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Don’t Do Church Small, Do Small Church Really Well
If you’ve been slow to embrace the idea that Small Churches can be great churches, I get it.
If you haven’t read The Grasshopper Myth yet, or you’re new to the ministry of NewSmallChurch.com, let me take this short post to challenge any presuppositions you might have, too.
Ministry to Small Churches is not about doing church small. It never has been and never will be. It’s about doing small church well. Really well.
So what’s the difference between doing church small and doing Small Church really well?
Here are two starter lists to give you an idea. Many of these points are linked to previous posts that explain these ideas in more detail.
Our Church May Have Reached Its Shoe Size – Now What?
If some churches have a shoe size, what do you do when your church reaches yours?
Sit back and take it easy? The temptation to do that is one of the main reasons many people (and by “people”, I mean me) feel very uncomfortable with the idea that a church can have a shoe size at all.
But a church doesn’t have to settle for less just because they’ve found themselves at a numerical size that works well for the kind of ministry God has given them – at least for a season. Maybe for longer than that.
And by the way, shoe size isn’t limited to Small Churches. In fact I’ve noticed that a lot of people who bristle at the idea of a shoe size for a church of 25, 50 or 100, are just fine with the church that’s stayed at 2,000 for a decade or more. Some churches have a bigger shoe size, is all.
In my last post I gave you 5 Clues Your Church May Have Reached Its Shoe Size. In today’s post we’ll follow up with the three foundational principles that have helped the church I pastor make sure we’ll never use our current shoe size as an excuse for settling, laziness or compromise.
5 Clues Your Church May Have Reached Its Shoe Size
What happens when a church is healthy, yet the numbers stay in a holding pattern?
There are a lot of books, blog posts and seminars about how to assess and remove obstacles that hinder healthy growth. My church and I have been helped by many of them.
But is it ever possible that a church may have reached its optimal size? Is there a point at which pushing for greater numbers might be counterproductive to the life, health and effectiveness of a church?
And, if there is, how would we know that?
I struggled with that challenge for years. My story is detailed in The Grasshopper Myth, so I won’t go into it again, but one result of that struggle was that we realized our church is better, healthier and more effective at around 200 than we were at around 400.
200 is our optimal size (let’s call it our shoe size). For now anyway.
It’s not that we aimed for this size or plan to stay at this size. It’s just that this is where we seem to do our best work for now. And it may be that way for a long time.
But how does a church know what their shoe size is? And, if we have in fact reached that place, do we just sit and settle? What about growth?
6 Lessons, Blessings & Cautions from 2 Years of Blogging
Last month, the second anniversary of NewSmallChurch.com passed by without notice. No, I don’t feel sad that none one sent me a card. Hallmark is still working on a set of “Your blog is two years old today!” cards.
I just didn’t remember it myself. I’m not big on anniversaries.
But we have passed that two-year mark, so I decided to take a moment to reflect on what’s happened in the last two years, and what I’ve learned from it.
Truthfully, it’s almost hard to remember what my life and ministry was like before I started this. Writing, blogging, travelling and speaking has taken up such a chunk of my time that it’s completely changed my schedule. I’ve met so many great people that I would no know today without this.
But mostly, the last two years have re-affirmed the premise of this blog and The Grasshopper Myth – that playing the numbers game in ministry is a dangerous thing.
Yes, reaching more people is better than reaching fewer people. This blog and my book have reached ten times more people in these two years than I expected to reach in my lifetime, and I’m profoundly grateful for that. After all, we write, preach, teach and pastor to touch people’s lives. It’s appropriate that we want those efforts to have a positive impact on as many people as possible.
But readership and attendance numbers can only tell us so much. And some of what we think they’re telling us is false.
The Invisible Scandal: How Bad Debt and Poor Stewardship Are Killing the Church
There’s a scandal going on in the church today.
It is one of the biggest scandals in church history, yet it remains invisible to most of us.
No, it’s not the sexual sins of some of our leaders. It’s not the physical, emotional and spiritual abuse of church members, or the cover-up of those sins. It’s not the self-righteous legalism on one side, or the moral compromise on the other. It’s not even our tendency to quarrel and back-stab each other.
