“You are just stealing people from other churches.”
I have found in my ministry a couple of things to be true. First, once someone is involved in their church it is a very difficult decision for them to ever leave. Regardless of the size of the church. Unless they are moving to the community or there is some major uproar in the previous church, it is fairly rare that a truly committed church member joins another church. Second, some people change churches frequently. If you look at their life over a span of decades they will have been in numerous churches. I have known some churches where their primary growth comes from conflict, church splits or transferred growth. But these are rare, in my opinion, and have not been the case in churches I have been affiliated with directly.
“You have too much flash and not enough depth.”
Again, this is a funny one to me. The people who are looking for depth—who know enough to be looking for depth—it would seem to me would know that real depth, real maturity, almost always occurs in much smaller settings. The worship service is only one part of discipleship. And whether a church averages 40 or 4,000, there will need to be some smaller settings for people to grow deeper spiritually.
“People aren’t growing.”
I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard a comment such as, “The larger the church the more immature people you seemed find.” That’s a funny comment to me because I was always pretty good with math. It makes sense to me that more produces opportunity for more. More people—more potential for people who aren’t growing. Something tells me there are some immature people in smaller churches too. (Maybe even some of the ones who spread unfounded generalizations about other churches. Uh oh. Did I say that?)
“People aren’t cared for properly.”
That may be true. And it might not be. Same would probably be true of smaller churches. In a large church you may not see the pastor every time you’re sick, but if they have a good care system you’ll be cared for in a biblical community. I have witnessed countless stories of that in some of the churches in which I’ve been a part.
“You won’t get to know anyone.”
That would be like saying if you work at a large company you wouldn’t know anybody you work with. Not true. You won’t be able to just attend the large gathering, never speak to anyone and expect to develop deeper relationships. But something tells me in every large or growing church there will be opportunities to get to know people.
“It’s all about the money.”
As with many of these, you have to think of things in a relative way. It is true that large churches require more money to fund the ministry. Again, that’s just math. But all churches have a budget. It’s almost always proportional to the size of the church. I have loved watching some large churches that actually are very kingdom-minded and bless churches of all sizes. It’s been amazing to me, for example, to watch as our status church blesses smaller churches. This was something that was happening before me—so it’s not about me. But, I love it.
