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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Ideal church size and how to maintain it
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Bartolomeo
Musical Engineer
# 8352
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Posted
Here in the U.S., some of the more popular denominations have been successful in managing the size of individual churches by merging and dividing them as necessary, at least in areas where population density and the prevalence of members of a particular church allow this.
The LDS church has been particularly effective at this, as has the LCMS. In both cases, a typical church has weekly worship attendance of around 300-400. Both denominations experience a high degree of denominational commitment among their members (an LDS member would not, for example, join a non-LDS church just because it's closer), and have an ecclesiology that makes the church experience highly fungible.
In contrast the experience in independent, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches is that, when two churches merge, many of the former members either stay home on Sunday or go to some other church, possibly with a different denominational affiliation. When such churches grow large they typically get a larger building rather than splitting the congregation.
What do you believe is the ideal size? Are the steps that have to be taken to reach that size worth it?
[ 06. June 2012, 20:45: Message edited by: Bartolomeo ]
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"Individual talent is too sporadic and unpredictable to be allowed any important part in the organization society" --Stuart Chase
Posts: 1291 | From: the American Midwest | Registered: Aug 2004
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
My church is struggling with a size question right now, in a good way, and it might be informative to your question. We are growing. But we are in between financial sustainability plateaus. We are a medium sized church. We think we can become a medium large church if we keep the growth we are seeing. In order to get there, we probably have to spend a few years offering the ministry programs of a medium large church on a medium church's income. The hope is that enough people stick around, and the pledged income eventually catches up with the programing. We have decided that it is worth the effort, and we are doing everything we can to keep the budget afloat. But we cannot go on like this forever, and people are beginning to feel a little tapped out. So it is a challenge.
Based on that, as a starting point, I would say an ideally sized church is one that has income to match its program needs.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
@Bartolomeo. Sorry, I'm acronym challenged. What are these churches you're referring to? (And I'm British, so you need to make allowances.....)
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Posts: 950 | From: Virtually anywhere | Registered: Jul 2011
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
In the U.S., many congregations are large. Economy of scale should make this desirable. Everything can be better-funded, higher quality, and more impressive without a higher per-capita expense.
The only drawback I see is when members must travel too far to make this happen. Then the time and expense (not to mention the consumption of energy, which will probably be an increasingly urgent consideration) keep people from participating as much as they would otherwise. O for the yearswhen a church was on campus, no more than a block or two from where I'd spent the whole day, enabling me to attend daily evening prayer daily, and with friends, as it should be. I miss that.
I recently learned that a very devout parishioner of S. Clement's who would attend morning mass every day (as it should also be ideally) lived as far away as I do. That made her commitment truly awesome. For most of us it would be simply impossible.
Economies of scale can be real, but only when the benefits are shared by everyone, not just administrators from their own point of view. Too often arguments on this basis look persuasive by ignoring the externalized costs.
Our megachurches may well become white elephants in the not-too-distant future. The greater the overhead in travel, the more urgent the argument becomes for local churches, whatever the size.
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
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Comper's Child
Shipmate
# 10580
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Posted
LDS is the Mormon Church (Latter Day Saints) but I have no idea what LCMS is...
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Bartolomeo
Musical Engineer
# 8352
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Posted
LCMS is Lutheran Church -- Missouri Synod.
Like other (U.S.) Lutheran churches, they follow doctrine from Martin Luther's catechisms and other writings. In general they have a liturgical style of worship that has much in common with the BCP. LCMS differs from the ELCA (which is the largest Lutheran denomination in the U.S. with about twice as many members as the LCMS) in that they follow the doctrines of inerrancy and closed communion, and have more conservative views on most major social issues.
[ 06. June 2012, 21:44: Message edited by: Bartolomeo ]
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"Individual talent is too sporadic and unpredictable to be allowed any important part in the organization society" --Stuart Chase
Posts: 1291 | From: the American Midwest | Registered: Aug 2004
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Bartolomeo
Musical Engineer
# 8352
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Posted
I think it would be helpful if those of you contributing to this thread could give approximate Sunday worship attendance figures along with your characterization of any place of worship as small, medium, large, mega, etc. Some large churches have average Sunday attendance approaching 10,000. Some churches with average attendance of 400-500 nonetheless think of themselves as "large."
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"Individual talent is too sporadic and unpredictable to be allowed any important part in the organization society" --Stuart Chase
Posts: 1291 | From: the American Midwest | Registered: Aug 2004
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
This blog that I found at random from Google, I think, explains where my church is- between 165 and 225. So too big for the rector to handle on her own, but not big enough to sustain multiple vibrant ministry programs. It provides some interesting thoughts about plateaus, and would be worth reading if you want to continue this discussion (as would the book it reviews, if you want to go farther). My parent's church has about 12 people attend on each Sunday, so my idea of a "small" church may be a little different from yours.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Bartolomeo
Musical Engineer
# 8352
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
This blog that I found at random from Google, I think, explains where my church is- between 165 and 225.
