“It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking
that if you’re maximizing growth, you’re also maximizing success.” (Bo Burlingham, in Small Giants)
Better churches become bigger
churches. Right?
Maybe not.
That’s been the rule of thumb for businesses, too. And it’s
no more true there than it is for us.
Constant growth doesn’t work for the majority of churches
or businesses. Yet they can still be successful at what they do.
As it turns out, constant growth doesn’t work for the
majority of churches or businesses. Yet they can still be successful at what
they do.
Small Giants
This week, I finally got around to reading Bo
Burlingham’s Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead Of
Big (how could I resist, right?). Written more than ten years ago,
it followed 14 companies that chose to limit their growth for a variety of
reasons.
Some limited their growth to keep it more personal and
intimate, some because a smaller size fit the skills and goals of the
leadership, some because they felt it was the best way to maintain quality
control, and so on.
But they all had one thing in common — an obsession with
making their business better, combined with the belief that staying small was
the best way for them to do that.
But how do we keep getting better if we’re not getting
bigger? And what does this have to do with church and ministry?
Even if you want your church to grow but it isn’t, you
still have a choice about helping the small church you lead become better.
Your Church Has A Choice
Not everything (or even most things) in Small
Giants applies to the church world, but what does is quite striking.
Let’s take a look at a few of the takeaways from Burlingham’s work that can
readily be adapted to what we see in church leadership. (Note: all parentheses
are mine.)
“Virtually every mass-market business (church
leadership) bestseller … has concentrated on the people in and the practices of
large public companies (big churches). … Along the way, we’ve come to accept as
business (church leadership) axioms various ideas that only work in those two
types of enterprise. …But there are thousands of private companies (small
churches) that don’t grow much, if at all, and … they’re often quite healthy.
“What about the concept of ‘getting to the next
level’? … The phrase implies that bigger is better. That may or may not be true
for public companies (big churches), but it’s demonstrably untrue for a large
number of private ones (small churches).” (pgs. xvi-xvii)
What Burlingham notes about businesses is obviously true in
the church world. We’ve been inundated with one model for church health and
excellence — the one that says the better a church is, the bigger it will
become.
Not only does the expectation of continual numerical
increase not apply to all churches, it doesn’t apply to the majority
of churches.
But most of us don’t even think about an alternative to
grow, grow, grow, because…
“If you constantly hear about the need to grow
or die … you may not even think to ask about options other than growing.” (pg
6)
“If you constantly hear about the need to grow
or die … you may not even think to ask about options other than growing.”
But if we don’t keep growing, what other option is there?
“There is a choice, and the payoff for choosing
the less-travelled path can be huge.” (pg 6)
Choosing to be a small giant can have many unforeseen
benefits — to the church, the community, the pastor, and the kingdom of God.
But what are some of those payoffs? Here are just two of them.
1. Connection to their community
“When you look closely at our small giants, one
characteristic jumps out at you. …they were all so intimately connected to the
place where they were located that it was hard to imagine them being somewhere
else.” (pg 50)
“A human scale company (church) in a single
location can be part of a community without dominating it.” (pg 60)
Pease note that not dominating a community does not mean we
stop having an impact on it. As Burlingham also notes, “every new
business (church) represents an attempt … to reorder the world in some way.”
(pg 122)
Small giants are no exception to that. In fact, by choosing
to remain small, all the companies Burlingham cites were convinced they would
have a greater impact than they might have had by becoming big.
2. A culture of intimacy
“There is generally an inverse correlation
between the number of people who work for a company (attend a church) and the
strength of their emotional ties to it.” (pg 98)
This does not mean that every company or church that grows
big loses their intimacy. Many of them got big precisely because people were
drawn to that kind of atmosphere. But the bigger you get, the harder you have
to work at it.
Size Does Not Equal Value
Here are a few more quotes about the dangers of equating
size with value. (Note again: all parentheses are mine.)
“You can’t measure the value of what a company
(church) does by looking at how big it is.” (pg 218)
“A company’s (church’s) record of growth … may
tell you something about the skill of its management team, but little about
whether or not the business (church) is contributing anything great and unique
to the world.” (p 218)
“It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking
that if you’re maximizing growth, you’re also maximizing success.” (pg 219)
And, finally, this. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from Small
Giants.
“Nothing in business (church leadership)
requires them to build the largest company (church) they’re capable of
building. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with deciding you do want
to build such a company (church), but it’s only one of many options, and
business (church) leaders are free to choose another path.” (pg 258)
Small And Excellent
Bigger isn’t always better.
And better doesn’t always lead to bigger.
Bigger isn’t always better. And better doesn’t always lead
to bigger.
But better is always better — whether it
gets bigger or not.
If bigger to be better isn’t working for the church you
lead, try something else. You have a choice.
Small but excellent might be what Jesus is calling you to
be.
Article by Karl Veters
Copyright © 2018 New Small Church, All rights reserved.
First posted HERE
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