Small Church BIG Deal

How to rethink size, success and significance in ministry

Chris Vitarelli

• Publisher: Author Academy Elite
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781647460143
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Iglesia cristiana

The vast majority of church congregations are small. In fact, 85% of churches never break the 200 attendee mark.

And yet, instead of being seen as the norm and as an incredible way to do ministry, a bigger-is-better mentality reigns in America with mega churches driving the growth culture.

Small Church BIG Deal aims to change the way pastors think about their church. It doesn't create a big versus small scenario but simply challenges pastors to see the church as God sees it:

Not according to size but according to how people are prepared for ministry; how to remain faithful and obedient to the calling regardless of church size.

Small Church BIG Deal encourages pastors to rethink size, success and significance in ministry according to different metrics. It calls for a return to looking at ministry not as a marketing or consumer challenge but as a spiritual one. Every church must be viewed as unique, important and necessary in their location. Small Church BIG Deal argues for contentment, obedience and faithfulness as the benchmarks of fruitful ministry.

Part 1
Size Matters

Chapter 1
Jeremiah’s Burden

The prophet Jeremiah is my hero. As you read his words, your heart breaks not only for the people chosen to hear his message but also for the messenger. God told Jeremiah on several occasions that he would deliver a message to which no one would listen. But Jeremiah was faithful. You would have to be faithful to stand before kings and crowds, knowing your message would fall on deaf ears. How many of us pastors would go to church and preach if we knew everyone there was going to carry on other conversations, play with their phones, and generally ignore everything we said? My apologies if I described your church, but the answer is probably a few of us. We show up each Sunday with the hope and belief that God will use our preparation and study to open the door for the Holy Spirit to work.

I recently talked with a pastor whose church has been on life support for some time and is about to die. For 22 years, this pastor has served the people of the church, and he has slowly watched as people melted away, were absorbed by other congregations, or bickered their way into non-attendance. The greatest cause of his church’s death was division among its people. I asked him how he was handling his coming retirement and the eventual dissolution of his church. His answer was a mixture of sadness and hope.

He said, “It’s been hard to watch. I didn’t expect this church to do what it did. Every ministry I’d been a part of before this one had grown. I’ve tried to leave four times, but each time, God wouldn’t let me. I choose to remember the good things. People have gotten saved and baptized, and people grew in their faith. I used to think that if I had to do it over, I would choose not to, but not anymore. I realized God had me here for a reason. And He’s always been faithful.”

He wasn’t crying when he said this, but I wanted to cry for him. I identify with that desire to be done with ministry. I have felt that pull to throw in the towel, to let God know that if there is anything else He’d rather I do or any place He’d rather put me, then He should let me know. If it’s not me throwing in the towel, then someone else should do it. I know what it’s like.

It reminds me of the classic scene in Rocky IV when Apollo Creed is getting his block knocked off, and his trainer is screaming at Rocky to throw in the towel. We want somebody to stop the fight. We’re getting beaten badly, and we’re up against the ropes. When God gives us a difficult task, we ask to be let off the hook. It’s natural to say, “God, if there’s anything else you want me to do, I’m available. I’m just not sure about the task you have for me right now.” Can you imagine asking God four times to release you from your current call – a ship you know is sinking – only to be told, “No. Hang in there. I’m with you?” Everything in my being cries out, God, I don’t want to be that guy.

But here’s the reality: Someone has to be that guy. Who will minister to the hardened hearts? This pastor friend of mine has done it faithfully for 22 years.

We hear that and think, surely a church like that can be turned around. I agree. It can be. But some churches (the people comprising the church) do not want to be turned around. And yet we are called to minister.

Who will proclaim truth like Jeremiah, even when doing so garners nothing but abuse? It’s not a popular job. Jeremiah certainly didn’t have an entourage or a hype man to let people know he was about to speak or to try to make him look good. He did what he was told with obedience and faithfulness.

What’s even more incredible is that Jeremiah did what he was asked to do even after being warned that he would not succeed. Jeremiah 7:27-28 says, “So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the LORD their God and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips.’”

