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Small Town, Big Church?
Orginally published on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 7:35 AM
by Todd Rhoades
I received an email from a pastor yesterday who pastors a church of 800 people in a town of 3,000. He was hoping to connect with other large churches in smaller towns. Then this morning, I found this article about a church that's currently averaging 1,000 people and is headquartered in a town of 300 people. Wow. Here's an excerpt from the article I saw over at BPNews.com...
The ministry of the then-31-member Lead Hill congregation has exploded to include nine towns in northern Arkansas and is now based in Bergman, a town with a population of 407. In December 2006, BNC averaged more than 1,000 people in attendance each week, with O’Dell estimating that about 60 percent drive from the larger city of Harrison. Others drive from smaller cities like Yellville, Lead Hill, Pindall and Kingston. “When church is done right, they’ll drive from anywhere,” O’Dell says.
My question for you today is… do you know of any churches that you would consider large churches in small towns? If so, tell us all you know about them (name, location, situation, etc.) It’d be great to be able to connect these church leaders with colleagues in similar situations…
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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.
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Post Your Comments:Our church might qualify. We are currently averaging about 800 in attendance (probably 1500 in membership) in an area of about 22,000 people. You can’t go ANYWHERE without running into someone you do church with. That’s kinda special actually.
Check out Victory Christian Center in Lowellville, OH pastored by Dave Thomas.
http://www.theresaplaceforyou.com
There’s a great story to be told here!
Our church probably qualifies, as well. We averaged 679 in the last quarter and we’re situated two miles outside a town of 3950 population. We have five weekend worship experiences--two on Saturday evening and three on Sunday morning. It’s exciting to hear of other churches in small town/rural locations doing ministry in a big way!
Our church doesn’t qualify YET! We 18,000 people in our community and about 100 people on Sunday morning...WAIT...make that 105 people on Sunday morning...we are growing!
I am traveling next week with a guy who is speaking at Only Believe Ministries Christian Center in Botkins, Ohio. OBMCC (snazy name?!?!?) has anywhere from 1500-2000 in attendance in a town of about 1200. Amazing story.
Jim Graff (Joel Osteen’s brother in law) leads a ministry that helps churches in smaller counties grow. His church has about 3,000 in attendance in a town of about 50,000. His ministry is at http://www.significantchurch.com/
Interesting quote from his website: In 2000, at a significant cost and a considerable amount of man=hours, Jim Graff commissioned a survey that gathered information on over 2,783 counties with a population under 150,000. These counties had a combined population of nearly 90 million people. If considered as their own nation, they would be the 13th largest nation on earth. That is certainly significant. In our survey we found incredible pastors with churches greatly impacting their communities but we also found many overlooked areas in need of vibrant, life-giving churches. Our mission is to affirm and strengthen churches in small counties.
NewPointe Community Church
Dover, OH
Lead Pastor Dwight Mason
http://www.newpoint.org
They just relocated from a town of about 5000 where they were running 15-1700. I think they’ve been flirting with or occasionally over the 2000 mark and they are still in the country, but closer to larger cities (20k)
Just kidding - the URL is actually http://www.newpointe.org. Remember the ‘e’.
subjectively speaking....the church i work at is located in a “small” (25000) town in the smallest county in texas. we hit about 10000/weekend.
I’m not a part of the church but Tyro Christian Church in Tyro, Kansas would qualify. They run about 1000 in a town of 250 with about 40,000 in their county. Their website is http://www.tyrochristian.org .
Wow Curt,
40,000 in your County. Crowded I would say!
I pastor in a County of 1,800--yep, 1,800.
Tough going here, but I have hope.
fishon
fishon: Great to hear you have hope! You also have prayer support.
We are the largest church in town. When I can get an accurate count of what size our town is - I’ll get back to this… lol
anne jackson - I have been hearing great things about your church over there in the smallest county here in Texas. Our church’s youth just benefited from Wes Hamilton’s teaching at Student Life Camp. Definitely got some prayer partners here!
We have a church with average weekend attendance of 5000 in a community with population of 2700.
Todd...I oversaw a Significant Church project at Faith Family in Victoria for Pastor Jim Graff where we called every small county in America under 150,000 in population to find the largest church in each county and figure out there population reach. The data we collected was enormous and for me sometimes disheartening. The vast majority of counties out there don’t have a church that reaches 1% of the county population. Those that reach 3 and 4% are very rare.
But people like Jim and others are trying to change that by ministering to small county pastors.
We sometimes look at these large churches in major metropolis areas and sort of idolize them. We implement there methods and strategies and find they do not work.
I gained a healthy respect for what Faith Family did by growing a church to 3,000+ in a small county. Victoria is a city of 65,000 in a county of about 85,000. And they are still growing.
I would encourage you to contact them on the research we did. [url=http://www.ffcvictoria.org]http://www.ffcvictoria.org[/url]
Thanks for pointing that out Derek.
I have a friend who is a Pastor at a larger church in a small town. It is called “Rock Springs Church” and is located in Milner, GA. Check it out at: http://www.rockspringsonline.com
I’m part of a church that is now 8 years old and averages around 400. We are in a rural community with a population of around 4,000. Dodgeville, WI is the largest town in our county and also the largest for about a 25 mile radius. We also have a video venue in a rural community 50 miles away and other small churches have begun to use our services and watch them instead of having a live speaker.
We would love to connect with other churches like ours. http://www.hiddenv.com
Make it better
We are in a town of 12,000 and worship 600 plus. Not huge, but the largest church in town and we are mainline! So in the minds of our peers we are Lakewood! But I feel our congregation makes a bigger impact than say a church of 1,000 in a town of 250,000.
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