Alban Weekly at The Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, United States"Reclaiming the Distinctive Gifts of a Small Church" for Monday, 20 June 2016 ?PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS"
Reclaiming the Distinctive Gifts of a Small Church
Small-membership congregations are often worried about the future. They struggle to get visitors to join them in worship. Those that do attend come only occasionally. The cost of maintenance, salaries, benefits and more is ever-rising. The children of the congregation grow up and join the fast-growing big churches.
Data from the National Congregations Study indicates that the majority of small churches are feeling this pinch.
Between 1998 and 2012, the number of regular participants, both adults and children, in the average congregation decreased from 80 to 70. The study confirms the suspicion of many small-membership church leaders that since 1998, more and more people are gravitating to larger congregations. In the 2012 study, half of all church attenders go to a congregation of more than 400 in regular participation, with an annual budget of $450,000. But such large-membership congregations represent only 7 percent of all American congregations.
What are the leaders of struggling small-membership congregations to do?
First, remember the distinctive gift of being a small church.
I first heard this idea in the first edition of Anthony Pappas' classic Alban Institute text "Entering the World of the Small Church." In small-membership congregations, Christians are formed through relationships. The children learn by being with the saints of the church. The classes and programs are more like back-porch conversations. Relationships are important in any church, but their formational power is the central, defining characteristic of the small church.
Read more from David Odom »
Faith & Leadership
CONGREGATIONS
Dave Odom: Reclaiming the distinctive gifts of a small church
BigStock / Alexeys
Few places in the U.S. support the conditions for small churches to act like big churches. So they have an opportunity to focus on the activities that both foster the particular gifts of the congregation and make a distinctive witness to the community, writes the executive director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.
Small-membership congregations are often worried about the future. They struggle to get visitors to join them in worship. Those that do attend come only occasionally. The cost of maintenance, salaries, benefits and more is ever-rising. The children of the congregation grow up and join the fast-growing big churches.
Data from the National Congregations Study(link is external) indicates that the majority of small churches are feeling this pinch.
Between 1998 and 2012, the number of regular participants, both adults and children, in the average congregation decreased from 80 to 70. The study confirms the suspicion of many small-membership church leaders that since 1998, more and more people are gravitating to larger congregations. In the 2012 study, half of all church attenders go to a congregation of more than 400 in regular participation, with an annual budget of $450,000. But such large-membership congregations represent only 7 percent of all American congregations.
What are the leaders of struggling small-membership congregations to do?
First, remember the distinctive gift of being a small church.
I first heard this idea in the first edition of Anthony Pappas’ classic Alban Institute text “Entering the World of the Small Church(link is external).” In small-membership congregations, Christians are formed through relationships. The children learn by being with the saints of the church. The classes and programs are more like back-porch conversations. Relationships are important in any church, but their formational power is the central, defining characteristic of the small church.
During the 1950s, the culture in the United States created conditions in which congregations grew quickly and were able to build buildings, hire full-time pastors, add other pastors and staff, start programs, and more. Denominations blessed all this activity and urged small churches to become big ones. Often, churches were counseled to hire the staff first and reassured that the members would follow. As a result, small congregations began to do and do and do. Even in the boom days, such churches struggled to fill all the volunteer jobs the programs created.
Today, there are few places in the United States that continue to support the conditions for small-membership churches to act like big churches. Most of us live in communities where congregations are ignored, unless the congregation is very large. Visitors don’t come to the doors of most churches. Neighbors don’t welcome visits by church members inviting them to services. A system designed for the 1950s does not work for congregations or their communities any longer.
Small-membership congregations have the opportunity to return to the basics by asking themselves some crucial questions.
Ideally, one of the congregation’s most meaningful activities that nurtures its being is closely related to what it can offer to the community. For example, cutting firewood can be a ministry for homebound members of the church as well as a witness and service to neighbors.
The purpose of the witness is not to recruit church members. It is to enact the message of God’s grace and hope to a world that is not paying attention to God or God’s congregations.
Of course, most congregations already do such acts of witness and service, but to make a difference at a scale that the acts can be noticed, small-membership congregations need to focus their energy on a particular project. Figuring out the focus and scale of activity can be challenging, but it is a way forward that does not depend on a pastor or a certain size building. It depends on relationships and the gifts of the members.
