The Smaller, the Better

I can't find the quote right off, but I believe it is in his book The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction where Eugene Peterson states that a local church really ought not to be greater in size than about 200 people, give or take a few. The reason is quite simple. A pastor cannot get to know by name more people than that and continue to take an active, praying and listening role in each of their lives. Pastors must fundamentally be people of prayer and listening. Pastors ought not to be distant figures up on some stage, but incarnate amongst their people a prayerful, listening form of ministry.

Now, megachurch-type ministries have sought to honor this principle in their own way by breaking the big church up into smaller units, sometimes quite intentionally calling them separate "congregations." But I think the economy of scale presupposed by the church as a whole may just miss the point and perhaps undermine the concept from the start. Big churches accustom people to, train their sensibilities in anonymity. What's more, when they fight anonymity, they generally do so by allowing people to 'shop for' their own 'niche,' for their own congregation or social grouping among more people like themselves (e.g., the 20s, young professionals, seniors, etc.). In a sense, they have you go deeper into your individuality, not transcend it. If you are never really forced to pray for or listen to someone outside your social group--which you can easily avoid in a megachurch--then you are far removed, I believe, from growing in the love of neighbor. As such, megachurches can exacerbate inter-generational or social group differences and lose any sense of cohesion.

That's the point of Peterson's model. It actively seeks to resist anonymity throughout an entire church not just throughout one's self-chosen small group or the like. Church should challenge us to love our neighbor right next to us, whether they are like us or not, by having that neighbor right there next to us at each point along the way.

I am deeply moved by Peterson's vision, to the point where it has opened my eyes to a whole new sense of what church ministry possibly could be. (I sense that part of why his vision inspires me so much is that I see such strong elements of this embodied in our very own pastoral team. I've seen it work, and it is good.)

As a result, I now believe firmly that any church which approaches, roughly, 200 active attendees ought to raise up a core group of 30 to 50 to plant a new church. If not before!

For me, the key now is not size, but dynamism. You want a church where intimate relationships can develop, and one-on-one discipleship is a living reality. You want that church to reach out well to folks in the community with whatever gifts the parishioners bring to the table. Small is better in this sense because it remains personable, not threatening and overwhelming as some shopping-mall sized megachurches probably are to the unchurched. We need to be busy in the relationship business, and you can only do that when you have a church where everyone can realistically get to know everyone.

What's more, it's gotten me thinking that the most logical way that you keep a church congregation small but dynamic is to have it plugged into a local community. Here I want to revive the old historic 'parish model' of doing church, where a church is at the center of a local community--the living, breathing hub of spiritual and social life. In such a model, the priest is a pastor not just to those on the inside but, in a sense, also to even the non-churched person who lives down the block. A pastor should know all the people in the surrounding community by name. They should know who could pray for them, if they want, where to find pastoral help, if they need it. And so the small, local congregation should end up being the hub for everything from after school tutoring and summer programs for kids to feeding the hungry, providing food for shut-ins and the sick or hosting block parties. To be sure, the church is not just a dispenser of social services (which is what I fear some socially active Roman Catholic parishes end up becoming). Rather, the Gospel is preached with power, and lived out within a local community. It ought to be an attractive way of doing church, with a genuine appeal to those who do not know Christ (yet) because the Body of Christ incarnates Him and makes Him real in the community.

On this model, local parishes should not be about recruiting members from outside of a given radius but constantly focused on getting to know and then serving everyone within their own. If enough people from another local community start attending--as they are certainly welcome to do--then they ought to begin thinking about how they are going to plant a similar church in their own neighborhood. And so on. Church growth, then, is a process of planting small but dynamic congregations who know their communities and serve them with the hands and feet of Christ.

My sense is that this model would work not only in densely populated urban areas, but especially well in the suburbs, where we could begin seeing subdivisions as parishes with their own church and the like. Rural areas may cover relatively larger swaths of land, but that is well-known terrain for such people. They are used to 'driving into town.' All is means is that the pastor must visit homes much more--and be the kind of person whose presence is always welcome.

Being a welcoming presence: that, to my mind, is the key. Everything else follows from it. For example, in contemporary American suburbs there could easily be zoning issues if a parish wanted to build a building (which would serve as a visible sign and physical meeting place for the community). But I would like to insist that before there is ever talk of a building, there must be genuine worship and service flowing out of the homes of parishioners to that community. If the church is a welcoming presence, it will likely be welcomed by her neighbors. Welcome enough, I would hope, to where the people of that community might actually desire the parish to build a facility, where they might see the value of having one in their midst--even if they themselves never intend to darken the door for worship. If church is built on relationship first--the core of Peterson's model for pastoral ministry--then everything else, including a meeting space, etc., will follow on its own.

In general, Christians need to stop viewing church as an organization whose members meet to worship and engage in all sorts of 'Christian activities.' Rather, church is the relationship we have amongst ourselves and to the world. To be the church, rather than to have one--that is the heart of the matter.