Church size - moving through the 400 barrier

While the smaller church grows through pastor-initiated groups and ministries, Keller states that the medium-sized church grows through multiplying these groups and by improving their quality and effectiveness. There is no room for the ‘amateurish’ approach of the small church – classes must provide a great learning experience, music must be at a certain quality, preaching must be informative and inspirational.

Once the 400 mark is reached, such a church will grow only if the habits of the 200-sized church are broken and discarded. Often it will also require that a church moves to new space and facilities.

Large church – 400-800 attenders:

With this size of church the primary circle of belonging becomes the small fellowship group – usually between 4 and 15 people in size and more of a miniature church, not focused on a particular task within church life but existing  for Bible study, worship, fellowship and ministry.

In a large church the leadership qualities of tenure, skill and maturity that served smaller churches are also desirable but must be combined with commitment to the church’s distinct vision and mission. Key ministries will grow, both in size and importance, and will become an important reason visitors decide to join that church.

Staff members in a large church, including the senior leader, will find themselves in an increasingly specialised role. Preaching, vision-casting and strategising will be the senior leader’s major tasks and he must relinquish many/most of his administrative tasks or find that he has become a bottle-neck to further progress. Change and decisions now come from ‘top down’ - from staff and key lay leaders.

The means by which a large church grows differs from small and medium sized churches in that the key to its growth is what happens in the worship services – the quality and style of worship and preaching are paramount here, giving a means of growth by a front door approach. This is unlike the small church’s groups and ministries (backdoor approach) and the medium-sized church’s targeting of felt needs of constituent groups such as young families, youth, seniors, seekers - providing specifically designed ministries for them (side-door approach). For the large church the Sunday meetings provide the front door through which new people will come.

Church size - the medium-sized church: 200-450 attenders

At this point of growth Keller states that the interplay between three vital parameters of church life comes into focus more clearly. The three are team, facilities and finance – place them as the three sides of a triangle to see how they affect the stability of the church; if one of them is weak it will affect the life and growth of the church. So much so that if a church has stopped growing it is usually one of these areas – or a combination of them – that needs to be looked at carefully.

In a church at this stage of growth, the primary circle of belonging for the individual ceases to be the entire membership of the church and becomes a specific ministry group within it. Men’s and women’s ministries, a worship group, an outreach team, the social action group, youth work, children’s ministry – all these are possible circles of belonging that make church life ‘living’. Each of these groups is likely to be the size of a house church, namely 10 to 40 people.

In the medium-sized church, leadership functions differently – the structure becomes increasingly complex and the leaders must represent the different areas of church life such as young families, older people etc. There is now too much work to be handled by one committee or board and work is devolved to influential leadership teams that have the power to make important decisions. Leaders are now chosen not for their length of service and strength of personality but for their skills and gifts in specialised tasks and roles. Lay leaders cease to have the power to merely rubber stamp proposals or withhold permission and are required to be active in ministry or lose their role.

The senior leader now becomes less of a practitioner and becomes a trainer and organiser of others. He must be able to train, support, supervise and organise - this requires significant administrative skills. Change is generally driven by forward looking groups – often the mission, ministry or evangelism team.

Church size - more about moving through the 200 barrier

Tim Keller identifies further issues for a church moving through the 200 barrier:

- A willingness to let power shift away from lay leaders to staffers. The old approach to decision-making requiring total consensus from everyone is now too unwieldy and up to this point any change that brings strong opposition and the possibility of anyone leaving the church is avoided. Growth toward the 200 barrier brings the point where someone is going to experience discomfort at any change and in order to facilitate necessary changes (necessary for growth!) much decision-making has to move to leaders and staff. Increasingly staff will know more about the members than lay leaders and newcomers will take their cues from the pastor and the staff. Decisions will need to be made by those individuals on the ground rather than the traditional committee.

- A willingness to be more formal and deliberate in assimilation and communication. Where previously this has taken place ‘naturally’, without planning, it now has to become more deliberate and thought out – word of mouth is no longer sufficient. If newcomers are to find their place in the church a more intentional and organised approach is required from the church.

- An ability and willingness of both pastor and people to allow the pastor to do less pastoring and more leading. More vision-casting, strategising and administrative ability is required at this level. Recruiting and supervising volunteers and programmes become more time-consuming while planning, delegating, supervising and organising become more important. At the same time the pastor becomes increasingly less available to the membership - this development needs to be recognised and accepted by both pastor and people.

Church size - moving through the 200 barrier

Approaching the 200 barrier, a church that truly wants to make room for more people is likely to have to engage seriously with the following:

- Multiplication options. There has to be a willingness to accept that it is no longer possible for everyone to have a face-to-face relationship with everyone else. This requires a major change in attitude within the church or newcomers will pick up that established members feel that the church is becoming too big and impersonal. Often the way to deal with this is to provide multiplication options such as an additional Sunday meeting and/or an active small group ministry. Experience generally shows that such moves provide a growth spurt – as Keller records, ‘when you give more options, people opt!’