With that vision in mind, the church faces questions of what kind of staff, building and more that it needs to maintain a vibrant community life that also serves as a distinctive witness. This is new territory for most congregations, but one that is much more energizing than struggling to keep everything going in a survival mode.
-------
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: SMALL CHURCH MINISTRY
Small is Beautiful
Small congregations often feel isolated from the bigger congregations in their communities and denominations, and even looked down upon by a culture that promotes the notion that bigger is better, but many of these congregations are thriving.
Read more from Wendy McCormick »
Small is Beautiful“People don’t realize we’ve been doing ‘small group ministry’ for 150 years!” This comment from the leader of one of the many small congregations across the country got a laugh from the ministerial association of a small southern Indiana town, but any leader of a small congregation would recognize the truth in the comment. Small congregations often feel isolated from the bigger congregations in their communities and denominations, and even looked down upon by a culture that promotes the notion that bigger is better, but many of these congregations are thriving.
Statisticians tell us that while the majority of church members in the U.S. attend a large church, the majority of congregations are small. Many of these congregations provide an anchoring presence in the rural or small town communities they call home, and some offer services and programs to benefit the community at large and not just “their own.” Most small congregations enjoy much higher percentages of their members in worship and ministry than do their larger counterparts, and many make generous contributions to mission in the community and the wider world, especially in proportion to their size.
But these congregations often struggle to find resources appropriate to their setting. Materials seem to be tailored to large congregations with large staffs. At the same ministerial group meeting, another pastor said it seems that every seminar or book begins, “First you convene a meeting of your worship pastor, your outreach pastor, and your discipleship pastor…”
The Indianapolis Center for Congregations strives to find resources appropriate for each congregation we serve. Often small congregations can be resources for one another. We also find that when small congregations gain clarity about who they are and what they are uniquely called to be and to do, other challenges begin to resolve. One small, rural congregation in southern Indiana put time and energy into clarifying their mission, landing on three key areas. They determined to do these three things well and to put aside the “something for everyone” approach into which congregations so often fall. Energy for their three-part vision began to grow, and thirty of their fifty members (60 percent) joined one of the three ministry teams.
At the Center, we also find that when congregations build on their strengths and assets, energy and resources for big challenges tend to increase. Several small congregations in southwest Indiana have focused on the unique advantages they have precisely because they are small. They realized that some of their members go out of their way to be part of a small congregation, passing by bigger congregations with more extensive programming precisely because they like the relationships and the family feeling the small congregation affords. They began to appreciate some of the interactive things they could do in worship that just aren’t possible in a large group.
Some congregations have built on these positive attributes by using the tools of appreciative inquiry and asset mapping to identify their strengths and passions. One congregation located near the center of their small town identified their building as one of their best assets and launched a study process to determine better ways to use the building for ministry and to prioritize needed capital improvements. Energy for projects and even for fundraising increased as ministry purposes were clarified and priorities fell into place.
Another congregation noticed that while they didn’t have young families, they did have teenagers. They trained some of their adults in CPR so they could supervise the youth group in providing monthly “date night” child care for the young families in the new subdivision that has grown up nearby.
Another congregation knew that the recession had increased the numbers of hungry people in their rural community, but they didn’t really know who the hungry were or how to find them. They didn’t feel they had much expertise at social services, but they knew their congregation was “pretty good at food.” They began a free “community meal” one night a week, opening their congregation’s table to anyone who wanted to come. Within a few months, they were in the unexpected position of needing more space; each week more and more of their previously unknown hungry neighbors, along with some of their community’s lonely citizens, were joining them to break bread.
These congregations are not without challenges. Some of them have part-time pastors stretched thin as bivocational ministers. Many have budget woes and building maintenance issues. Still, the Center for Congregations finds that small congregations grow in their capacity to face their challenges when they do what these congregations did: identify one or more areas of strength and start small; look more at what they can do than at what they cannot; and resist traditional outside measures of success. They are proving that small is beautiful.
