Church Growth
Are You Pushing Pastors to Build Bigger Churches? Please Catch Us When We Fall
Many pastors feel pushed to grow, but they don’t feel like they get the help they need from church leaders when that growth fails to materialize.

The push to build bigger churches continues full steam ahead.

I regularly get cries for help from small church pastors because of the damage this push is causing.

Today I’m posting two of them.

Because of the personal nature of these messages, I’ve left the names off. But I have verified that they are legitimately from small church pastors who are accurately describing their situations. They’ve granted me permission to make them public.

The two pastors and their churches are about as different as they can be:

  • One is a man, the other a woman
  • One is a church planter, the other is in an established church
  • One is from a mainline denomination, the other is a conservative evangelical
  • One meets in a refurbished house, the other has a traditional church building
  • One is from a Northwest US state, the other in the Midwest

The pastors do not know each other but, as you’ll see, their stories and frustrations are surprisingly similar.

Pastor #1

It’s amazing the number of pastors and spouses who experience great pain and have nowhere to go and no one to talk to.

It’s amazing the number of pastors and spouses who experience great pain and have nowhere to go and no one to talk to.

We were just talking about it in a ministerial group this morning and everyone agreed. Our church leaders drive us to grow the church and reach people, which we all want to do, but where do we go when we’re hurting and broken? Where do our spouses go?

I can’t prove it, but I think this is a huge problem all across the evangelical church and the pastor drop-out rate backs it up.

I’m going to hopefully talk to a denominational leader later this month. Something has to be done!

There’s no easy solution, but if our denominational leaders are going to drive us to grow, they’d better come up with something to help us when we’re hurting.

Pastor #2

My church is 9 years old, and we have about 60 people in worship each week. It is the healthiest church I’ve ever seen.

Still, when you’re a church planter, the focus on growth is even more intense. The pressure to “Grow or Die” is constant.

So many of us start with next-to-nothing for resources, so if we can’t quickly grow the church to enough people to pay our salary and the rent on the building, the denomination pulls the plug – sometimes after only two years!

Fortunately, my denomination has allowed us to continue to do ministry out of our inherited church building (which used to be a house) without charging us any rent. This has allowed us to stay afloat, but I continue to work at about a half-time salary for doing full-time work.

How Church Growth Proponents Can Help Struggling Small Churches

These two pastors and the churches they serve reflect a problem that is far more commonplace than most of us would like to admit.

Many pastors feel pushed towards church growth, but they don’t feel like they get the help they need from church leaders when that growth fails to materialize. Which it doesn’t for over 90 percent of pastors and churches, no matter how much they want it, or how hard they work, pray, and follow all the church growth advice they can find.

So I’ve written a starter list for church growth proponents and denominational officials. When it comes to helping small church pastors, please consider these six principles:

1. Stop equating size with health

Big churches are great. But size is not the only (or even the best) indicator of health.

2. Stop pushing hurting churches to get bigger
The apostles didn’t push church growth on struggling churches.

The apostles didn’t push church growth on struggling churches.

When John wrote to the the small, struggling churches in Smyrna and Philadelphia (Rev 2 & 3), he didn’t give them church growth advice. He supported them in their struggles and encouraged them to be faithful.

As I wrote in 4 Proven Strategies for the Care and Treatment of an Unhealthy Church, we can’t hold stuggling churches to the same expectations as healthy ones.

3. Acknowledge that small is normal

Approximately 90 percent of churches are under 200. It’s always been that way. It’s time to stop making normal churches feel inadequate.

We should celebrate church growth when it happens. But we need to acknowledge that big churches are the exception, not the rule. We need to stop comparing other churches to the rare church that has exceptional growth.

4. Give us the training and tools to become healthy small churches

One of the reasons I wrote The Grasshopper Myth was because I looked for years to find a book that would help me pastor a healthy small church, but couldn’t find one. We need more books, seminars and other materials about pastoring from a healthy small church perspective.

5. Find ways to celebrate great small churches

Small churches don’t have the numbers to verify our successes. Not even per capita stats will show the results. But we have great stories. Give small churches a platform to tell them.

6. Get proactive about helping hurting pastors

I have to admit, I’ve been frustrated with some small church pastors who complain that their church officials haven’t helped them, only to find out they’ve never asked for help. But that’s often the way it is with hurting people. They’re too hurt to even ask for the help they need.

If small church pastors got one phone call a year from someone who cares, many will respond.

If small church pastors got one phone call a year from someone who cares, many will respond. The calls, emails and other cries for help that I receive on a regular basis are proof of that.

Someone needs to do the hard work of leaving the 99 healthy churches and pastors to call out for the lost, hurting sheep who may not even know how to find their way home.

The needs are real. The hurt is deep. The help is rare.

But we are not without hope. It just needs to be fanned into flame.

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The views of the blogger do not necessarily reflect those of Christianity Today.

August 22, 2016 at 12:14 PM

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