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Is your church too small to grow?

Wayne M. Warner

Is your church too small to grow? Be careful before you say yes. The first Christian church had only 12 members, and they turned a whole city upside down. I suggest any congregation willing to pay the price of change can grow with these four steps.

1. Prioritize meeting people’s needs.

God does not call every congregation to become a megachurch with 7,000 members like the one my grandchildren attend. Church growth does not come by compromising with the consumerism seducing us today, nor by simply choosing the right formula. Growth will come by observing the process of life and understanding that God does not predestine the majority of churches to necessarily remain small forever. The smallest of congregations in the smallest of communities can experience exciting growth, for where there is life, there will be growth.


The place to begin is to prioritize growth. Establish a ratio of at least one outreach worker for every nine workers needed for administering current programs. John Wesley knew the value of tithing, and people who commit their time, talents and money as Wesley did will see both change and growth. Any congregation willing to tithe 10 per cent of its workforce to outreach will discover they can bring in all the new people the other 90 per cent of the volunteer workers can assimilate into ongoing ministries.

Unfortunately, many congregations fail even to tithe their outreach. They plan and provide maintenance support for traditional programs but give leftovers to outreach. Since it does not affect their survival, it never becomes a priority. Thus, these congregations accommodate themselves to a “maintenance” ministry that is self-serving at best.

However, it is not sufficient to simply enlist a full complement of outreach workers. The congregation that does not seek ways to discover people’s needs and provide for them will soon find many of those entering the front door quietly exiting by the back door. On the other hand, people who have little interest in the gospel message initially often become quite responsive when they find the gospel relates to the problems they face. Rick Warren refers to the time he realized a pressing need for “potty training” in his community of young parents with small children. By providing that service, Saddleback Community Church opened a previously closed door and gained entrance into the community. This allowed the church to follow through by planning a contemporary worship service designed to make those young families more comfortable at church.

2. Mobilize members around self-determined goals and objectives.

Small congregations frequently focus on everybody in general and nobody in particular. That “shotgun approach” provides inclusiveness, they argue, thinking that aiming at a specific demographic group of somebodies narrows the command to go “into all the world” and shows partiality. Quite the contrary: By focusing on a specific demographic group and its need, the smallest of churches can maximize its greatest strength. This is especially true where the pastor is the clerical “GP” (general practitioner) and everyone demands his services. In such a context, the focus generally remains on congregational needs, rather than on mobilizing the congregation to meet the needs of the unchurched.

A congregation can take a giant leap forward by simply aiming its biggest guns at that segment of the population it can reach most effectively. No one will be refused or neglected; however, congregational effectiveness will be greatly enhanced by concentrating on that area or those areas where the congregation is strongest.

If your strength is older people, for example, specialize in meeting senior adult needs. There will always be plenty of seniors, and these people are often the most receptive to a church’s invitation. Moreover, they need tender loving care as they adjust to aging, and TLC is something the small church is especially good at giving.

3. Use church-growth measurements rather than institutional barometers to determine your success.

Buildings and budgets reflect an institutional mindset more than a mission and ministry mindset. As such, they provide a poor substitute for what God has most on His mind – winning the non-Christian world.

When I consider the last decade of my own ministry, with its relocation projects, budget increases and program expansions, I see success on all fronts. I need to ask, however: To what extent did we improve and expand our outreach skills? To what extent did we increase the number of harvest workers reaping in the fields Jesus described as ready (John 4:35)? How much did we reduce the ratio between outreach and maintenance workers? Did our growth percentage keep pace with community growth? To what extent did we decrease the ratio of nonbelievers to believers in our community? Did we plan our strategies by what we believed God wanted, or according to what we thought we could afford? Frankly, I don’t see such glowing success here.

4. Recognize no franchises.

Franchising is good business for McDonalds, but it has no place in ministry. Jesus told His disciples, “Go and make disciples of all nations” or ethnic groups (Matthew 28:19). As long as one lost person remains in God’s world, the Good Shepherd searches for that person, without respect for human walls and institutional ways. Every community with an unsaved person in it deserves a vital Christian witness.

The biblical emphasis on evangelism makes us all “evangelicals” – people who proclaim salvation by faith in Christ’s death on the cross. Anyone who in some way tries to convert a nonbeliever to personal faith in Christ, either by word or deed (or both), becomes an evangelist. One can scarcely become a Christian without becoming an evangelist.

Churches large and small face huge harvest fields. While many of us work on our own turf and in our own language and cultural comfort zone, the harvest fields offer no exclusive territories. No congregation has exclusive rights (a franchise) to a neighbourhood or territory. That does not mean we become competitors, as in business. Rather, it means we intentionally cooperate and work in concert to saturate our area.

Being small may offer some disadvantages. The only sin in being small, however, is “thinking small”. Corrie watched real neighbourhood kids sell real drugs on her real church’s street. When killers dumped their victim on the church lawn, that was too much, and Corrie began walking the sidewalks. She talked and prayed with people, occasionally interrupting drug sales.

Taking evangelism seriously can become life-threatening, and men threatened to shoot Corrie. Gang-related kids threatened her with car-bombing.

Persisting courageously for three years, nevertheless, brought results to Corrie’s area. The neighbourhood crack house closed. Trash disappeared. Neighbours cleaned up their neighbourhood and began repairs. The minister finally convinced the church to buy a nearby apartment building and begin a school. The result? A small, struggling ethnic congregation now began to make a difference.

It happened, however, only when someone refused to be intimidated by circumstances and intentionally accepted a new and bigger challenge.

Wayne M. Warner lives in Battle Creek, Mich.

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Last modified May 17, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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