____________________________________________
Adapted from “Small is Beautiful” by Wendy McCormick in Congregations Winter 2010(vol. 36, no. 1), copyright © 2010 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
-------
The Strength and Beauty of Small Churches
In a time of extraordinary transformation, small churches are a resource and a gift to the wider church. They are the ones best-prepared to enter the way of revitalization and renewal, and to report back to those who will follow.
Read more from Lisa Fischbeck »
CONGREGATIONS
Dave Odom: Reclaiming the distinctive gifts of a small church
BigStock / Alexeys
Few places in the U.S. support the conditions for small churches to act like big churches. So they have an opportunity to focus on the activities that both foster the particular gifts of the congregation and make a distinctive witness to the community, writes the executive director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.
Small-membership congregations are often worried about the future. They struggle to get visitors to join them in worship. Those that do attend come only occasionally. The cost of maintenance, salaries, benefits and more is ever-rising. The children of the congregation grow up and join the fast-growing big churches.
Data from the National Congregations Study(link is external) indicates that the majority of small churches are feeling this pinch.
Between 1998 and 2012, the number of regular participants, both adults and children, in the average congregation decreased from 80 to 70. The study confirms the suspicion of many small-membership church leaders that since 1998, more and more people are gravitating to larger congregations. In the 2012 study, half of all church attenders go to a congregation of more than 400 in regular participation, with an annual budget of $450,000. But such large-membership congregations represent only 7 percent of all American congregations.
What are the leaders of struggling small-membership congregations to do?
First, remember the distinctive gift of being a small church.
I first heard this idea in the first edition of Anthony Pappas’ classic Alban Institute text “Entering the World of the Small Church(link is external).” In small-membership congregations, Christians are formed through relationships. The children learn by being with the saints of the church. The classes and programs are more like back-porch conversations. Relationships are important in any church, but their formational power is the central, defining characteristic of the small church.
During the 1950s, the culture in the United States created conditions in which congregations grew quickly and were able to build buildings, hire full-time pastors, add other pastors and staff, start programs, and more. Denominations blessed all this activity and urged small churches to become big ones. Often, churches were counseled to hire the staff first and reassured that the members would follow. As a result, small congregations began to do and do and do. Even in the boom days, such churches struggled to fill all the volunteer jobs the programs created.
Today, there are few places in the United States that continue to support the conditions for small-membership churches to act like big churches. Most of us live in communities where congregations are ignored, unless the congregation is very large. Visitors don’t come to the doors of most churches. Neighbors don’t welcome visits by church members inviting them to services. A system designed for the 1950s does not work for congregations or their communities any longer.
Small-membership congregations have the opportunity to return to the basics by asking themselves some crucial questions.
- What activities are most meaningful to those who attend? What activities nurture the life of the congregation? What do members do that invites a deeper love of God and neighbor? What would be required to focus more intentional energy on those things? What could be eliminated to provide more opportunity to invest in them?
- A second set of questions is equally important. What is that one thing the church does that makes a distinctive witness to those outside the congregation? Why is this a distinctive witness? Who are the people it reaches, and how does it address their needs?
Ideally, one of the congregation’s most meaningful activities that nurtures its being is closely related to what it can offer to the community. For example, cutting firewood can be a ministry for homebound members of the church as well as a witness and service to neighbors.
The purpose of the witness is not to recruit church members. It is to enact the message of God’s grace and hope to a world that is not paying attention to God or God’s congregations.
Of course, most congregations already do such acts of witness and service, but to make a difference at a scale that the acts can be noticed, small-membership congregations need to focus their energy on a particular project. Figuring out the focus and scale of activity can be challenging, but it is a way forward that does not depend on a pastor or a certain size building. It depends on relationships and the gifts of the members.
With that vision in mind, the church faces questions of what kind of staff, building and more that it needs to maintain a vibrant community life that also serves as a distinctive witness. This is new territory for most congregations, but one that is much more energizing than struggling to keep everything going in a survival mode.
-------
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: SMALL CHURCH MINISTRY
Small is Beautiful
Small congregations often feel isolated from the bigger congregations in their communities and denominations, and even looked down upon by a culture that promotes the notion that bigger is better, but many of these congregations are thriving.