Those scandals are horrifying, for sure. They’ve been well-documented and need to be exposed to the light of day even more.
The scandal I’m talking about has flown under the radar for a long time – centuries, actually. It’s so common we seldom even think of it as the scandal it is, or how badly it hurts people and tarnishes the reputation of the church in the eyes of those affected by it.
The most widespread sin of the modern-day church is poor stewardship.
Innovation without Compromise: 5 Church Leadership Lessons from the Life of Billy Graham
Most of us have never known a world without Billy Graham.
Graham came to international prominence in the historic Los Angeles Crusade in 1949. So if you are 75 today, he was already famous when you were just ten years old.
Billy is 96 now. His crusade days are long over. But his legacy stills looms large.
Personally, aside from members of my family and Jesus himself, no one has had a longer or stronger impact on my life and ministry that this man whom I’ve never had the privilege of meeting.
Many of us can say the same thing.
Last month, my wife and I had the chance to visit the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is a a fitting tribute. It’s down-home and simple, even corny at times, yet always done with understated excellence.
As we walked through the exhibits, I was struck by the realization that every Christian, and especially everyone in ministry, can learn several lessons from the life of this humble servant whose life still impacts the world.
Especially today, when it seems almost impossible to make a simple statement about faith without offending this or that ideological camp, Graham stands high as someone who set the standard for never compromising, but never causing unnecessary offense either.
As I ate a tasty, nutritious, modestly-priced lunch (of course) in the library’s cafeteria, I jotted down these 5 lessons we could all learn from the extraordinary life and legacy of Billy Graham.
7 Important Reasons to Thank Your Worship Leader Today
If your church has someone who is willing to lead your congregation in worship consistently, humbly and reliably, you need to take time to thank them on a regular basis.
Actually, don’t just thank them. Encourage them. Support them. And run interference for them.
This also applies to youth workers, children’s ministers, seniors leaders, and others. But I’m focusing on worship leaders today for one simple reason.
There is no ministry in our churches under more attack today than our worship departments and their leaders.
Yes, at times they are part of the problem. But, more often than not, they’re the unfairly-accused victim.
As pastors, we know what it’s like to work hard, only to have every decision second-guessed, to have every sermon dissected, and to get little to no acknowledgment for our hard work.
Well, we’re not alone. Our worship leaders face the same problems. Sometimes worse. And sometimes their pastors are adding to this pressure instead of helping to relieve it.
Church Leaders Need to Stop Playing H.O.R.S.E. with Each Other
I love learning the best ideas, methods and principles that I can find from as many people as possible.
But, no matter how good their idea is, no matter how well it’s working at their church, I’ve learned the hard way that my church isn’t their church. Because of that, I’d like to pass this simple principle on to you today, so you don’t have to learn it the hard way like I did.
We need to stop playing H.O.R.S.E. with other churches and church leaders.
For those who don’t know what that means, H.O.R.S.E. is a game basketball players like to challenge each other with. The first player tries a trick shot, then the other players have to duplicate it. If they do, they stay in the game. If they don’t, they add a letter until they’ve spelled H.O.R.S.E. and they’re out.
This happens in the church all the time.
We go to a pastoral leadership conference, where we hear about a church that’s discovered a new way to do a certain kind of ministry, so we go home and try to duplicate their trick shot, only to fail miserably. Then we wonder “what’s wrong with me and my church that we couldn’t pull it off?”
After trying and failing enough times, many ministers find themselves leaving ministry entirely because they couldn’t duplicate the success of others. But we’re not called to duplicate the success of others.
Learning principles from other churches is great. But trying to copy their methods, programs or style is just the church version of H.O.R.S.E.
When Church Growth Numbers Blind Us to Deeper Truths
Numbers can be a great way for church leaders to gain objective information. They can help us quantify data, spot patterns and trends, and face harsh realities.
But information is not the same as truth.
Numbers can give us facts, but they can’t give us truth. Yet, ironically, numbers can tell us lies.
While giving us all the data we need, numbers can actually disguise deeper truths, keeping us on a dangerous path for far too long.
That happened to me and my church.
