While some churches are shrinking into oblivion, others are growing into oblivion.
Sometimes numerical growth squishes the very things that appealed to those who fueled the growth. This is often the case with new church plants that launch with fanfare but eventually dissipate. What happens?
A commenter on my earlier article, “I’m Not Being Fed at This Church,” offered some thoughts on this phenomenon. He’s Pastor Bill Wagner in Tacoma, Washington, who wrote:
“Church plants in the early stages are so exciting. A group of dedicated people join together to form a new church and they meet at coffee shops, in living rooms, anywhere they can gather and talk about everything. This attracts others who get caught up in what’s going on and they make new, tight, long lasting friends with those who are beginning this new church venture!
“But along the way, after they finally get ‘enough’ members, they rent a school or a space, set up some chairs and start doing church. Then things change. Now there is a schedule. Now there is an order of worship. Now there is a sermon. Now there are rules and a time and a place for things. It all changes.
“The very thing that was so attractive about this new church plant now has gone away and they become just like every other church. That group of believers got involved because of each other and being able to engage with each other as they learned about God’s word. New people came because they could ask the tough questions and get an answer. Now that we have a space and chairs and a pulpit, they no longer can ask their questions. Now the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit speaking through someone sitting in the congregation is frowned upon because it does not fit into the schedule or the planned service.
“THAT’S why they stopped coming. They had the fire. Our structure and lecture model is what put it out.”
Wagner leads a ministry called Parkland House Ministries, which gathers in small groupings in different locations. He said, “We have ages birth through 60 with mostly 19- through 23-year-olds–all meeting together over a meal, several times a week.”
Intimate, relational settings like Wagner describes may still be underused in America. But they’re fueling significant growth in other parts of the world. For example, by necessity, millions of Christ followers in China gather in homes and other venues every week. The same is happening in Cuba, where the church is also posting steady growth.
The American church can learn from these examples in China and Cuba. (Incidentally, I’m leading an excursion to Cuba with Lifetree Adventures to see how Christ followers are being the church in effective ways. Join me in October.) These ministries in China and Cuba accentuate a sense of belonging, real relationships, conversation, an openness to tough questions, spontaneity, the “priesthood of all believers,” and opportunities to serve together.
So how do these ministries handle numerical growth? They mutate. As their confined spaces fill up, they replicate and form new small groupings at other places or times. Wagner said, “We never grow a house to more than 15. Once we reach that number, we begin a new house.”
This reminds me of earlier church models in places like Cappadocia (now in modern Turkey), which located in dwellings carved out of limestone pinnacles. There were hundreds of them in one area. When one filled it was time to carve out another one.
Pursuing ministry in this dispersed manner requires leaders to demonstrate a certain humility and sharing of control. Wagner said, “I am always looking for a new person of peace to serve as a host for their neighbors and community. I work with them and provide the content.” But he doesn’t seek the limelight. “I am not impressive. I have no ambition to be a superstar,” he said.
He wants to grow–while seizing the advantages of being small.
I’ve seen this pattern repeated over many years in my country and city. In fact on Saturday morning I attended the memorial service of one such very faithful pastor who started in a home, ‘grew’ into a building with structure and sermons etc, and then shrank in terms of spiritual life and numbers to an elderly handful. He was a humble and loyal servant of Jesus, who has entered into his reward. I’ve also seen ‘house churches’ at work in China. Often smaller is bigger in God’s economy. Witness the parables of Jesus…
In the church growth world there are interesting statistics, including one that says when a church moves from a portable campus (home, school, hotel) to a permanent campus (land and building) that they can LOSE up to 30% of their membership. Many of the reasons were cited in this blog, but I think the primary one is the move from ORGANISM to ORGANIZATION.
This isn’t anything new. The beginning of the END for the Israelites is when they moved from a decentralized (judges, tribes) to a centralized (king, nation) form of government. The early church gathered in homes for teaching/worship, but met in the public squares, by river banks and everywhere else to be the “light” and “salt.” When Constantine centralized (legalized) Christianity in the early fourth century, the persecution was over, but the emerging church looked nothing like its first century forefather. The term “catholic” comes from the Greek “kata holis” which means “according to the whole” (or universal) but very soon it “Romanized” or centralized inside Rome (western church). The universal became centralized. Roman Catholic (as a term) is descriptive but also oxymoronic: universally local?
Its no surprise that house churches in heavily persecuted nations (like China) prove a template to emulate. I’ve heard of a similar story of churches (I believe in England) where house churches meet as often as they want during the week (some meet daily like the first church, gathering after work for supper, fellowship and Bible study). No home group or cell is larger than 15-20 before forming a second cell. Once a quarter the “pod” (2-5 cell groups) will meet for a corporate worship experience and every Easter the entire church meets together in a rented facility.
No one knows how big the church is until every Easter. There are also no full-time pastors, but only part-time “pod” pastors who select/train the cell leaders within the vision and values of the church. These “pod pastors” are essentially the elders of the church, who spiritually guide, pastor and protect. Each pod pastor oversees no more than 5 cell groups. The church has no offices, no buildings and no physical assets. All monies collected go to pay the PT pod pastors, cover occasional building rentals, printing/mailings, etc. though most of the gifts are funneled to missions (including sending their own out to do specialized service).
The world has changed. So will the Church. We are in the GREATEST cultural shift since the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation.
Thanks, Rick. You are the yoda for the church. We certainly are in a period of rapid transition.
Excellent article. It’s difficult, of course, in that environment to expect a minister to gain the education that’s often required, but then the question becomes, “what is really necessary?” Denominations are certainly not going to be friendly to this methodology, since their model is built on “bigger is better,” and success is often measured in mega-church terms. I like the model a lot. It also offers a better structure for friendship ministry.
I hope that you (and others) are able to convince the economic stakeholders of the wisdom of this approach.
I keep thinking of the quote from Tertullian that basically says, “We are everywhere;” it’s what the church should be.
Because Christianity is a very spiritual thing, as soon as a mobile group establishes a physical structure, they step away from the spiritual and into the physical where the growing group gets caught up in taking care of physical things. Then when you add the need for money into the mix, it just corrupts everything. They start teaching on “generosity” and get people to give and not to the poor but to fund the structured thing they built.
I recently joined up with a church that has meetings all over the place. During the week, local home groups meet together. Last night our home group leader said this is our church, not the Sunday meetings. They are for everyone to get together for celebration but the home groups are where the business is done.
The original campus has between 1-2,000 meeting on Sundays and now there are three satellite campuses. Ours is about 800. We have two celebrations on Sunday and are going to three shortly.
When they build a new campus, they do it through home groups. The people who attend a specific campus and meet in homes during the week, when there are enough of them in a given location, they then form their own campus and build a Sunday celebration for themselves whilst developing the home group ministry.
As one can imagine leadership is in in demand all the time so there’s not much opportunity to sit on the premises as they encourage everyone to stand on the promises so they can function in their god given anointing
Great article. Reminds me of something else I have read – Malcom Gladwell talks about this same concept, in great depth, in his book The Tipping Point. He used the example of a company that had working units that were no more than 200. If the unit grew larger than that, they split off and formed two units. Likewise, Gladwell used the example of the Amish community which limits the size of a “church” to about 175. When it reaches that point, they split the church into two. Gladwell claimed that it works better because of the human quality of being able to a limited number of true relationships with people.