Read more from Wendy McCormick »
Small is Beautiful“People don’t realize we’ve been doing ‘small group ministry’ for 150 years!” This comment from the leader of one of the many small congregations across the country got a laugh from the ministerial association of a small southern Indiana town, but any leader of a small congregation would recognize the truth in the comment. Small congregations often feel isolated from the bigger congregations in their communities and denominations, and even looked down upon by a culture that promotes the notion that bigger is better, but many of these congregations are thriving.
Statisticians tell us that while the majority of church members in the U.S. attend a large church, the majority of congregations are small. Many of these congregations provide an anchoring presence in the rural or small town communities they call home, and some offer services and programs to benefit the community at large and not just “their own.” Most small congregations enjoy much higher percentages of their members in worship and ministry than do their larger counterparts, and many make generous contributions to mission in the community and the wider world, especially in proportion to their size.
But these congregations often struggle to find resources appropriate to their setting. Materials seem to be tailored to large congregations with large staffs. At the same ministerial group meeting, another pastor said it seems that every seminar or book begins, “First you convene a meeting of your worship pastor, your outreach pastor, and your discipleship pastor…”
The Indianapolis Center for Congregations strives to find resources appropriate for each congregation we serve. Often small congregations can be resources for one another. We also find that when small congregations gain clarity about who they are and what they are uniquely called to be and to do, other challenges begin to resolve. One small, rural congregation in southern Indiana put time and energy into clarifying their mission, landing on three key areas. They determined to do these three things well and to put aside the “something for everyone” approach into which congregations so often fall. Energy for their three-part vision began to grow, and thirty of their fifty members (60 percent) joined one of the three ministry teams.
At the Center, we also find that when congregations build on their strengths and assets, energy and resources for big challenges tend to increase. Several small congregations in southwest Indiana have focused on the unique advantages they have precisely because they are small. They realized that some of their members go out of their way to be part of a small congregation, passing by bigger congregations with more extensive programming precisely because they like the relationships and the family feeling the small congregation affords. They began to appreciate some of the interactive things they could do in worship that just aren’t possible in a large group.
Some congregations have built on these positive attributes by using the tools of appreciative inquiry and asset mapping to identify their strengths and passions. One congregation located near the center of their small town identified their building as one of their best assets and launched a study process to determine better ways to use the building for ministry and to prioritize needed capital improvements. Energy for projects and even for fundraising increased as ministry purposes were clarified and priorities fell into place.
Another congregation noticed that while they didn’t have young families, they did have teenagers. They trained some of their adults in CPR so they could supervise the youth group in providing monthly “date night” child care for the young families in the new subdivision that has grown up nearby.
Another congregation knew that the recession had increased the numbers of hungry people in their rural community, but they didn’t really know who the hungry were or how to find them. They didn’t feel they had much expertise at social services, but they knew their congregation was “pretty good at food.” They began a free “community meal” one night a week, opening their congregation’s table to anyone who wanted to come. Within a few months, they were in the unexpected position of needing more space; each week more and more of their previously unknown hungry neighbors, along with some of their community’s lonely citizens, were joining them to break bread.
These congregations are not without challenges. Some of them have part-time pastors stretched thin as bivocational ministers. Many have budget woes and building maintenance issues. Still, the Center for Congregations finds that small congregations grow in their capacity to face their challenges when they do what these congregations did: identify one or more areas of strength and start small; look more at what they can do than at what they cannot; and resist traditional outside measures of success. They are proving that small is beautiful.
____________________________________________
Adapted from “Small is Beautiful” by Wendy McCormick in Congregations Winter 2010(vol. 36, no. 1), copyright © 2010 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
-------
The Strength and Beauty of Small Churches
In a time of extraordinary transformation, small churches are a resource and a gift to the wider church. They are the ones best-prepared to enter the way of revitalization and renewal, and to report back to those who will follow.
Read more from Lisa Fischbeck »
Faith & Leadership
VOCATION
Lisa G. Fischbeck: The strength and beauty of small churches
In a time of extraordinary transformation, small churches are a resource and a gift to the wider church, says a North Carolina vicar. They are the ones best-prepared to enter the way of revitalization and renewal, and to report back to those who will follow.
One afternoon, my daughter texted me from college with a quote: “Evolutionary innovation occurs most easily and quickly in small populations.”
