The small church advantage

When I was in college and seminary, most of my professors seemed to assume that I would spend my life pastoring a church of 600 talented, eager-to-serve members. After I graduated and became a pastor, most of the programs coming to me from different church departments and entities seemed to make the same assumption.

In reality, I had two small churches of about 50 members each. Not unusual, you say, for a young pastor's first district. The anticipated career track for Adventist pastoral ministry envisions a year or two of internship in a large church, learning the ropes under a senior pastor, then a district of two or three small churches, followed by increasingly larger congregations, and finally a single church of 500 or 600 members.

How does reality compare with this anticipation? Can most seasoned pastors reasonably expect to serve a large congregation?

Statistics say no. Writing in Christianity Today (Aug. 8, 1986, p. 10), editor V. Gilbert Beers declares: "The fact of the matter is that there are more small churches in America than large churches. Anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of most denominations are 'small church' (usually under 200people). And when you have weeded out the deceased, nonresidents, and dropouts, most church rolls could probably be cut as much as 50 percent—all of which means that small churches are often much smaller than their membership rolls indicate."

Our own denomination bears out what editor Beers has said. In the North American Division 78 percent of Seventh-day Adventist churches have less than 200 members; 57 percent have less than 100.* Congregations range from a low of four members to the 4,990-member Loma Linda University church in Loma Linda, California—the denomination's largest in North America. Even in California, however, not all Adventist churches are large. In the Southern California Conference 44 percent of the churches have 200 members or less; 12 percent have less than 100. For the Southeastern California Conference the figures are 39 percent and 14 percent respectively.

Obviously, the majority of Adventist pastors will spend their entire ministry serving small churches. But if you're among that majority, you don't have to feel badly or pine for a larger congregation. Small can be beautiful. I know; I've pastored some really small churches.

Sure, small churches have their draw backs. They often lack talented members and almost always have a weak financial base. A shortage of children sometimes makes it difficult, if not impossible, to have a church school. Realistic expectations for significant church growth may seem limited. And it's easy to conclude that your small church can't wield the influence in the community or in the conference that large churches enjoy.

But don't be too quick to decide that a small church dooms you to a mediocre ministry. Small churches have some advantages that large ones can't match. Here are six advantages of small churches and how they can work for you and your members.

Adaptability

Small churches are more adaptable than large churches. I once planned a spring evangelistic series in the smallest church of my three-church district—a congregation boasting about 16 members, as I recall. This church sat, as it had since the late 1800s, in a tiny crossroads community of some two dozen houses surrounded by outlying farms.

My advertising brochures (all 200 of them) had been distributed; the members were ready to support the meetings with their attendance and by inviting guests. The meetings were to begin on Saturday night. Sabbath morning 18 inches of late-spring snow paralyzed everything on wheels, and I lived 45 miles from the church! But the snow didn't affect the telephone. It was a relatively simple matter to get on the phone and postpone the meetings one week. Within minutes everyone in the church knew of the revised meeting schedule. Within three or four hours everyone in the community knew. Try accomplishing that with a 600-member church in a city of 200,000 people!

Small churches are more flexible and adapt more quickly to emergencies than do large churches. It's the principle of inertia. An ocean liner simply can't turn as quickly as a row boat. Knowing and using this fact can make your church effective in ways that would be difficult for a large church.

Incidentally, when the meetings began a week later, the little church was filled, and we baptized four people at the close of the series—25 percent of the church membership. And that points up the second advantage of a small church.

Reaching goals

Small churches can usually reach per capita goals easier than large churches can. I know the argument that says the reverse is true: in a large church you have more people to help reach the goal. However, the key factor is not bodies, but active participants, and I'm not convinced that the average large church has a greater percentage of active members than the average small church. In fact, I'm quite certain it's the other way around. If I had to choose between raising an Ingathering goal of $12,500 with 500 members or a goal of $1,250 with 50 members, I know which one I would pick.

Check it out for yourself. Look at all the comparative listings your conference office sends you. Per capita, small churches will probably be at the top. Whatever the goals deal with— finances, baptisms, church atten dance—I'm convinced that as long as goals are based on membership, small churches will reach them more easily than large churches will.

The family feeling

Small churches have a feeling of family that large churches can't often duplicate. Many times the small church feels like a family because it is one. The wise pastor will be reasonably sure he knows who is related to whom before he says very much to anyone about any body! It's amazing how the family tree can include some branches you would never have suspected.

But aside from blood relatives, a small church just naturally generates a closer bond between members than is possible in a large congregation. In a small church everybody knows everybody else—who they are, what they do, where they live, and what they've been through. In a large church, members may know a small circle of friends that way; they probably recognize a larger group by sight, but the rest are mostly strangers.

My wife learned this the hard way. We had belonged to a 600-member church for two or three years when she became one of a team of greeters at the front doors. This church always had a large number of visitors, so spotting an unfamiliar face one Sabbath morning and wanting to be friendly, she asked brightly, "Are you visiting our church today?"

The man eyed her coolly and replied, "I've been a member here for six years!"

Such a thing could never happen in a church of 100 members. Small churches don't have to schedule a moment of organized friendliness into the service and have everyone greet someone sitting nearby. In a small church most of the worshipers have already greeted every one else.

