Is there any hope for a small church? I am one who believes the answer is 'yes'. The small church will always have a future. By that I mean that there will always small churches because there will always small towns. But many of those small churches will always be under threat. The members of these churches know that Jesus is the Lord of the church and the church universal will not perish, but they also know that small churches struggle.
There are many threats to a small church. Here are a few of them.
1. "We're like a family".
Strangely enough, the greatest strength of a small church can be its undoing. Many of us who have been in small churches know how wonderful it is that we are all like a family together. We share each others joys and struggles. We know everybody and we are known by everybody. And when someone comes in from a larger church, they often comment on how wonderful this family feel is.
But it's really hard to connect with a family when you're the new person. And a small church can - unintentionally - make people feel unwelcome.
This is most obvious during morning tea after a worship service. If people are standing in a closed circle talking together, the body language says, "No one can join this circle." I know this might not be your intent, but the message is there. And you don't want to give a visitor that message to take home.
2. Family Prayers.
This connects with the first point. In a large church, when it is time for prayer, the minister or someone else is appointed to pray. But in a small church, we share the time of prayer and often bring our prayer requests to the church to pray for. This is nice, and it is good to share our needs with our fellow worshippers, but we often end up with shallow prayers. Again, I believe it is unintentional, but it happens. As one who spends a lot of time in small churches, trust me - it happens.
Let our prayers be more focused on God and less on ourselves.
3. Empty chairs
Small church fellowships and empty chairs naturally go together. But if you can do something to lessen the impact of these empty chairs, then do so. This doesn't mean you should have one person in each row. That is a really dumb idea, because if a family arrives late, they should be able to sit together. Hard to do if there are no empty rows.
4. The glory days.
Most of the small churches have had a time in the past when it was a flourishing church with a full building on Sunday morning, a number of activities during the week, and a huge Sunday School gathering. Praise God for such days. But we damage the hopes for the future when we keep thinking about what God has done and not about what God is doing.
5. The Big Church.
Those who have been ministers or committed members of a small church will know exactly what I mean here. It's not an accusation of sheep-stealing, but a heart aching reality that the big church is a threat to the small church. And it doesn't even need to be the big church in your town. So many people have visited a small church and decided to go to the bigger church because it 'offers more for my children', or "I prefer the music there", or any other number of reasons.
If you are the minister of a large church, and someone comes from a small church, what do you do? I assume that you welcome them, as you should. But would you challenge them to stay in the small church? Would you urge them to continue worshipping in their local church rather than travel 25 minutes to come to yours?
I know that there are other threats to small churches. These are just some that stand out for me. What are some of the threats you see?