“Relevant to the church?” she asked.
“Yes!” I texted back. “Where did you hear this?”
“In my paleo-stratigraphy class.” she replied.
After almost 10 years as vicar of the Church of the Advocate, a small mission church in Chapel Hill, N.C., I know well the insecurities that can plague small churches. Compared with large churches, with their many programs, resources and staff members, small churches can easily feel overshadowed and somehow “less than.”
VOCATION
Lisa G. Fischbeck: The strength and beauty of small churches
In a time of extraordinary transformation, small churches are a resource and a gift to the wider church, says a North Carolina vicar. They are the ones best-prepared to enter the way of revitalization and renewal, and to report back to those who will follow.
One afternoon, my daughter texted me from college with a quote: “Evolutionary innovation occurs most easily and quickly in small populations.”
“Relevant to the church?” she asked.
“Yes!” I texted back. “Where did you hear this?”
“In my paleo-stratigraphy class.” she replied.
After almost 10 years as vicar of the Church of the Advocate, a small mission church in Chapel Hill, N.C., I know well the insecurities that can plague small churches. Compared with large churches, with their many programs, resources and staff members, small churches can easily feel overshadowed and somehow “less than.”
But my life and ministry at the Advocate has also taught me the strength and beauty of small churches. At a time of extraordinary transformation, when the whole church is looking for new ways of being for a new generation in a new world, small churches can be an invaluable resource and a gift to the wider church. In many ways, small churches are the ones best-prepared to enter the way of revitalization and renewal, and to report back to those who will follow.The church certainly has no lack of small congregations. In virtually every denomination, most churches are small, with an average Sunday attendance of less than 100, even less than 50.
Are they -- are we -- ready to hear and to answer the call to lead? If so, we have much to offer the church and the world.
Small churches can be places of extraordinary community, the very thing that people today long for. In a small congregation, an individual can often find a sense of belonging more readily than in a large church. In a small congregation, Paul’s metaphor of the church as the body of Christ comes alive, with each individual essential to the whole (Romans 12:4-8(link is external), 1 Corinthians 12(link is external)).
At the Church of the Advocate, we say every Sunday that the liturgy will be what it will be because of whomever God has called together in that time and place. The liturgy literally would not be the same if each person were not there.
What is true for the liturgy is even truer for the community and its life together. Each person brings her or his particular needs, history, skills and passions. The gadget-adroit teenager, the writer, the prisoner, the singer who can sing the tenor line, the rambunctious child, the chef, the chronically mentally ill adult, the carpenter -- each brings something essential to our life together.
With scant resources and fewer people to make things happen or support a budget, small churches are inherently vulnerable. But as sociologist Brené Brown has pointed out, both in her books(link is external) and in a popular TED talk(link is external), vulnerability is not a bad trait to have. In vulnerability lies great strength -- for vital people and, as Brown made clear in a talk to the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes earlier this year, for vital congregations.
Those who minister in small churches have long known this vulnerability -- and the hidden strengths that it brings. Vulnerability helps us identify with the poor and needy. It helps us understand the vulnerability of Jesus and our dependence on God and one another. Vulnerability helps make us faithful.
In addition to the gifts of community and vulnerability, small churches are blessed with the capacity to try new things more easily than our larger counterparts. They can in the right circumstances be nimble and agile.
Sure, small churches are known for being averse to change. They often have members who are reluctant to give up control of some particular aspect of the congregation’s life, whether worship, music, outreach or finances. They can be closed systems with well-identified role players, each doing what he or she has always done, leaving little if any room for newcomers or for change. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
With fewer people in the pews to satisfy or mobilize, small churches can move and even experiment more readily than larger congregations can. Small churches can take a worship service outdoors or down the street on a moment’s notice. They can easily change how they do processions for a season to see whether another approach might be more meaningful.
Small churches can change their meeting time or the way they engage with the surrounding community with surprising swiftness. They can more readily talk about and explain, discuss, and even argue about changes with each other, and then break bread together in fellowship.
At the Advocate, for example, our relatively small size has enabled us to find times and ways throughout the church year to name and celebrate the ministry and vocation of the laity in the world. Through commissions, prayers and celebrations, our people are better able to connect their faith and their work.