- A willingness to meet the cost of an additional primary ministry staffer. It should be a given that one full-time minister cannot personally shepherd more than 150-200 people. Specialists, such as youth workers, administrators and musicians can help with the span of pastoral care – the actual profile of this will vary with the local culture. Often a middle class environment will require such specialists earlier on in the process. The time will come when it will be necessary to employ a second full-time staff worker – such an appointment should be made for growth – and in essence that person must be able to aid growth and generate the giving to cover his/her salary. For this reason the second staffer is often an evangelist, unless one of the primary gifts of the senior leader is evangelism, in which case a pastoral gift would complement the situation and work on internal growth. At this stage the church can be big enough to give the senior leader a feeling of increasing burn-out but has not yet got to the point where it can/will pay for that second worker.

Church size - starting small

Keller examines churches of different sizes and from his research gives the following observations. He talks of ‘house churches’ with up to 40 attenders growing in an organic way attracting new people by their warmth, relationships and people. They have no recognised programme of outreach and find that newcomers, once they have been invited and have come along, tend to continue to attend because they are befriended.

The small church, which has between 40 and 200 members, continues to build on the importance of relationships between the members of the congregation but the relationship with the pastor tends to be the primary attraction for new people. With the backing of one key informal leader Keller maintains that the pastor can start and run two or three ministries, groups or activities which will in all likelihood bring lots of new people into the church

At this point, moving through the so-called ‘200 barrier’ becomes the issue. Keller actually talks about ‘making room’ for more than 200 people and I am sure he is not just talking about having the space - or enough chairs. A significant change in thinking and a commitment to many of the following changes is required.

Church size - why it matters

In considering the issue of church size there is one person whose work I would turn to every time. Dr Timothy Keller, the founder and pastor of New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan has written very helpfully on this topic and I make no apology for being heavily dependent on his work for what follows. 

 You can find his complete article ‘Leadership and Church Size Dynamics – How strategy changes with growth’ on the Redeemer website: 

http://redeemercitytocity.com/resources/library.jsp?Library_item_param=477

What follows are highlights from the article with my own personal slant on some of the points.

Keller stresses that how a church operates and functions will be heavily impacted by its size and that failure to realise the significance of church size provides the common reasons for mistakes by pastors and leaders in managing their church. He talks of a ‘size culture’ which will majorly influence the areas of decision-making, the flow of relationships, how effectiveness is evaluated and even what ministers, staff team and volunteer leaders actually do.

Major differences between churches are often seen in denominational or theological terms - so we can underestimate how size impacts the way an individual church operates. In Keller’s view, a staff team member who moves from a church of 400 to one of 2000 is making a massive change and one greater than a move between denominations. He tells us that it is not just a matter of a large church being a bigger version of a small church but it has a massive impact on the scale and scope of leadership skills required to cover the difference in the means and style of communication, ways of forming community and the decision-making processes.

Keep building your marriage - and have FUN!

One of the observations Deb & I have made over our years in ministry has been that as ministry responsibilities have increased our marriage has had to grow to in parallel to meet the new challenges. This recent series has summarised some of the lessons we have learnt over time.

My encouragement to all of us would be – continue to invest in your marriage and to read widely together on the subject. We have recently read Mark and Grace Driscoll’s Real Marriage and I am planning to read Tim and Kathy Keller’s book The Meaning of Marriage over the summer. Deb and I would say that at the very least a weekly date night is important and should be protected. Also, ensure there are no ‘no go’ subjects between you, and further, that you regularly ask each other these questions:

-      Am I meeting your emotional needs?

-      Am I meeting your sexual needs?

We would recommend the book The Five Sex Needs of Men and Women and the companion book The Five Love Needs of Men and Women by Dr Gary and Barbara Rosberg - both are worth reading, as are two books we have previously recommended, Men Only and Women Only by Geoff and Shaunti Feldhahn.

As a leader you are an example and a model to your church. It would be true to say that the strength of the marriages within the church leadership will be reflected in the community you lead. By investing in and prioritising a good marriage for yourself you are building a foundation for the young couples who are in your church. It’s a vital investment! I would also encourage you to preach annually on the subject of marriage – here at King’s we also run the excellent HTB Marriage Course once a year.

All this can sound heavy and weighty – I would also say that you need to prioritise having FUN together! Marriage is a gift from God, to be enjoyed and that enjoyment has got to include some fun! Deb and I celebrate our 23^rd wedding anniversary this week. The longer I am married to Deb, the more I realise God has been amazingly good to me. I am incredibly fortunate to be married to such a beautiful, intelligent and godly girl and to get to spend the rest of our lives together!