As told to Jessica Hanewinckel, the concept of “de-sizing” the church questions our modern obsession with numerical growth. While prioritizing large congregations may seem traditional, it is actually a relatively new phenomenon in ecclesiastical history.
Where did our obsession with “bigness” come from? Many pastors today operate within a culture so focused on bigness that they don’t even recognize the environment they are swimming in. The Church Growth Movement has been influential for about 40 years, and we finally have enough distance to step back and make a proper assessment of its long-term impact.
I am absolutely in favor of church growth. I believe the church will expand because Jesus promised to build it, and he knows what he is doing. However, we must distinguish between healthy expansion and a fixation on individual congregation size. If we are simply creating larger singular churches, that is not growth; it is Christian consolidation. Legitimate church growth is happening globally in places like South America, Africa, and parts of Asia, where Christians are increasing as a percentage of the total population.
There is really no right church size. We shouldn’t be using size as the primary determiner of whether a church is healthy. When we say a church is doing well, we assume that means the numbers are up. Not only is that not the only determiner of health, it’s not the best determiner.
We are in the middle of what could conservatively be called an epidemic of burnout among pastors. I’m convinced that our obsession with bigness is the main but least-understood contributing factor to pastoral failure, to burnout, to frustration, to feelings of inferiority, to resignations, and to all other forms of dysfunction and ill health. If it is not the primary contributing factor, it’s the least-acknowledged one.
If we don’t recognize how bigness has contributed to our dysfunction, then we can’t deal with it properly. If I’m constantly being told that my church is failing if it’s not getting bigger, then that weighs upon hearts and shoulders to a degree that we don’t fully understand. But if we can let pastors know that the size of their church is not something for them to feel burdened by, but simply a tool for them to work with, then that is one less burden.
We’ve got this picture that somehow bigger fixes things. But bigger doesn’t fix anything. In fact, bigger fixes nothing. If you take a small, unhealthy church and all you do is make it bigger, now you’ve got a big, unhealthy church. Now, if you make that small, unhealthy church healthy, even if it doesn’t get bigger, healthy is better.
Small is not a problem to fix—it is the normal state for most churches in the world. You can lose with bigger. You can’t lose with healthier. And healthier doesn’t inevitably lead to bigger. If we can lay that myth aside, then we can move forward with healthier pastors, churches, communities, and better ways to reach them.