Not far away, in Oxford, N.C., St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church, a small, once-struggling historically African-American mission, offers an object lesson in change. After years of slow decline, the church embraced a call to be a place of reconciliation, healing and hospitality in a town with a notably racist past. The transformation of the congregation and its surrounding community has been palpable.
To some, words like “evolution,” “innovation,” “change” and “experiment” are frightening, distasteful, even heretical. But if the Spirit is moving in the church, we need to be alert to the ways the Spirit might be calling us to change.
Both as individuals and as congregations, too many of us have grown accustomed to certain ways of being and doing church. As with any change, the prospect of doing church in new and different ways seems uncomfortable, even frightening. It can require a deep and painful “letting go.”
Small churches have been letting go for years. They know what it means to be part of the body of Christ, and to have the gifts of vulnerability and flexibility.
They are called to lead the way. I pray that they will answer the call. And I pray that the wider church will find ways to encourage and nurture that call.
The paleontologists are right: Evolutionary innovation occurs most easily and quickly in small populations.
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The Small Church
Before parishioners could travel by car, train, or Beecher boats to church on Sunday, churches had been small. The normative model for the vast majority of church history has been the small church, and the percentages show that this is still true today.
Read more from Steve Willis »
The Small ChurchQuite often I drive by the Peaks Presbyterian Church on my way to hike through the Blue Ridge Mountains. The little white clapboard church sits in a beautiful setting, looking up to Sharp Top and Flat Top Mountains of the Peaks of Otter, among the highest elevations in Virginia. This congregation has always been a small country church since it was founded in 1761. It has survived the Revolutionary War, the trauma of our nation’s Civil War, the Great War to end all wars, the Second World War, Vietnam, the culture wars of the sixties, and now continues its ministry today. The Peaks Church’s beginnings hearken back to a time that had a quite different understanding of church and pastoral leadership.
During the period when the Peaks Church came into existence, stability was the norm for ministers, who most often pastored the same church their entire ministerial life. A study of Congregationalist ministers who graduated from Yale College during this era shows the difference between then and now. Robert W. Lynn and James W. Fraser, church analysts, who in 1977 contributed to one of the first books written specifically about the small church, summarize the differences:
Of course, today is not the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, and much has changed, including changes both welcome and lamentable. If we consider the church’s position in the larger culture and the influence and power of the mainline Protestant church on society, things today more closely resemble 1761 than 1950. By this I mean that denominational Christianity has found itself in the periphery of the dominant American culture. Even our central-culture churches have found themselves at a new periphery. We have experienced a loss of social influence and status in the culture and a loss of resources. As much of a shock as it is to our system, we know that the church’s position in any culture ebbs and flows. We have little control over whether we are flowing or whether we are ebbing.
Today there is knowledge to explore that comes from healthy, sustainable, rural churches. We need to start thinking the other way around about where we are in the culture and what place we inhabit. Mainline Protestantism has grown comfortable and accustomed to the center, but we need to relearn gifts and skills from the periphery. Our social location is changing–really, it has already dramatically changed. So our learning needs to change as well.
I wish and pray for a time in the church that values and grows from the insight, experience, resources, and stories of all our diverse and varied ministries. A more in-depth collaboration among and learning from both central- and peripheral-church ways of being will provide needed perspectives and skills for living into an ever-changing future. Sharing our diverse voices and gifts can help us all remember that it is the sovereign, gracious God of Jesus Christ who is the center of our life together.
1. Robert W. Lynn and James W. Fraser, “Images of the Small Church in American History,” in Small Churches Are Beautiful, ed. Jackson W. Carroll (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), 7 – 8.
2. Anthony C. Pappas, Vital Ministry in the Small-Membership Church: Healthy Esteem (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 2002), 10.
3. Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher(New York: Doubleday Broadway, 2006), 202.
______________________________________
This article is adapted and excerpted from Imagining the Small Church: Celebrating a Simpler Path by Steve Willis, copyright © 2012 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
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FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY
With unflinching honesty and a wonderfully redeeming sense of humor, Entering the World of the Small Church is an essential resource for motivating change and growth in the small church by using its natural strengths.
