Is Your Church Stuck or Just Small?

I spent a lot of years trying to unstick a church that wasn’t stuck.

I thought it was stuck because it wasn’t getting bigger. And I’d been told in virtually every church leadership conference and book that if my church wasn’t growing numerically, we were stuck.

I didn’t want to pastor a stuck church.        

I still don’t.

So I went to all the conferences on how to get unstuck. I read all the books. I applied all the principles.             None of them worked.

Pastors of fast-growing churches are always writing helpful blog posts with lists of all the things churches must be doing wrong if we’re not experiencing numerical growth. So I read a ton of blog posts listing 10 Ways to Get Your Church Unstuck, then applied those 

principles to my church.    They didn’t work either.

So I prayed longer and harder.           Nada.

Then I starting reading stories of pastors and churches that stopped trying to grow but just implemented the principles of church health. As soon as they did that, without trying to help God grow the church—boom!—the church started growing like crazy.

So I relaxed and stopped worrying about church growth. Our church worked on getting healthy instead and …

Nah, that didn’t grow the church either.

Finally, I left the modern church-growth movement behind and went back to the source. I read, re-read, preached and taught about the growth of the church in the book of Acts.                         Still nothing.

The Question No One Told Me to Ask

Then I looked at my church again.

And I asked myself a question none of the conferences, books and blog posts ever suggested.

“If I took numerical growth off the table, would I call this church a healthy church?”

The answer was surprisingly obvious.                      Yes.

The church I pastor is one of the healthiest churches I know.

Which led to a follow-up question.

“If a church is healthy in every way but numerical growth, is it really stuck?”

No.

It turns out, my church wasn’t stuck at all. It was just small.

And if that’s the case—if a small church can be a healthy church—then maybe numerical growth isn’t the be-all, end-all sign of health we’ve made it out to be.

Maybe a healthy small church is an OK thing to be.

And, as I soon discovered, a healthy church that keeps working on health gets even healthier.

Have You Asked That Question?

What about your church?

Have you been spinning in the same never-ending cycle of frustration I was?

Have you been trying to unstick a church that might not be stuck?

Is it possible your church isn’t stuck? Just small?

If you’re not sure, I encourage you to learn from my mistakes and do what I should have done all along. Look at your church and ask the question I finally got around to asking.

If you took numerical growth off the table, would your church be considered unhealthy?

If it’s unhealthy, get to work on fixing that, regardless of growth.

If it’s healthy, quit beating yourself and your church up for not getting bigger. That may not be what God is calling you to be.

Yes, you read that right. God may not be calling your church to grow numerically. Despite what we’ve been told, individual congregational growth is not a biblical mandate.

If a church is healthy but not getting bigger, then it’s not stuck. It’s just small.

Is Your Church Healthy?

So, if we take numerical growth off the table, what are the signs of a healthy church?

Isn’t it strange that we even have to ask that question? Any church leader should know the signs of a healthy church, no matter what size it is. But we’ve been so inundated with a grow, grow, grow approach to church health, it may take a reboot of our heads, hearts and spirits to start looking at church health through a lens other than numerical growth.

Is your church doing all or most of those non-numerical signs of health?

Then you have a healthy church.

You’re not stuck. You’re just small.

So what do you think?

 Have you ever considered that your small church might not be stuck, just small? 

Karl Vaters is the author of The Grasshopper Myth: Big Churches, Small Churches and the Small Thinking That Divides Us. He’s been in pastoral ministry for over 30 years and has been the lead pastor of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Fountain Valley, California for over 20 years. He’s also the founder of NewSmallChurch.com, a blog that encourages, connects and equips innovative Small Church pastors