counselors and specialized, er, programs. And the churches I’ve helped plant have supported missionaries and church plants at the expense of their “own” programs. I guess I just don’t think there’s a single “optimal” church size. I disagree that large churches use more resources (human or financial) than a network of small churches adding up to the same number of people, but I agree that (if I had to choose) multiplying churches is more important than growing my church ever bigger.

Chris

I just want to thank you all for this dialogue. I am learning alot and reworking some of my own concerns. My fellowship is at a critical point where I think the choice is between spending $2,000,000 on expanding our existing structure due to growth and building limitations or, as I see it, expanding our ministry into the neighboring, poor, ethnically different area through actual presence and relief. I know I’ve been vague and haven’t given much information, but I just wanted to thank you all and to ask you to pray for us and our leadership as these decisions are being made. And for me—I really don’t want to end up more disillusioned than I already am!