For those of you who have been looking for a reliable guide to interpret the world of the small church, look no further! This book includes images and models and strategies that highlight the profound uniqueness of the small church. It clearly shows leaders how to lead within the dynamics and culture of the small congregation. It is theologically sound and eminently practical.
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Alban at Duke Divinity School
The Small Church
Before parishioners could travel by car, train, or Beecher boats to church on Sunday, churches had been small. The normative model for the vast majority of church history has been the small church, and the percentages show that this is still true today.
Read more from Steve Willis »
The Small ChurchQuite often I drive by the Peaks Presbyterian Church on my way to hike through the Blue Ridge Mountains. The little white clapboard church sits in a beautiful setting, looking up to Sharp Top and Flat Top Mountains of the Peaks of Otter, among the highest elevations in Virginia. This congregation has always been a small country church since it was founded in 1761. It has survived the Revolutionary War, the trauma of our nation’s Civil War, the Great War to end all wars, the Second World War, Vietnam, the culture wars of the sixties, and now continues its ministry today. The Peaks Church’s beginnings hearken back to a time that had a quite different understanding of church and pastoral leadership.
During the period when the Peaks Church came into existence, stability was the norm for ministers, who most often pastored the same church their entire ministerial life. A study of Congregationalist ministers who graduated from Yale College during this era shows the difference between then and now. Robert W. Lynn and James W. Fraser, church analysts, who in 1977 contributed to one of the first books written specifically about the small church, summarize the differences:
- The eighteenth-century New England Congregationalists did not view the successful pastor as one who changed churches. That 7 percent with more than two pastorates consisted of the “ne’er to do wells.” The situation was precisely the reverse of today, that is, Congregational pastors of that time looked upon themselves as holding identical offices with identical problems. There were no essential spiritual distinctions between the minister who labored in a small Connecticut hamlet and the pastor of the prominent church in New Haven or Boston.1
- So for the first time in human history, thousands of people could get to a one- or two-hour event and get home for lunch! So large churches, big steeples, big pulpits, Old Firsts came into being. As we think of them today, large churches have only been around for a little over a century–only 5% of the history of our faith.2
- On a practical level, a popular church was an excellent investment. It was exempt from taxes, its revenues were regular, it was unlikely to chisel or default, and it brought up the real estate values of the neighborhood, creating more opportunities for wise investors to make money. The church paid the owners rent or a mortgage with a profitable interest rate, and they could make extra money by hiring out the building for speeches, concerts, meetings, and other entertainments during the week.3
Of course, today is not the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, and much has changed, including changes both welcome and lamentable. If we consider the church’s position in the larger culture and the influence and power of the mainline Protestant church on society, things today more closely resemble 1761 than 1950. By this I mean that denominational Christianity has found itself in the periphery of the dominant American culture. Even our central-culture churches have found themselves at a new periphery. We have experienced a loss of social influence and status in the culture and a loss of resources. As much of a shock as it is to our system, we know that the church’s position in any culture ebbs and flows. We have little control over whether we are flowing or whether we are ebbing.
Today there is knowledge to explore that comes from healthy, sustainable, rural churches. We need to start thinking the other way around about where we are in the culture and what place we inhabit. Mainline Protestantism has grown comfortable and accustomed to the center, but we need to relearn gifts and skills from the periphery. Our social location is changing–really, it has already dramatically changed. So our learning needs to change as well.
I wish and pray for a time in the church that values and grows from the insight, experience, resources, and stories of all our diverse and varied ministries. A more in-depth collaboration among and learning from both central- and peripheral-church ways of being will provide needed perspectives and skills for living into an ever-changing future. Sharing our diverse voices and gifts can help us all remember that it is the sovereign, gracious God of Jesus Christ who is the center of our life together.
1. Robert W. Lynn and James W. Fraser, “Images of the Small Church in American History,” in Small Churches Are Beautiful, ed. Jackson W. Carroll (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), 7 – 8.
2. Anthony C. Pappas, Vital Ministry in the Small-Membership Church: Healthy Esteem (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 2002), 10.
3. Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher(New York: Doubleday Broadway, 2006), 202.
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This article is adapted and excerpted from Imagining the Small Church: Celebrating a Simpler Path by Steve Willis, copyright © 2012 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.
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