I had a great conversation with Adam the other day about Church and it either confirmed that I’m NOT crazy OR that we are BOTH equally crazy. I’m hoping for the former. I’d love to hear your opinions on the matter as well.
Really, my thoughts can be summed up into church size. I have seen no spiritual advantages of a congregation of 5,000 people vs a congregation of 100. Oh, I have seen some of the amazing things a large congregation can do because of their resources — but what positive affect does a larger congregation have on an individual’s spiritual growth? I can’t think of any.
If you didn’t already know, I’m a member of the Village Church (which technically makes me Baptist despite my Wesleyan and Methodist roots) which is a multi-site, multiple thousand member church with an average weekly attendance of around 5,000 people across 9 different services in 2 locations. The church’s small group model is that of “we are a church of small groups” — meaning the idea is to have everyone apart of a smaller group, which is where community is suppose to happen. Home group leaders rely on home group coaches (each coach responsible for 3-5 leaders) and those coaches rely on area pastors for support. Membership at the Village requires being in a home group. In theory, every member would then be a part of a small group and a that group a part of a number of groups creating mini churches which breaks the 2000+ membership into much more manageable and practical numbers.
I’ve seen the flow chart, and I think it’s a great idea — but I haven’t seen a working example. I’ve been to the home group leader retreat and listened to the new plan to make all of our ministries fit into our group model but I don’t really see how they intend to make this all work. I don’t understand why we don’t plant more churches… or… equip and train people to go and serve in congregations where we already live.
My local church is anything BUT local for most of us who attend — why is that? How much more effective would the local church be if it were local? What do you think? How far do you go to “go to church”?
Well, we go to FUMC Plano, which is a large church in the next suburb over. We attended FUMC Wylie, which is literally down the street, but after three months of attending, people were still greeting us like it was our first time. On the second visit to FUMC Plano, the pastor greeted us by name. Although he now admits it was probably a fluke, that got us hooked. We also have a bunch of small groups, mainly just Sunday School classes, but in no way is it required. In fact, we don’t have the space for everyone who comes to worship to attend Sunday School. Just my 2 cents.
For me geography plays a little bigger role than size, although I wouldn’t mind seeing more church plants and smaller churches. I’d agree that there are no apparent spiritual advantages of a large church over a smaller church, but at the same time I see no ideal church size mentioned in scripture, and there certainly can be disadvantages to being a small church. I’m with you on the small groups. I’m still not sure what’s supposed to happen with the groups at The Village…
I’m a little more interested in the idea of being local though, not just regarding church, but how we live out our entire lives. Living, working and serving as a member of a church all in the same 5-10 mile radius. Investing ourselves in our immediate context. It’s already easy enough to separate our “church life” from the rest of our “everyday life”, driving somewhere else to worship doesn’t help that sense of separation any. It’s making less and less sense to drive past multiple churches to get to church in a community where I have nothing invested.
Really my reasoning for emphasizing church size is that, while I too don’t believe there is a “right” size congregation, I do believe that it is a factor that is neglected in church planning.
It seems that more and more churches are focused (actively or passively) on growing their congregations without any regard to what an appropriate size for them should be. The sky is the limit; we wouldn’t want to limit the Holy Spirit. The problem with that is, group size can drastically affect the communication of any group’s dynamics, especially when you consider the infrequency of the average church attenders contact with the congregation (which is greatly affected by attenders not being a part of the local community to begin with).
Great input everyone — I’m already working on my follow-up post.
yeah i don’t know why the village doesn’t start planting churches. i know they want to and are researching the idea so we’ll see what happens. we love the village, but it is hard to be on mission through community with such a huge number of people. we are close w/our small group and another group close to us, but outside of that it can be tough and frustrating some times.
michael and i are planting a church in austin w/hill country next summer. jaya and i will be moving there after i graduate dts in may. we are in the planning stages right now… you should check it out and see what you think… http://www.gogetscatter.com