Small Church Ministry

Small Church Ministry
How Much Does The Pastor's Personality Affect Church Growth Or Size? (Survey)
Can you take this short survey to help us understand more about small churches and their leaders?

Most churches in the world are small. As many as 90 percent are under 200, 80 percent under 100.

Is this because the pastors of those churches haven’t mastered church growth? Or could there be other factors at play here?

These are valid questions, but they have surprisingly ...

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Small Church Ministry
Do You Serve In A Small Church? We See You, And You Matter
You may feel alone, but you're not. You're seen, loved and appreciated.

Today's article was written by Bernie Harding, the community pastor of Peel Elim Community Church, where her husband is the pastor. Peel is a town of 6,000 people on the Isle of Man. Bernie is responsible for running the community centre, kids church, some evangelism projects, ...

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Small Church Ministry
Why Are There So Few Resources For Churches Under 50?
If you’ve learned something practical about pastoring a very small church, we need to get that information out to others.

There are a lot of small churches in the world.

By most estimates, over 90 percent of churches are under 200, and over 80 percent are under 100. In fact, it’s not unusual for half of the congregations within a denomination to have 50 or fewer people in attendance.

So why ...

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Small Church Ministry
7 Reasons Small Churches Are An Essential Part Of The Body Of Christ
Small churches have an amazing capacity to bounce back over and over again.
7 Reasons Small Churches Are An Essential Part Of The Body Of Christ

The body of Christ is made up of many parts.

Various denominations, liturgies, styles, and sizes.

And nowhere is that variety more evident, more delightful or (let’s be honest) more frustrating than in the amazing menagerie of small churches.

Big churches matter. Medium-size ...

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Small Church Ministry
When The Small Church Pastor's Biggest Critic Is In Our Mirror
Small church pastors can’t get mad at others for looking down on us when we keep looking down on ourselves.

Small churches and their pastors seldom get the credit they deserve.

Including from small church pastors ourselves.

Yes, it’s true. Often the biggest critics of small churches and the people who pastor them are staring at us in our mirror.

What Am I Doing Wrong?

Too many small ...

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Small Church Ministry
The One Big Counterintuitive Reason Most Churches Stay Small
In many cases, small might be a strategic advantage.

Why are most churches small?

The common wisdom is that they’re stuck. They’re broken. They must be doing something wrong. If they’d get their act together and fix what’s wrong, they’d start getting bigger.

Certainly, all of that does apply to many ...

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Small Church Ministry
The Small Church's Biggest Need, Biggest Blessing, and Biggest Opportunity
There is a role for churches of all sizes. Big churches meet some needs, small churches meet other needs.

The typical church has about 75 attendees every week.

So if you pastor a small congregation, your church isn’t broken, it’s what’s known as normal. And normal doesn’t need to be fixed.

But for the most part, the books, conferences and classes about pastoring ...

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Small Church Ministry
What About The Small, But NOT Struggling Church?
It’s unfair, inaccurate and unhelpful to make the assumption that a church is struggling just because it’s small.

There are a lot of small churches in the world. Over 90 percent of all churches, by most counts.

Yet perhaps the most common moniker used for small churches isn’t

  • Small and normal
  • Small and commonplace
  • Small and typical
  • Or even small and holding strong

It’s small and struggling.

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Small Church Ministry
The Undeniable, Irresistible Resilience Of The Small Church
To some people, small churches may look frail, weak and out of touch, but no matter what happens, we keep coming back up.

Small churches are not better than big churches. Big churches aren’t better than small ones.

The arguments we have about size are silly, dangerous and missing the point.

Everyone has something unique to contribute.

As for small churches, here are some of the most undeniable, ...

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Small Church Ministry
8 Non-Numerical Ways To Assess The Health Of A Church
Numbers are not the only way to measure church health and effectiveness, especially in smaller churches.

There are healthy churches of all sizes.

In recent years there’s been a renewed emphasis on defining health numerically. But that’s not the only way to measure church health and effectiveness.

In my previous article, Effective Small Church Metrics: Why Average Results ...

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