“They will not listen to you.” Imagine launching out into ministry with that as your final send-off. Yet, that’s exactly the direction Jeremiah received. He succeeded in obeying the word of God, but in the eyes of his fellow so-called prophets, he was a complete and utter failure. Later in Chapter 20, Jeremiah describes the conflict he faces when knowing he must speak God’s words, while at the same time facing the mockery and shame of being a lonely voice:

“For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’ For the word of the LORD has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot . . . Why did I come out from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame? (Jeremiah 20: 8-9; 18)

On the one hand, he faces shame and abuse for speaking truth, but on the other, if he tries to hold it in, it’s like a fire is burning inside him, and he cannot contain it. The burden is so great that he wishes he had never been born (see Jeremiah 15:10ff). It is no secret that when a person is called to ministry, they receive a kind of fire inside that burns with intensity. It must be shared. Ask a person, who felt called to ministry but denied the call, how they feel now. I’ve rarely met someone who was happy they walked away. Jeremiah embodies this type of call. Ministry, whether it is in an existing church or a church plant, is intense and places a tremendous burden on the minister. How we determine whether we are successful or not plays a significant role in our longevity, productivity, and faithfulness in ministry. Read how Jeremiah expressed his feelings of frustration with his ministry in Jeremiah 17:14-18:

“Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise. Behold, they say to me, ‘Where is the word of the LORD? Let it come!’ I have not run away from being your shepherd, nor have I desired the day of sickness. You know what came out of my lips; it was before your face. Be not a terror to me; you are my refuge in the day of disaster. Let those be put to shame who persecute me, but let me not be put to shame; let them be dismayed, but let me not be dismayed; bring upon them the day of disaster; destroy them with double destruction!” (emphasis added)

Jeremiah acknowledges his job is tough. He knows his message is unpopular. Every time he opens his mouth, someone is there to question it, to accuse him, to shout him down. In verse 16, he lets God know, “I haven’t run from my call.” What this tells me is that he was thinking about it. Jeremiah contemplated running from his call.

I can imagine this conversation with God late one night:

Jeremiah: “God, this isn’t working. I’m telling them word-for-word what you’re telling me to say. I’m doing everything right. Why am I not successful?”

God: “But you, dress yourself for work; arise, and say to them everything that I command you. Do not be dismayed by them, lest I dismay you before them. And I, behold, I make you this day a fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze walls, against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, declares the LORD, to deliver you.” (Jeremiah 1:17-19, emphasis added)

Jeremiah’s success was not in how many people he got to listen to his message; it was in delivering the message no matter who was listening. In a word, success meant faithfulness.

I don’t think I’m being dramatic when I suggest that some of us feel like Jeremiah. We stand and preach week after week and wonder if anyone is listening. We wonder if people’s hearts are being changed and if their passions and desires are being turned toward God. We dream of preaching to crowds but are speaking to only a handful, and we wonder if any of it is making a difference.

Jeremiah was taken to Egypt where he died side-by-side with the same folks who wouldn’t listen to him? What must Jeremiah have thought at the very end? “Ok, God. I’ve been faithful for 40 years of ministry, and this is how it ends? With an anonymous, lonely death in a foreign country with a bunch of obstinate fools? What a waste of time!”

Something tells me that’s not what Jeremiah was thinking. Without a doubt, he had his moments of frustration about how his ministry had gone, but I believe that even in the end he was obedient and faithful to his call.

Jeremiah’s message burned within him, and he obediently and faithfully spoke it. We will return to these two ideas—obedience and faithfulness—but first, let’s examine the struggle we face.

 

Connection Questions:

1. What ministry struggles tempt you to give up?
2. How does Jeremiah’s ministry encourage you?
3. Jeremiah’s ministry was significant in God’s eyes, but there were few who responded or followed. What about Jeremiah’s ministry honored God above men?

Chapter 2
The Church – Big vs. Small

A strange thing is happening in the American Church. Megachurches seem to be everywhere. Though there are many definitions of what constitutes a “megachurch,” I view any church with a weekly attendance of 1,000 or more as “mega.” Churches of this size are operating on a completely different scale. In many communities, including my own, as people move into town from other places and begin looking for a church, they default to attending the largest and most well-known churches. This is natural since a church of over 1,000 people in a town has the exponential ability to make itself known and have a high profile in the community. It is also natural considering that many people who are new to a community want to attend a place where they can be anonymous. They want to slip in the back as the service begins and slip back out afterward. This anonymous, in-and-out mentality is a great low-commitment entry strategy that the megachurch accommodates well. It is intimidating to walk into a church of 40 to 80 people, each of whom knows immediately that you are new. But what is amazing to me is that I increasingly hear from Christians that a smaller church is better for them than a megachurch.

