Resourcing the Small Church Experience

Resourcing the Small Church Experience

By Outreach Magazine • May 2015

Be Your Own Church

It is amazing to me that large churches try to mimic small churches by focusing on small group ministry, while smaller churches try to emulate large church programs. I think H. B. London said it best when he said, “Bloom where you are planted.” Instead of trying to be what you are not, know what you do well and do it well. Too many pastors try to adapt to the new family who shows up on Sunday because they need the numbers. As a small church pastor, I know who we are as a church and what we do well. I do not excuse or apologize for who we are. I know what we do, why we do it, and how we do ministry. I try to find out what they need and then be honest with them about how we can minster to them. If we cannot meet their specific needs, then I help them find a church to meet their needs.

Jim Thomas, a small church pastor at Holly Springs Bible Fellowship in northwest Iowa. He frequently works with pastors of churches of less than 125 people in towns of less than 2,000, many in the Midwest. He writes at SmallChurch.com.

The Next Big Thing: Small

If small churches can provide opportunities for genuine relationships with God and each other, in a healthy church, with practical ministry to the surrounding community, we can be the vanguard of a new church movement. But it really won’t be a new movement. It will be the oldest one of all. The main reason I’m convinced small churches will be the next big thing is because they’ve always been a big thing. Since the day of Pentecost, innovative small churches have been the way the majority of Christians have done church. They’ve just stayed under the radar for 2,000 years.

Karl Vaters, NewSmallChurch.com, is lead pastor of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship, Fountain Valley, Calif.

The Resurrected Church

Some people take a fatalistic view of existing churches. They would have us believe that it’s too hard for small and dying churches to be resurrected and we should channel all our energy and resources into planting new ones. ‘After all,’ they say, ‘it’s easier to have a baby than to raise the dead.’ Well, I’m all for church planting, but I also believe in resurrections. And while new babies are amazing, there is something utterly unique and awe-inspiring about a resurrection. If we change the soil, resurrections can happen. Languishing, struggling and dying churches can be turned around—brought back to life. They can even go places they’ve never gone before. But, it’s not easy. It’s a process, and it takes commitment.

Jim Powell in Dirt Matters: The Foundation for a Healthy, Vibrant and Effective Congregation (WestBow Press). Powell is the lead pastor at Richwoods Christian Church in Peoria, Ill., a large church, but he’s also passionate about small churches. He runs the 95 Network, providing coaching, mentoring conferences and resources for the 95 percent of churches under 800 people in attendance.

Preferring Death to Change

So what did the deceased churches cling to? What did they refuse to let go of facing certain death?

Worship styles were certainly on the list. As were fixed orders of worship services. And times of worship services.

Some stubbornly held on to buildings and rooms, particularly if that room or building was a memorial, named for one of the members of the past.

Some would not accept any new pastor except the one pastor who served 30 years ago.

But more than any one item, these dying churches focused on their own needs instead of others. They looked inwardly instead of outwardly. Their highest priorities were the way they’ve always done it, and that which made them the most comfortable.

It was not just the past they revered. It was their personal good old days.

So, unlike the heroes of Hebrews 11 who held onto nothing of this life, these dying churches held onto everything, at least everything that made them comfortable and happy.

Such is the reason we speak of them in the past.

They were warned. They were facing certain death. They saw every sign.

But they preferred death to change.

And death is what they got.

Thom S. Rainer in Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12 Ways to Keep Yours Alive (B&H Publishing Group). Rainer is a writer, researcher, speaker and the president and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources. Used by permission. Excerpt taken from Autopsy of a Deceased Church by Thom S. Rainer. Copyright © 2014 B&H Publishing Group.

Contentment Does Not Mean Quitting

We need to be content with who we are, but never content with staying where we are. I’m not a fan of bromides like “Be the best possible you, you can be!” but I have realized that it’s only after discovering who I am and who I am not in Christ, that I can be set free to do and be what God made me to do and be.

