Home Small Group Leaders Articles for Small Group Leaders 5 Things Every Small to Mid-Sized Church Struggles With

5 Things Every Small to Mid-Sized Church Struggles With

4. Tradition has more pull than vision

This is not just about traditional churches—it’s true of church plants too.

The past has a nostalgia to it that the future never does.

Even the recent past. Remember how great the church felt when it was smaller, more intimate and met in the living room/school/old facility?

The challenge for the leader is to cast a vision that is clear enough and compelling enough to pull people from the familiar past into a brighter future.

5. The natural desire to do more, not less

As you grow, you will be tempted to do more. Every time there are more people/money/resources, the pressure will be strong to add programming and complexity to your organization.

Resist that. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Often the key to reaching more is doing less. By doing a few things well and creating steps, not programs, you will help more people grow faster than almost any other way.

The two books that have helped me see this more than any other resources are Andy Stanley, Lane Jones and Reggie Joiner’s Seven Practices of Effective Ministry and Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger’s Simple Church. These two books helped our team resist the pressure to do more simply because we could.

Complexity is often the enemy of progress.

What tensions do you face or have you faced in small to mid-sized churches?

How are you handling them? Scroll down and leave a comment.

And if the subject of small churches versus large churches still bothers you, have a listen to this interview I did with Karl Vaters. The direct download off iTunes is here.