WHERE SIZE MAKES A DIFFERENCE

When you spend over a week face-to-face with pastors of small churches, some patterns begin to emerge; certain topics come up again and again. As these pastors reflected on their ministries, they all agreed that small churches have different needs than big churches. Here are the most common points of difference.

Money

No one would ever accuse a small-church pastor of being in it for the money. Churches of less than a hundred will always require some kind of financial help.

“Money magazine reported a few years ago that two hundred members were needed to sustain a church,” said George Vanderpoel of Garden City, New York. “I’d say that’s probably correct. Anything less than that and you’ve got to look for a financial bargain-either in facilities or pastor’s salary-or else you need outside income.”

Some churches are subsidized by their denomination, others earn additional income by renting their building to outside groups, while yet others hold regular fund-raising projects such as flea markets, sandwich sales, and car washes.

The most common practice, however, is the pastor finding an outside source of income. Ten of the twelve pastors we interviewed had outside revenue. Two received aid from the denomination, one was getting a military pension, one had a private counseling practice, another had an itinerant music ministry, three served multiple parishes, and two worked full-time in secular work.

The multiple parish approach has both advantages and disadvantages. Paul Dufford, who serves a yoked United Methodist charge in Warrensburg and Bolton Landing, New York, said with a smile, “I’m glad I have two congregations. If one’s going well, and the other one isn’t, I can always say the failure obviously isn’t my fault. But you can’t say that if you’ve got only one church and it’s going badly.”

On the other hand, multiple parishes can sometimes spark jealousy between the different congregations. Martin and Martha Nale, copastors of three Lutheran congregations on the southern edge of the Catskills, decided not to live in the large parsonage next to one of their churches largely for that reason.

“Our predecessors had to endure mudslinging between the congregations because of where they were spending their time,” said Martha.

As a result, the Nales chose a slightly musty ground-floor apartment in a two-story frame home next door to a Dodge dealership in Liberty, New York, half an hour from their nearest church but approximately midway between the three communities they serve. Even though it means more driving, the decision has kept the peace.

The “tentmaking” approach to small-church ministry is probably the most common. The Southern Baptist Convention reported in 1980 that 28 percent of its pastors were bivocational, supporting themselves with outside work. Having a full-time job besides pastoring obviously cuts down on the amount of time a pastor can invest in church work. But the outside job enhances ministry in more than financial ways.

“If you’re nothing but a pastor, your people have no way to evaluate you as a worker,” said Jim Bruinsma, who in addition to serving First Baptist Church of Mexico, New York, sells lumber and supplies for Deaton’s Building and Home Center.

“If people see you only on Sunday, they can judge your sermon, but they can’t tell much about your character. They don’t know if you’re a hard worker, if you show up on time, if you have integrity, or if you’re ethical even when it costs you money. With an outside job, you model the faith in daily situations. They see if you’re responsible; they have a measure by which to judge. Otherwise, about the only common living experience a pastor has with his people is raising a family.”

Length of Stay

In large city churches, where people are used to coming and going, a pastor can be accepted quickly and make a significant impact within a few months. In the small church, however, the process of acceptance happens more slowly; yet ironically, pastoral turnover in small churches is high, as they’re seen as steppingstones to larger congregations.

In fact, some congregations are so used to pastors moving on after a few years that they think something is wrong when they stay.

“When you’re young, in my case twenty-nine,” said Martin Nale, “the older people see you as almost their adopted child.” Even though Martin and Martha enjoy working as copastors, a situation not easy to find just anywhere, people in their congregations expect them to leave the nest. “The older ladies keep saying things like, ‘Of course, you’ll have to better yourselves,’ even though we have no plans to leave,” said Martin. People were surprised-and pleased-when the Nales committed themselves to a second two-year term in the three Lutheran congregations.

The most effective ministry doesn’t happen until a pastor has been around long enough to know failure and success, joy and grief, forgiveness and acceptance.

“I’ve been here five years, and that’s the longest of any of the five pastors in town,” said Bill Wick of Bradford (Vermont) Evangelical Free Church. “But it takes at least that long before people begin to feel that you’re part of them, that you can be trusted.

“In a small church, because of the pastor’s central role, it’s easy to feel directly responsible for the church’s success (which makes you feel you want to move on to something better) or for its failure (which makes you want to leave). But I’ve learned your most effective ministry is staying and correcting the mistakes you make. I think a person’s first pastorate should be his longest.”

Pastoral Style

Larger churches often pride themselves on their full-bodied program-something for everyone. They tend to see their pastors as professionals, trained specialists who smoothly carry out assigned responsibilities.

In a small church, professionalism can actually be a hindrance. Small churches prefer their pastors personal rather than professional. A seminarian who looks forward to practicing his specialty-Christian education, counseling, biblical studies-may chafe when forced to be a general practitioner. The small church cannot afford a specialist, indeed usually doesn’t want one. Professional skills get in the way of the natural relationships small churches demand.

Members of small churches have a seemingly perverse habit of reemphasizing the humanity of their pastor, retelling the story of his crucial strikeout in the church softball game or the time he forgot the names at the wedding. Apparently those stories aren’t meant to demean but to demonstrate the pastor is one of them.

“My most important role is being a human being,” said David Wood of the United Church of Lincoln, Vermont. “They don’t want me to be too well organized. They want a visit-er, not an organizer.”

Pastors in large churches sometimes worry about self-disclosure-how to let people know who they are-so they use personal illustrations in sermons or try to share their struggles in prayer meetings. In a small church, self-disclosure isn’t a problem. If anything, the problem is privacy.

The ministry in a small church is not so much telling people what the Bible says as it is showing them. There seem to be more opportunities for modeling the Christian life in the small church, if only because people take a closer look.

It takes different skills to serve a small church. The professional skills aren’t as quickly reinforced. Expectations aren’t so great for sermons, programming, or administrative detail, but the pastor is required to be approachable and available.

As Bill Wick reflected, “I could be a better preacher in a large church, but I can be a better pastor in a small one.”

-Marshall Shelley