If we’re not content with who we are, no amount of church growth will bring that contentment. If we are content, we’ll be spurred on from the resulting hope and joy to do great things for God, our church and the community, no matter what size church we pastor.

Karl Vaters in The Grasshopper Myth: Big Churches, Small 

Churches and the Small Thinking That Divides Us (New Small Church).

The Allure of Success

The corrosive effect of the current standard of church success wreaks havoc on our souls and the souls we have been called to love. The alluring reality of success in ministry is ever present and difficult to ignore. While the drive to be successful pastors can be easily veiled in spiritual language, if we drill down a bit deeper we begin to see that it is nothing more than a glossy coating of the spirit of self-glorification. Scripture calls this selfish ambition. Let me be clear here: it is not the size of a church’s budget, square footage or average attendance I am criticizing, but an improper motivation behind the desire for a larger church. What drives us? Spotlight and recognition? Influence over thousands? Power that comes with a title? Or would we be content with a downward movement of faithful servanthood, even if it meant obscurity?

Meeting Expectations

For many pastors it isn’t pride but insecurity that comes via comparison with larger churches. Every one of us has experienced feelings of inadequacy in our lives, some more painful than others. With the expectation to be professional in our pastoral calling, inadequacy is difficult to admit. Think of the name of the degree we give graduating seminarians—magister divinitatis—master of divinity. What message does that send to our congregations? Have we really mastered the divine when we graduate from a theological institution? Seen by many as professional Christians paid to love Jesus, admitting weakness, ignorance or sin can be excruciating. We can become exhausted by worry when we try to live up to the expectations of others.

J.R. Briggs, in Fail: Finding Hope and Grace in the Midst of Ministry Failure (IVP). Briggs is cultural cultivator of The Renew Community, the founder of Kairos Partnerships and the director of leadership and congregational formation for The Ecclesia Network. He blogs at JRBriggs.com.

Small Town Leadership

I’m becoming more and more convinced that leadership in the rural church has little to do with what happens on the stage of life in the public arena, because in rural America, there really is very little that’s private. Everybody knows your wife, everybody knows your kids, everybody knows your junk, and everybody knows your marriage.

That’s why I’m convinced that leadership must begin in the home. My life, my wife and my marriage have got to be red hot, because a red-hot marriage and a functional family is the most powerful evangelistic tool in rural America. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but I really believe it. More important than the building, than the satellite uplinks, than the Christmas cantata is what’s happening in the home, because everyone sees it and it speaks volumes about the gospel.

Shannon O’Dell, in Transforming the Church in Rural America: Breaking All the Rurals (New Leaf Press). O’Dell is the senior pastor of Brand New Church, a multisite network of small, rural churches based out of Bergman, Ark. He blogs at BreakingAllTheRurals.com.

What We Lose Without Small Churches

The number of evangelicals has not boomed. We have just become more centralized in fewer, larger churches that produce better Sunday performances. Not always, but too often, the larger crowd and better performances have cost us in our shepherding of individuals. The change has come in philosophy of ministry. 

Simple discipleship and care for the sheep have been lost in many ministries. Somewhere along the way they got painted over in the constant struggle for progress, for more, for bigger, for better. In some contexts, the business model of the church does not allow “pastors” room to do true pastoral care. In other contexts, one committed shepherd-pastor is attempting to do all the shepherding in a large flock, without time or space to reproduce other leaders through discipleship. As the flock grows, one shepherd cannot touch all the sheep—not even within a subministry like youth, young adults or an additional venue. More and more, the most “successful” of our leaders won’t touch actual shepherding—won’t get their hands in the mud, their fingers in the wounds, their hearts in the lives of the people. That priority trickles down through staff and layleaders to parents and kids.

John S. Dickerson in The Great Evangelical Recession: 6 Factors That Will Crash the American Church … and How to Prepare (Baker Books). Dickerson is senior pastor of Cornerstone, an Evangelical Free Church in Prescott, Ariz.