The Recycled Church
by xcode
Read Time: 7-8 minutes
Location: Illinois
“Hello, my name is Murphy”. A somewhat normal looking face stares and greets me. I am not quite sure what to do and instinct takes over and I quickly respond with “hey”. I feel like I must have seen this face before, I mean, I have been coming to “Cool Church” for 15 years now. My head is spinning attempting to remember if we met at a cell group, youth event, singles bowling night, “Explode” summer conference or maybe he is that guy in the parking lot who always wears that US Navy hat. You know, the one’s you get with the branches on the lid. I think you can only find them at military exhibits, or at least that is where my grampa gets his.
“Hey”, is all I say to Murphy. He replies, “Really cool to meet you, what is your name again”? I reply with a little less of a glaze on my face, “my name is Earl, have we met somewhere before?” Murphy laughs a little bit and takes his hat off. “Yah man, I used to attend that cell group but had to stop because it was too far and work has been killin me.” “Ooooooooooooo, yes, yes, yes,” I respond but am drawing a blank. What do I say now? Am I supposed to ask about his job or is that too hot of a subject? Alright, I’ll resort to the safe move of talking about today’s weather. “Murrrrrrrphy, that’s right. Hey how about this crazy summer weather?” Murphy replies with “Ya, summer sun is weak this year but am pretty excited to celebrate my 10th year of coming to ‘Cool Church’”. SCREEEEEEEEECH!! My mind has frozen…
I am absolutely shocked to think Murphy has been coming to “Cool Church” for 10 years and I don’t recall anything about him. I can’t even remember where I saw him. Not only that, I struggle to hold a conversation with this member simply because I can’t recall where we met. I wonder how many other Murphy’s there are at “Cool Church”. We have almost 10,000 members and I think I am meeting less and less new people. Is something wrong with me or is this normal?
I began a thought march recently composed of the size of today’s churches. Should today’s churches strive to be the largest in the world? Is our goal to acquire as many human beings under one roof to worship God? Are we building chruches so large we cannot remember who comes in or where someone goes? What was the early church structure?
We can see from this model the many changes of the early church and its offshoots. I do not want to focus too much time on this diagram but find it an important artifact of history which will magnify our current church growth strategy.
Many of you reading derive from a mega church. If you are not currently at a mega church then you most likely are an offshoot or striving toward the monster mega church model. If you claim neither then we can look a bit deeper into church statistics and you can choose for yourself which category you fit into. Remember, our goal in this is not to discredit mega churches or cafe churches but to quantify the most effective way of making disciples.
You may have heard people say that the “average” sized church in the U.S. or Canada is about 75 people. You also may have heard someone say that the “average” sized church in North America is about 185 people. Who is right? It all depends how you define “average”.
Statisticians use three terms when describing populations. “Mean”, “Median”, and a third term that won’t really enter our discussion today called “Mode”.
I have borrowed, and expanded upon, an analogy from the The National Congregations Study that was released last month, to help us understand the differences in these terms and why they are important to our understanding of churches in North America. What you will read here is U.S. data, but the numbers are very similar for the Canadian situation as well.
Imagine you are looking down a very, very long street, and all the churches of U.S. are lined up along the left side of the street from smallest to largest. In behind each church are all their Sunday morning attendees.
If you counted the grand total of everyone standing behind each church and then divided this number by the total number of churches that you see on this very long street, you would come up with a “mean” or “average” size of 184. “Mean” is usually what we mean of when we think of “average”. But this number of 184 is a very misleading number.
Lets say you start walking down the street, passing the churches with 5 people on a Sunday morning, 10 people, 15 people, 20 people. You continue walking until you have passed half of all the churches in America. Half of the churches in the U.S. are now behind you, half are still in front. The “average” church that you are standing in front of is called the “median” church. You look to see how many people are lined up behind it, and you see 75 people. That is right, half the churches in the United States have less than 75 people.
