Small Churches Can Thrive
I think Ed Stetzer is spot-on correct, and he makes his case in a vivid manner. You can read the whole thing here. Here is a snippet from his blog post.
As a speaker at a number of conferences each year, I continue to see pastors and leaders going from one workshop to another searching for “THE” answer. They show up and hear amazing stories about implausibly happy people who willingly follow a new vision for their lives and their church. They have heard all the strategies and promises, but for many small-church leaders, the conferences, led by rock star celebrity pastors, are like “ministry pornography”– an unrealistic depiction of an experience they’ll never have that distracts them from the real and wonderful thing. In other words, the lust of the megachurch distracts them from the mission of their church. (I’m not anti-big church–I preach at a megachurch every week– but I am also pro-small church.) The reality is that smaller churches can thrive, too. More than 65 percent of the churches that participated in the research survey for Comeback Churches (B&H)–the book I co-wrote with Mike Dodson– had under 200 regular attendees. Smaller churches are not always unhealthy churches; it depends largely on their mindset. In our research, we found that the small churches which experienced revitalization often did so around prayer and outreach.



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