Like any close-knit family, a small church can be prone to rivalries, feuds, and grudges. But I've noticed that the same things happen in large churches. At least in a small church everyone knows that Sally and Mary aren't speaking this week, and the family can start trying to reconcile the two. In a larger church most of the members may not even know who Sally and Mary are.

Informality

Small churches are less formal than large churches. Depending on your point of view, this may or may not be an advantage. If you're highly structured and organized, the fact that the service doesn't begin until enough people show up may bother you. If you're more spontaneous in your approach to life, you may see that as an advantage. If nothing else, the informality of the small church keeps things from getting dull.

"Sister Smith is sick today. Mary, can you play hymn No. 311?"

Mary looks, decides that No. 311 has too many sharps, but says she could do "pretty good" with No. 543. So everyone sings No. 543, and Mary indeed does "pretty good." ("Pretty good" is enough in itself to keep things from getting dull.)

Informality can be overdone, of course. One district I pastored included a 23-member church that pushed the limits. About twice a month Henry showed up for church, always with some provision against starvation—a candy bar, a bag of potato chips, a handful of peanuts. (Never, I'm thankful, anything as large as a watermelon or a cake.) Early in the service Henry would produce his snack and eat it. That wasn't a real problem; he did it fairly unobtrusively. But eating made Henry sleepy, so he usually stretched out on the pew and went to sleep!

Now we all knew that Henry wasn't operating with the same mental capacity most everyone else enjoys, so we didn't make a big thing out of his nap. Anyway, he wasn't the only member I've had who took naps during my sermons—just the only one who didn't mind doing it openly.

I'm the first to admit that informality has a twin brother named carelessness and a cousin called sloppiness. But if you can keep away from these two, informality can add a special quality to worship. Things come off too slick in some large churches, almost like a television special in which every second and every line is planned beforehand.On balance, I put down informality, rightly handled, as a plus for the small church.

More people-oriented ministry

The small church allows you to spend less of your time being an administrator and more of your time in direct ministry to people. In most cases the senior pastor of a 500-member or larger church is as much administrator as he is pastor. He heads up a pastoral staff—at least an intern and an office secretary—whom he must supervise and assign duties. Add committees (figure at least one per 50 members), boards (churchboard, school board, plus a few the conference will find for him to sit on), budgets to help prepare and follow, regular office hours, correspondence, elders' and deacons' meetings, and the pastor finds himself with precious few hours for person-to-person ministry.

It really isn't his fault, and many pastors of large churches fight against it as much as they can, but it's just the nature of any organization to require more internal management the larger it becomes.

By comparison, a 100-member church can almost run itself. Even when you consider that a small church also requires regular board meetings and a certain amount of committee work (even when these are duplicated two or three times because of multichurch districts), fewer hours are spent on administrative duties in a small church than in a large one. That's why a large church often has a minister of visitation—the senior pastor must spend most of his time as an administrator.

When you pastor a small church, you get to do more of the satisfying part of ministry, visiting your members in their homes, holding Bible studies, doing personal evangelism—in short, people work instead of paperwork. And that's the primary purpose of being a pastor— ministering directly to people.

Active laity

A small church demands more active involvement of its members. A large church usually has a dedicated core of talented people who willingly assume responsibility, and a great mass of passive members who willingly watch them do it. A small church, on the other hand, can't afford the luxury of very many idle members. When the nominating committee meets to select church officers and assign responsibilities, you can be sure that nearly every member of a small church will have a job—often two or three.

In a large church a member may come and go for years without ever being asked to do much of anything, especially if he or she likes it that way. With so many people, it's easy to get lost in the crowd. Not so in a small congregation that has almost as many people on the platform as in the pews. Everyone is needed; every one's talents (or lack thereof) are well known, and everyone gets drafted to do something.

Having people who are used to active participation in the church is a blessing to your ministry. These are the people who will respond most readily when you appeal for involvement in special projects. Of course, any church, large or small, is going to have lethargic members. But it's harder to be inactive in a small church than it is in a large one.

Respect your church

There they are—six advantages small churches have over large ones. Advantages that you and your members can use to make your ministry more effective than you may have thought possible.

But a word of caution. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that small means you can afford to be less professional than your large-church colleagues.

You may be able to keep your member ship list on the back of an envelope, but don't. If you do, you, your members, and the community will see your church as just that—a vest-pocket operation. Approach your ministry as though you had a thousand members. Hold regular board meetings and keep accurate minutes. Insist that the treasurer and clerk maintain up-to-date records and turn in their reports to the conference office promptly. Put out a monthly church newsletter and mail it to your members' homes. Make it neat and informative.

See that the church building and grounds are in good repair and attractive inside and out. Small doesn't have to mean dirty, cluttered, or disorganized. Throw away last year's Ingathering papers (or find some better use for them than to decorate the back windowsill or a corner of the sanctuary). Clean the clutter out of the pulpit. Have an up-to-date sign identifying your church.

In short, don't use your small size as an excuse for mediocrity or worse. Small can be as good as, or even better than, large. After all, if 50 to 70 percent of the churches in most North American denominations are small, there must be a reason they continue to thrive. People must be finding in these small congregations a spiritual home that meets their needs. That's what your church—no matter how small—can be for your members.