Keeping Up with the Mega-Church Joneses

I serve a small church in a small town. We average from 100 – 120 on Sundays. Three Elders serve alongside me. We have seven ministry teams: Outreach, Worship, Discipleship, Children’s, Youth, Missions & Building/Grounds (we also have a budget & stewardship committee, but it operates more like a committee than a ministry team). Each ministry team has a ministry leader. In addition to me and two of our elders, four other members serve as ministry team leaders. That said, within those ministry teams a significant percentage of our members are active and involved in ministry (roughly 53%). This is great for a church our size! But, like all churches we could do better. We could improve the percentage of active and involved members. And, of course, we believe the more members involved in ministry, the more effective our church will be in realizing our mission: To help each other grow as Disciples of Jesus Christ, and plant seeds of God’s grace in the world.

I’ve spent many hours reading, attending conferences, researching and seeking out new ideas and strategies for ministry. But, most of what’s out there is designed for large churches in suburban or urban locations. Try as we might, most of those kinds of programs are simply not appropriate for a small church in a small town. So, why do we keep trying to keep up with the Mega-Church Joneses (so to speak)?

Brandon J. O’Brien, author of The Strategically Small Church, may have an answer. He points out the fact that 94% of all existing churches in America have less than five-hundred attendees, and two-thirds (2/3) of these have less than one-hundred, according to Hartford Institute of Religion Research. He goes on to point out that less than one-half of one percent (<0.5%) of all existing churches have more than two-thousand attendees (the minimum number to be considered a Mega-church). O’Brien asks, “Why have we allowed the ministry experience of one half of one percent of all churches to become the standard by which we judge the remaining 99.5 percent of churches?” Here’s his answer: “Could it be because we have bought into the notion that small churches are failed churches and they can only become successful if they follow a certain plan and grow to a certain size?”

I believe O’Brien has got something here. As long as “bigger and better” is our ONLY measure of success in ministry, then the small church is by definition a failed church. That’s not to say that we should be satisfied when the church is failing to grow or get “bigger” in quantifiable ways (i.e., attendance, involvement, baptisms, etc.). The fact is that large churches do significantly better than small churches in reaching unbelievers. Typically, each year as many people come to Christ in one large/mega church today as do in thirty small churches. How well those new Christians do post-conversion is another story (See Willow Creek Community Church’s 2007 Reveal). But, there is no doubt about it. The large/mega church model has its advantages.

We need other measures for ministry “success” than just increasing attendance and involvement. What about spiritual growth, or strengthened families, or community impact? O’Brien suggests that small churches are better for achieving some significant goals in ministry:

• · Small churches are well-suited to facilitate a higher level of commitment from members
• · Small churches focus attention on fewer programs, increasing effectiveness
• · Small churches nurture close relationships across age and life-experience barriers

Our small church is focused on growing, but not just any kind of growing. We want To help each other grow as disciples of Jesus. This means we must be more concerned about people and less concerned about programs. Large/mega churches are concerned with branding, programming, staffing, marketing because they can be concerned with such things. They can do “church-wide campaigns” that involve numerous staff meetings, promotional materials and administrative teams to run the organization required for such things. Small churches really can’t be concerned with all of that. But, neither does it mean that we have to be un-professional or un-organized or un-presentable. What it means is that we can focus more of our energies and time on people, on a very personal level.

Probably, Bonheoffer said it best when he challenged the “visionary” in the church. In his little book Life Together, he said:

Every human wish or dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive.

We’ve got to see our small church as it is. Instead of trying to keep up with the Mega-church Joneses, and feeling like we’re not a success unless we do, we must see within the small church that God has granted everything it needs to do exactly what God would have it do. For example, this became real to me as I reviewed our budget and realized that we simply do not have the funds for additional staff. I’d love to bring on board a family/youth minister. But, we can’t do it. The money is simply not there. So, does that mean our ministry is a failure—that the church is doomed to fail? Of course, not! All it means is that God wants us to find our own way to minister to the youth in our church and our community. Probably, that means greater involvement from the membership, less of a focus on programming and big youth events, and more of a focus on mentoring and the kind of consistency that a small church in a small town is very good at. Maybe, one day we will have the budget for a Youth/family minister. That’d be great. In the meantime, we got to do what we do best. What other option do we have? Are we just going to sit around wishing and dreaming of a church that doesn’t exist? Bonheoffer would shake his head in disapproval. Small, Large or Mega, the church is God’s creation through His Son Jesus Christ. As usual, the problem isn’t the church. It’s us. We have to get out of the way!