Three Benefits of Smaller Churches

“I guess it’s alright on the mission field, but not here…” The guy was trying to justify his fear of microchurch.

His reaction reflects a misunderstanding of three things. How size has little to do with quality. That opportunities do not depend on numbers. And the built-in strengths of smaller congregations.

One: The relationship between size and quality.

A friend once told me that the optimum size for a congregation (really, for its pastor) is 350 people. He believed that a church of that size could pay its bills and afford to reward its pastor handsomely. He would also know most people by name, making it easier for him to do his job.

Selfish, you might say, but I like the thought that in a smaller congregation, everyone knows everyone else’s hurts and victories—let alone the fact that everyone wants to belong in a place where “everybody knows your name.” There is a reason why people flock to pubs and places of familiarity.

Smaller churches benefit from relationships that nearly always trump programs. A friend of mine recently joined the church which I attend. He is a legal asylum seeker taking all the steps toward citizenship in our country. While our congregation of 800 people had little to offer regarding programs, two men went to work helping him secure a job. However, that occurred after several weeks of my friend feeling like an outsider; he would have met those helpful men in a smaller congregation on his first day there.

Two: The opportunities that surround us.

Having filled two Sunday morning services, I started a third service on a Friday night. We placed just 12 chairs in a corner, recruited one man with a guitar, and I taught the Sunday message as a Bible study while sitting down.

It was intimate and effective. We attracted people who served during the other two services and recruited help from those who showed up. This was in the first church I planted back in Hermosa Beach. BTW, it grew into our largest service and became a dating place for single adults—many weddings came from that gathering.

At the other end of my life, we started an early morning service with just eight people at the last church I planted. One guy could no longer make it to our 10 AM service due to a work change, so we started another at 8 AM. In a church of fewer than 200 people, that group of eight grew to 50, or one-fourth of our attendance.

You don’t add services because of packed rooms—you add them because you can meet needs that would otherwise go unmet (we’ll explore this further in the next blog).

Three: The benefits of smaller churches that cause angst in larger congregations.

I pastored three churches. Two grew to 2,000+ in attendance, while the third (in my old age) topped around 300. So what was our biggest problem?

Even at 300, we discussed the issue of strengthening fellowship nearly every staff meeting.

Three hundred people come to a church as mostly strangers—and they remain that way unless we work hard to overcome the “strangeness” that goes with flitting conversations in a hallway or around a cup of coffee.

Three hundred is also a large church if you pastor 40 people. What comes naturally is difficult as numbers grow. Again, you want to go to a place where everybody knows your name. That which comes naturally in a small setting grows more difficult as numbers pile up.

We focused on free food (potluck if you can get it) before and after services. What we called MiniChurch made a larger church function as a gathering of small ones. The point was an understanding that Jesus chose twelve as an optimum size, and we should contrive ways to do the same.

A church of 2,000 or 300 must work hard to get folks into small circles, which comes naturally in a smaller congregation.

I’m not saying small is best. However, I strongly disagree with the guy who thinks seven or eight people in a microchurch misses the point of a church being about love, acceptance and forgiveness. What works so well on the mission field should be a lesson to all of us. You are never too small!