Church Size

Rick Warren’s Surprising Video On Church Size & Attendance

/ 3 minutes of reading

“Nobody likes a big church – except pastors.”

If you hadn’t already read the title of this post, you probably wouldn’t think that quote was from Rick Warren.

But it’s just one of several similar quotes in a short video in which Rick Warren shares some very helpful thoughts on our misperceptions about church size and attendance.

The video originally appeared on Thom Schultz’s When God Left the Building YouTube page. You can scroll down a little to watch it right here.

Here’s another quote from Warren:

“I think one of the things we need to do is change what we reward in churches today, because for the last 50 years denominations and organizations have rewarded size, attendance.”

I have no idea what those “rewards” would look like – I’m guessing Rick my not either – but he’s absolutely right that we need to change our thinking in that regard.

As he says in the last quote of the video, “Big isn’t better. Small isn’t automatically better. Healthy is better.”

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Our Church May Have Reached Its Shoe Size – Now What?

/ 7 minutes of reading

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.

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5 Clues Your Church May Have Reached Its Shoe Size

/ 6 minutes of reading

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?

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Why My Church Is Better at 200 than It Was at 400

/ 3 minutes of reading

There are a lot of reasons why the church collapsed and nearly folded. But the main one was this. The pursuit of numbers made us sick. And sick things start to die.

I’m grateful that our sickness was evident in our shrinking numbers. It forced us to deal with the problems. Some churches start dying internally, but keep getting bigger externally, so they don’t see their sickness. No, not all of them. Not even most of them. But some of them. Including mine.

Through that process, I learned several painful lessons. I’m grateful for every one of them.

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Let’s Ask Better Questions About Church Size

/ 3 minutes of reading

Instead of asking “what’s the best church size?” we need to ask “what’s the best church size for a given situation?” The best size for one church may not be the best size for another church. Even the church right across the street.

Better questions might include

What’s the best church size for the people we’re called to reach?
What’s the best church size for this pastor’s leadership gifts and calling?
What’s the best church size for our church’s purpose and philosophy of ministry?
What’s the best church size for our church right now?

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Big Church Sins vs. Small Church Sins: Who’ll Throw the First Stone?

/ 6 minutes of reading

Big churches and Small Churches bring different gifts to the body of Christ. They also face different sets of temptations, based on their size.

The biggest problem with church size isn’t that there are too many big congregations or too many small ones. I also don’t think there is an ideal church size or a bad church size.

The biggest problem with church size is when we use it as one more excuse for Christians to throw stones at each other.

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Your Church Is Big Enough (Podcast)

/ 2 minutes of reading

In today’s podcast, Jeff and Jonny of 200Churches.com interview Karl about the content of his previous post, “Your Church Is Big Enough”.

It starts with Jeff’s question “How can you say your church is big enough as long as there are still people in your community who need Jesus?”

Then it gets fun.

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Growing a Bigger Congregation Is Hard, Rare and [Gasp!] NOT a Biblical Mandate

/ 8 minutes of reading

For four decades, we’ve been told that if your church is not growing numerically, you’re failing. But that denies so much evidence. Evidence that very clearly indicates that growing a big congregation is not inevitable. It’s not common. And it’s not required by God to be a faithful pastor.

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