“I’m a Fan of Keeping the Church Small”
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Mon, February 16, 2009
- Viewed 85
- (21) comments so far
[HT: The Dallas News Religion Blog] What do you think?
What do you think of this quote by Kirk Anderson, the pastor of a small church in Arizona...
"I'm a fan of keeping the church small. We're a relationship-based church, and I like to commune by name."
Comments
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Jesse Phillips on Mon, February 16, 2009
I think I would like to see the 19 other comments before I comment - is there a way to view comments without commenting yourself? Here’s my URL http://mondaymorninginsight.com/index.php/site/comments/im_a_fan_of_keeping_the_church_small/ there doesn’t seem to be.
About keeping the church small - that’s interesting. I wonder why he says that? I can think of several reasons myself. I think it’s harder to achieve community in larger churches, so I can understand why you’d want to keep things small. I assume you’d have a greater community, higher accountability, greater investment in each others’ lives and hopefully greater spiritual growth - I wonder if that’s true.
Dave Browning is doing something interesting, where instead of growing up in one place, they grow outward and multiply a lot! It seems they are able to keep intimacy, authenticity, community at a maximum, while still reaching tens of thousands for Christ. I, personally, like this strategy, though I haven’t been a part of it.
jud on Mon, February 16, 2009
We have a lot of people that call themselves church planters but seem intent on merely establishing the next mega-church with multi movie screen campuses. I like the idea of churches COMPLETELY dividing at 200-300 people and getting out to under reached confines.
I’m completely sick of the entrepreneurialism that Christendom is today.
Ryan Plantz on Mon, February 16, 2009
Acts 2:41 - 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
Acts 4:4 But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.
I’m not sure Jesus was a huge fan of keeping the church small. It is understood that they met in homes on a regular basis, but it is also clear in scripture that everyone (the thousand) met to together for meetings. In Acts 6, we see the massive church addressing a major problem with Hellenistic Jewish widows. 7 spirt-filled men were selected to address this (and probably other problems). This was not a ‘house-church’ issue. This was a mega-church issue.
Mike Silliman on Mon, February 16, 2009
I love my kids being small too, but I know if they are healthy and growing they won’t stay little forever. I need to cherish every stage that God has them in. I’m not going to purposely stunt their growth, and neither am I going to purposely force them to grow.
chique on Mon, February 16, 2009
I believe it’s impossible to follow the guidelines of church discipline ( laid out in 1Corn. 5 among others ) in a large/mega church. The accountability is lost when you can come and go without anyone knowing you when ever there.
I see large churches so focused on the money & numbers
( which go hand in hand), that they are willing for sacrifice what makes a church a church.
Dave on Mon, February 16, 2009
What if the person who lead you to Christ had that same attitude? What if he/she preferred that there was no room in God’s family for you because he/she wanted to know everybody by name? It is another form of consumerism—“us for and no more”. Mutual accountability and evangelistic growth are NOT exclusive of one another!!
Andy Wood on Mon, February 16, 2009
I think small vs. large is a false dichotomy. It’s possible to have both in the same congregation. Yes, it’s work, and yes, it’s impossible for one senior/lead pastor to know everyone intimately in that kind of arena. But the fact remains, churches don’t have to give up their “smallness” in order to reach more people.
Derek Vreeland on Mon, February 16, 2009
No problem with keeping an individual church small as long as we continue to reach the lost and multiply our disciple-making efforts. Too me this is the beauty of the multi-site approach. Continue to reach people for Christ, but instead of building a 3,000 seat auditorium, set up multiple campuses to keep each individual congregation under 800 or so.
I like what Michael Slaughter did at Ginghamsburg Church in Tripp City, OH, he built two buildings—one 1500 seat auditorium and one multi-purpose building and he said that he would build no more. They run multiple services and a couple of years ago they sent a bunch of their folks and an associate pastor to rehab a dying church about 50 miles away.
So keeping an individual church (or campus) small is fine, just multiply campuses or church plants or church rehabs.
Derek
Bart on Mon, February 16, 2009
Why is it that small churches long to be big so they can have progams and the benefits of all it brings, and the large churches stress their small group ministry? I could not find anything about the quote that would suggest that the writter does not believe in evangelism or reaching others for Christ, but that he prefers the intimacy found in a small gathering. If the house church movement is true to its roots, it reaches others and then splits to reach more when the size is to large to meet in a home. I have been in both large and small churches in my life, and have found God to be in both.
David Brown on Mon, February 16, 2009
Keeping the church small is as unscriptural as any perceived committed by mega churches. Problems created by size are merley problems with leadership and structure. Acts is our pattern. They grew massively and structured for it. Though they had small house meetings, they never limited the size of large temple meetings. With 7 billion people on the planet and most of them unconverted we must multiply efforts. I believe in mega churches, multiply site churches, massive church planting and mass evangelism!!
jud on Mon, February 16, 2009
I think anyone with the ambition to grow a mega church should be forced to spend a month completely alone in a very remote prairie with mmm say 13,000 sheep so they will know what it is like to even attempt to shepherd that many.
jud on Mon, February 16, 2009
When people bring up the massive size of the Church in Acts as PERMISSION to go huge with their church they completely forget about CONTEXT. Isn’t this referring to the big “C” and not the little “c” Church? Besides I see the Church in Acts being led by a HEALTHY Elder system as opposed to the CEO cults of personality we find today.
Wendi on Mon, February 16, 2009
On the home page of the Emanuel Lutheran website it says:
Our GROWING congregation is devoted to serving others through mission work in our own community as well as abroad.
We believe that all members of our congregation have a valuable role to play if our mission OUTREACH is to continue and be successful!
This statement is in direct contradiction with their stated mission . . . unless they adopt the multi-church strategy or plant churches at a regular pace. If 25% of the regular attenders reach one new person per year, by the 3rd year the church would have doubled to 400 people.
A church cannot stay small and grow at the same time, and growth is essential if we are going to evaluate church health in a biblical way.
Wendi
Wendi on Mon, February 16, 2009
Jud - growth doesn’t necessarily equate to mega-church, as I mentioned above. The context of church growth described in the two Acts passages was one geography. Although they met in homes, there seems to be evidence that there was only one governing body in Jerusalem.
I know numerous mega-church pastors who fully submit to their elders. Having some business approaches to ministry doesn’t mean there isn’t healthy shared leadership going on too.
Wendi
Peter Hamm on Mon, February 16, 2009
[It’s possible to have both in the same congregation.] That’s what they did in Acts, and that’s what we do with healthy small-group life (I hesitate to use the word ministry, since that’s not all it is…)
Jud, I’ve seen some megachurches with CEO-style pastors that weren’t cult-personality-driven. Not all are.
Also, Jud writes [I think anyone with the ambition to grow a mega church should be forced to spend a month completely alone in a very remote prairie with mmm say 13,000 sheep so they will know what it is like to even attempt to shepherd that many.] Except… that any healthy really big church has multiple people shepherding that flock, not just one, like the church in Acts did. We have just under 1000 in average weekend attendance, and we have 6 pastors. We need 6, and we don’t do all the ministry (We do precious little of it) as our people buy into the idea that they are more than the congregation, they are the CHURCH!
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