Think Small
Grow: Rethinking Church Growth - Part 1
April 7, 2024
Luke 13:18-21
Jesus asked, “What is God’s kingdom like? To what can I compare it? It’s like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in a garden. It grew and developed into a tree and the birds in the sky nested in its branches.”
Again he said, “To what can I compare God’s kingdom? It’s like yeast, which a woman took and hid in a bushel of wheat flour until the yeast had worked its way through the whole.”
Luke 13:18-21
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Somewhere along the line, our culture became obsessed with the idea that “bigger is better.” It is the philosophy that drives our capitalistic, consumer market. We don’t even have to leave our home to find ourselves inundated with advertising that tries to tell us that we need more… bigger, better, faster… in sum, that we never have enough. It is not a far stretch to move from the idea that we don’t have enough to the deeply rooted feeling that we are not enough. The “Bigger is Better” philosophy has created a deep cultural crisis of identity and worth that we have barely begun to realize or admit.
When applied to the church, we have bought into the lie that only large churches are successful and we have created an endless array of costly programs with the goal of helping to make small churches big. We have come to believe that if we do not have enough people, money, and space to have personalized programming for every possible demographic like the mega church down the road, that we somehow have less value in God’s Kingdom. We are easily discouraged by attendance and offering numbers, seemingly forgetting that we follow a savior who transformed the world with only 12 disciples and fed thousands with only 5 loaves of bread and a few fish.
The Kingdom, Jesus said, is like a mustard seed or a pinch of yeast, tiny, unnoticed and seemingly insignificant, but with the power to transform into something amazing. If such parables are to be taken seriously, we must consider the immense value that small congregations have in the Kingdom on earth. Small churches offer unique opportunity for deeper intergenerational relationships. They can more easily adapt and respond to the immediate needs of the community around them as there is less bureaucracy and administrative red tape. We are able to know everyone and quickly recognize and welcome newcomers when we gather. Personally, I have found that even kids can feel more included in a small congregation of loving adults than in a large organization where they get lost in a crowd of other children and never even speak to the pastor or other church members aside from a Sunday School teacher or children’s minister.
Could it be, as Karl Vaters suggests, that 100 congregations of 50 people could be more effective, or at least as effective, at transforming their communities than a single church of 5,000?
What would it take for small churches to recognize and live into their own significance, to celebrate their strengths and giftedness, and to focus on faithfulness over numerical growth?
How might our own church and community look different if instead of struggling to grow bigger, we instead focused on growing healthy in Christian maturity, growing deep in our discipleship, growing wide in hospitality and welcome, and growing in love as we live into the Great Commandment and Great Commission of Jesus?