The reasons for this vary, but the most common reason I hear is that at megachurches it’s more difficult to get to know people. They often don’t feel known by others. Large churches work hard to combat this feeling of anonymity by getting people to join small groups and connecting people by affinity or neighborhood. This can be successful to some degree, but as one church-goer recently said to me, “there is nothing like sitting in a congregation listening to the pastor, knowing that he knows you and you know him.” That may seem like a small thing. But there is a big difference between preaching to a sea of faces and preaching to individual sheep that you know and love. Increasingly, I am hearing people speak of a desire for this kind of relationship with their pastor and their church.

State of the American Church and its Pastors

There are over 300,000 Protestant churches in America. The Barna Group puts the average Protestant church size in America at 89 adults. Only 2% of churches have over 1000 adults attending. According to Carl George and Warren Bird, fully 85% of all Protestant churches in North America never break the 200-attendance mark. In case you didn’t catch that, here it is again. 85% of all Protestant churches in North America never break 200. If you are in a church of less than 200, let that sink in. I don’t emphasize that to discourage you. I want you to understand an important dynamic of church growth and size. If 85% of churches never break 200, then why do we assume that churches with less than 200 people are not achieving their potential or are not vibrant or healthy?

Even with 85% of churches existing with less than 200 people, almost all of our efforts to help churches are directed at making them grow. Think of all the headlines and news reports on church growth. Eight guaranteed steps to church growth. The three things that are keeping your church from growing. Five ways to break the 200 barrier.

This obsession with growth is something close to an addiction. Addiction is defined as a compulsive dependence on a substance, thing, or activity. In the case of the church, we’re addicted to church growth books, conferences, and strategies. We’re addicted to success. In North America we have been looking for what is the most effective strategy rather than the big-picture issues of church ministry. In the scariest phases of this addiction, we would rather be successful than faithful. It is ministry pragmatism at its worst. We put success above faithfulness primarily because we don’t believe that we can be both. Success and faithfulness should not be mutually exclusive. A major theme in this book is that faithfulness is success.

At the same time, I don’t want to give the impression that I am against growth. I want Christ’s church to grow as people are drawn by God’s Spirit to believe and embrace the Gospel. I simply can’t buy into the church marketing industrial complex that has overtaken 21st-century North American churches.

Sadly, the church in North America is addicted to growth strategies, and we are exporting this addiction to churches around the world. We have been taught to expect that every church should be growing exponentially. We have been taught that with the right combination of tools, strategies, and personalities we can unleash God’s numerical blessing on our church. We are Christ’s Body. If we applied church growth methodology to human bodies like we apply it to Christ’s Body, we would have similar results. For example, expecting every church to be large and robust in every way is like expecting each individual in a random group of 100 people to be able to follow a workout regimen for the next year, and in the end to be hulking bodybuilders. That’s not realistic because not everyone’s body is designed to be muscle-bound and ripped. So why do we expect every church to be large? Often, large churches, the 2%, are trying to help the little guys. I can appreciate the heart behind this desire to share resources and ministry tools that large churches have developed. Many of these tools are helpful and can fill a gap for a small church that lacks the resources in a certain ministry area. However, some problems arise from this resource sharing.

One problem is that these ideas must be contextualized. Recently, I was looking for a new kids curriculum and found some free resources on the website of a megachurch. I was excited until I accessed the curriculum and realiz...

Table of contents

• Praise for Small Church BIG Deal: How to Rethink Size, Success and Significance in Ministry
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Author’s note
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction A Church Planting Story
• Part 1 Size Matters
• Chapter 1 Jeremiah’s Burden
• Chapter 2 The Church – Big vs. Small
• Chapter 3 Harsh Judgment – What we really think about small churches
• Part 2 Your greatest enemies
• Chapter 4 The Pastor’s Heart . . . Contentment
• Chapter 5 The Pastor’s Leadership . . . Expectations
• Chapter 6 The Pastor’s Ego . . . Magic formulas
• Chapter 7 The Pastor’s Identity . . . Self-focus
• Part 3 Changing your mind
• Chapter 8 Faithfulness and Obedience . . . The real measures of success
• Chapter 9 What you do matters . . . Postcards from eternity
• Part 4 Changing your approach - Why the small church is a BIG deal
• Chapter 10 Proximity
• Chapter 11 Spiritual Growth
• Chapter 12 Connection
• Chapter 13 Uniqueness
• Chapter 14 Lead like it counts
• About the Author
• Small Church BIG Deal Conferences and One-Day Regional Events!
• FOR FURTHER ENCOURAGEMENT
• ALSO BY CHRIS VITARELLI
• Appendices Appendix 1: Recommended Reading
• Appendix 2: Next Steps
• Appendix 3: End Notes