Although we have many large churches in North America, we continue to balance the load with small churches. So, what does this all mean?
Let’s take a look at what was happening in Jerusalem immediately following Peter’s sermon to the masses. This commentary courtesy of Bible Gateway shows us an interesting outlook of the early church. Some thoughts which you may agree with and other which you may find laborious.
The community lived out its commitment to the apostles’ teaching by gathering each day in the temple courts to hear instruction. They probably met in Solomon’s colonnade, at the eastern end of the court of the Gentiles (5:12; compare 5:20-21, 42, and Jesus’ practice–Lk 20:1; 21:37). In the temple they also fulfilled their commitment to prayer as they engaged in corporate worship.
Daily the community broke bread together in homes–sharing a meal, beginning it with the bread and ending it with the cup of the Lord’s Supper (Lk 22:19-20; 24:35; Acts 20:7, 11). With constant intimacy, exultant joy and transparency of relationship they enjoyed the graces of Messiah’s salvation in a true anticipation of his banquet in the kingdom (Lk 22:30; compare Acts 16:34). It was a gracious witness to the people (laos), “Israel as the elect nation to whom the message of salvation is initially directed” (Longenecker 1981:291).
Today growing churches manifest the same “metachurch” pattern: celebration, joining in large gatherings for worship and instruction, and cell group, meeting in home groups for fellowship and nurture.Impact: Church Growth (2:47)
Every day the Lord Jesus by his Spirit saved some, incorporating them into their number. God’s plan is for churches to grow. The challenge for us is, “Will we meet the Scriptural conditions for growth: a dedication to be a learning, caring, fellowshipping, worshipping church?” Will we meet the one essential condition? “As empowering follows petition, so evangelism and Christian unity or community follow Pentecost. The empowering, moreover, is repeatable. So pray!” (Talbert 1984:17).
If you are a leader of a church you are finding a way to tell yourself your church model structure is right and who does this writer think he is to question church growth strategies. What I am questioning is not how large you can grow your church but how many people can you bring through those big pearly gates?
Does your church feel recycled with visitors and church hoppers? Are you focusing too much on people who are not in the building instead of giving your all to lead your sheep into heaven? Are we saving the one or are we dropping the one to try and save thousands?
Good talk :: see you out there
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7 Comments
Crystal
07.18.2009
If you look at the Catholic church as the biggest of “Mega” churches. Nobody expects the Pope to know the names of everyone of the millions of Catholics in the world. Yet the members of St. Marks in Ann Arbor Michigan might expect there Priest to know all there names. People are not likely to leave the Catholic church because the Pope didn’t send them a birthday card. But they could be hurt if the Priest who they have been with for 20 years suddenly didn’t have time to visit them in the hospital.
I might not expect the pastor of a 10,000 member church to ever meet me, however I would think that some leader in that church would take a personal interest in me. Maybe the issue is to create a leadership structure that allows for growth without the lose of personal care.
Also consider the role of a Missionary versus the role of the Pastor. One is a recruiter and one is a coach. As things get bigger it really seems to come down to a situation of delegation.
Carrie
07.19.2009
From a perspective of personal experience, I have been members of only 2 churches in my entire 14 years as a Christian: the first is what you would call a mega church and the other is my current church, which I would call medium-sized, not too small and not too large. I only spent approximately a year at the first and the rest of my time at my current church. The first church is the church where I was introduced to the Lord.
From what I’ve come to learn and experience, is that the first “mega” church has its purpose, and actually it is a purpose of evangelism. Many, many people came to the Lord there, including myself, but I never saw the same person twice as it was so large and I was ready to get into the “meat” of my relationship with God once I was introduced to Him, hence the purpose of the second, my current, church. So God moved me to my current church, which focuses on preparing us as leaders to then go out and influence others.
