5. People Don’t Like Big Churches
The data just doesn’t support the view that people hate big churches. Many large churches keep growing. And many smaller churches keep shrinking.
It’s important to keep your church relational and feeling ‘smaller’ as you grow.
The bigger your church is, the smaller it needs to feel. But through small groups, serving teams, multi site and other ventures, larger churches continue to grow even as they establish smaller footprints.
Christmas Eve is one of our biggest outreaches every year. Last year, we hosted 2,000 people in two cities. The largest room holds 700 people. So it’s a big reach using small rooms.
This year, we are going to host services in four cities (you can see the initiative here), going into two new communities in which we’ve never had service before. We don’t know what will become of that, but we now have the potential to reach 3,000 this Christmas with a new strategy. Again, come to any of those rooms, and it will still feel fairly intimate.
It’s not a question of whether people like big churches or small churches. People like effective churches.
If a large church is effective in reaching people, people come. If a small church is effective in reaching people, people come and bring friends until (often) it’s no longer a small church.
There’s More
Jeff Brodie and I break down these myths in much more detail on Episode 1 of the Canadian Church Leaders Podcast. Listen in for free.
