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 attenders.
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. (Michael Bell, Guest Blogger, Internet Monk, July 13, 2009)Bell continues to describe walking past these churches: So, you continue walking, past the churches of 80, 90, 100, 110. You walk until you have passed 90% of all the churches. You look to your left and you see 350 people lined up behind this church.
My first post-college experience playing guitar was at on a church worship team was at Church of the Open Door in the Minneapolis area. I think at the time they were running between 5000 and 6000 each weekend. I also led worship for the youth. That youth ministry alone was bigger than 75% of all churches in North America.
As much as it pained me to leave Open Door (a place of significant spiritual changes, and one really cute girl), I moved from there and entered vocational ministry in Ohio. It was at a church averaging 65 - 75 people a Sunday. I was the part-time youth and worship guy. Those poor people. I tried to make it "Church of the Mini Door" every week with just my acoustic guitar and an overhead projector. But they had tremendous grace for me. Thank you, Jesus.
It took me a long time to accept that my experience at Open Door couldn't be duplicated. No matter how much I wanted it. Prayed for it. Fought for it. It wasn't going to happen. Partway through my second ministry experience (again, in the quintessential small church dual-role pastor of youth and worship) I learned a phrase: "current reality."
Current Reality: who I have to work with is who I have to work with; the amount of money in my budget is the amount of money in my budget; the church facility is the church facility. I can whine. Curse the unfairness. Pontificate on the injustices. Or I could get busy and start creating a desired future out of the building blocks of the present that are within my reach.
Up until the last 18 months, the majority of my ministry has been spent in churches under 150 people. Through this God has given me a heart for small churches and the unique challenges they face. Over the next weeks and months I'll be adding to this "Small Church/Big Worship" theme. Please feel free to share about your "current reality" and past experiences in smaller ministries - the good and bad - I'd love to have constant input as I write these posts.
Jon - I'm really glad you're addressing this, because I think it's a HUGE issue in the church right now and it's something that's really been on my heart lately. So many of the solid resources right now are coming from really big churches (Hillsong, New Life, Willow Creek, etc.), and there seems to be a lot of pressure on folks to present those resources in the exact same way their original creators did, which is simply unrealistic for most people/situations.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I've felt a major shift on this area in my own life in the last couple of years. Up until recently, I was always focused on doing as much as I could. I would look at my situation and the people I had and think about how big we could go with it, and then push to that limit. Not too different from what you're describing above. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since it stretches folks, but recently I've been swinging more the opposite direction. I think simplicity is a really valuable thing, especially in a smaller church. Now, the big question I ask myself as I play is "How simple can this be without diminishing the quality or effectiveness of the message we're communicating?" That has made a significant change in the way I plan and lead worship (and has probably kept me from stressing my team out as much as I used to!)
Ultimately, I think the key is finding what works for your individual congregation and then finding creative and innovative ways to work in that situation and be authentic with it. I'm constantly amazed by the quality of what our creative team is able to put out in our congregation of ~150. It's all about playing to your strengths. Some of the big churches are starting to recognize this, too - as I write this, Hillsong has just released a collection of their best known songs stripped down and recorded in front of a crowd of 300. I think that will be a big step towards reality for a lot of folks in smaller churches.
Again... really glad to have this conversation starting here.