The way I see it is that each of these churches, size not considered, have an assignment, a specific message/purpose. This does not affect the fact that all churches should be focused on leading others to Christ. What I see among those called to evangelism, including myself, is that anyone who has this call will, of course, be focused on influencing people for Jesus and almost all they preach, teach or talk about will be bringing people to Christ, simply because this is the passion/call God has placed on their heart. The challenge with that is to be balanced, which I admittedly struggle with as well.
My pastor’s (don’t know if you would differentiate that from preacher) call is to help those who are already Christian grow in their walk and relationship with the Lord. That is why I go to church – not because I need saving, but because I need prayer, deliverance, training, fellowship, teaching, mentoring, taught how to be a leader, worship, and so on. God speaks to me almost every time I go to church. Sometimes it was if the Pastor was speaking directly to me! And it happens frequently to others there as well. I know I would not get this without the local church, ran properly of course.
I’ve often thought about how a person needs more attention once they are Christian than when they weren’t. As a Christian, you encounter many things you did not as an unbeliever and that’s why God has people in place for that as well. Bringing people to Christ is only one side of the equation. Churches need to be well-rounded and not lopsided in focus because that opens up a whole other door of trouble and woes.
I work with the youth at our church and God has made it clear He has called me to evangelism and my church often focuses on influencing our community, city, state and even the nations but we don’t forget to tend to the needs of the flock already there. Thank God or many of us would be a wreck!
I do understand the concern over churches whose major goal is to have as many seats filled as possible rather than doing whatever it is God assigned them to do (in addition to bringing people to Christ). But, as for spiritual gifts, there are Pastors and shepherds. Pastors deal more with the church as a whole and will not have as many and as deep one-on-one relationships with the congregation as will a shepherd (similarly as to what is mentioned in the comment by Crystal).
Jesus is the head of the church. If church wasn’t necessary, there would not be a need for a head. It’s Jesus’ job to judge, correct and admonish the churches, as we see Him doing in Revelations and, yes, He will remove them if necessary, as He sees fit.
There is no church that is perfect and all will be strong/weak in some area or another because we as humans are strong/weak in one area or another. This blog/site poses some great questions and things we need to consider in our personal walk with Jesus and how we display that outwardly and in our churches.
Jennifer
07.20.2009
I’ve attended an “average church all my life. The way I see it is this: The size of the church doesn’t mean that they’re not fulfilling what God wants them to do. As long as they’re bringing others to Jesus Christ and being discipled in the Word, then what’s the issue? To me, the size of the church isn’t as important as the it’s calling being fulfilled to the fullest. As long as you’re doing what God wants you to do even if it means expanding the church building itself, then fine.
Even the largest church building.
Just remember, whether small or large, we’re all plundering hell to populate Heaven!
Katie
07.21.2009
I don’t think the question of the size of a church is what the administrator is questioning. More a matter of the motive of our manic strivings to be bigger and better according to American standards and not fruitful according to Biblical standings.
admin
07.21.2009
very true as there are different gifts to different people. thanks for the comment, great word.
Daniel Ross
07.23.2009
A friend of mine just told me about this site last night so I decided to stop by. I have been thinking about this topic since becoming a Christ follower nine years ago.
My concern is so often we are asking the wrong questions. We ask questions like “Should the church be big?” “What kind of services are going to reach more people?” etc.
The question that I asked myself when I was a pastor on staff at a large church was “Does this system (machine) produce the kind of results (product) that truly reflect the values and principles of the Kingdom of God?”
We are so focused on getting people under one roof and then trying to reach them as opposed to empowering people under the roof to reach others. Ephesians 4 states that the purpose of our the ministry gifts is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. I do not think it was ever God’s intention for us to show up at our sloppy feeding troughs on Sunday morning to be feed. I am a grown man and my mom quit feeding me decades ago and I have been feeding myself with no problem ever since.
Thanks for asking these kind of questions!
admin
07.23.2009
Great to see new readers engaging. Great thoughts concerning soul RESULTS and less physical IDEALS. “equip” good word.
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