I think that that blog, and the received wisdom from print publications (which are, after all, authored and published with an eye towards saying things that will encourage people to buy them) has a bias towards the idea that making churches bigger through steady growth is a Good Thing (tm).
I don't know how intentional it is but it seems to me that LCMS and LDS manage church size by combining small churches and splitting large ones apart. Perhaps this is a Better Thing (tm) because it avoids the real and perceived "transitions" and "chasm crossings" involved in size changes.
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"Individual talent is too sporadic and unpredictable to be allowed any important part in the organization society" --Stuart Chase
Posts: 1291 | From: the American Midwest | Registered: Aug 2004
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rhflan
Shipmate
# 17092
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Posted
I read somewhere that you can only 'know' about 150 people. So if your church is one that believes you have one pastor to shepherd the flock, it seems like 150 would be the max.
The largest church that I've attended had around 1,000 members. They had maybe 8-ish elders that would shepherd the church. It seemed to work well for them. It seemed to work well for them. They also had small groups that individual elders would help oversee. I think that each small group had maybe 15 to 20 people, and I think that each elder had at least 5 small groups that he would oversee.
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www.twitter.com/rhflan
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
Our megachurches may well become white elephants in the not-too-distant future. The greater the overhead in travel, the more urgent the argument becomes for local churches, whatever the size.
The cultural context is very different, but the UK has faced its own problems with oversized church buildings.
In the late 19th c. it was fashionable for Protestants in England and Wales to build huge churches in the city centres, suburbs and villages, often in competition with those of other denominations. Sometimes they managed to fill them, more or less, but these structures often incurred lots of debt, were expensive to maintain, and were particularly vulnerable to changes in the local population. Many of them have since been demolished or converted to non-sacred use.
However, part of the problem has also been that many denominations have tried to keep a presence in every community, but just haven't been able to do so. Perhaps this would have been more manageable if the church buildings had been smaller and cheaper to start with. (Or if they'd just been less reliant on buildings....) But it's not easy to get the right church buildings and clergy to the right people quickly enough, when you have all your resources heavily tied up in one place, but your natural or potential constituency is on the move.
The RCC in England reappeared as a growing entity n the 19th c. and didn't try to fund church buildings and clergy in every area. Catholics were expected to be willing to travel a certain distance. This turned out to be a better strategy than the one adopted by the Protestants. Of course, in addition, a Catholic can't just switch to worshipping with another denomination just because it's closer. RC distinctiveness has served to maintain loyalty to the church (at least until very recently) in the UK. This reminds us that despite the appeal of ecumenicalism, it doesn't necessarily serve the purposes of individual denominations.
When my Methodist church was about to close, my minister was quite happy to suggest that some of us would go off to the Anglicans/Baptists/etc. while others would travel slightly further to the nearest Methodist churches. I found his atittude a bit unnerving, because it implied that it was okay for our loyalty to Methodism to be easily discarded. He probably isn't the only minister to hold this view, but it seems inevitable that this more tolerant approach makes for less commitment, on the whole.
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PD
Shipmate
# 12436
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Posted
We had one congregation in our denomination stall, crash and burn because it got itself "over-buildinged." They stalled out at 75, but their building could hold 225, as a result they became an increasingly disheartened congregation rattling around an over size plant, and then decline set in.
Personally I find a parish somewhere between 50 and 75 members the easiest to pastor, though if I had no distractions I could probably deal with a church with 120-150 members without forgetting too many names or life histories. The trouble is that the number and cost of maintaining the ministries needed to keep a congregation of 150 interested, as compared to one of 75 grows exponentially, whilst the pool of people simply doubles. However, then one has about the same budget until the next gear change is hit at the 225-250 mark. The trick for congregational financial heath is to be at the upper end of one of those bands, but not so close to the next gear change that you are having to add extra programmes which are not really going to gain you anything except expenses!
PD
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Roadkill on the Information Super Highway!
My Assorted Rantings - http://www.theoldhighchurchman.blogspot.com
Posts: 4431 | From: Between a Rock and a Hard Place | Registered: Mar 2007
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rhflan:
I read somewhere that you can only 'know' about 150 people. So if your church is one that believes you have one pastor to shepherd the flock, it seems like 150 would be the max.
That number varies widely from person to person. One customer at work recounted how she had met the then-mayor of Philadelphia, Ed Rendell, just for a moment, at the Philadelphia Flower Show. Several years later she encountered him as the governor of Pennsylvania and, after a few seconds of thought, he recalled her and where they had met before. She was duly impressed, of course. Surely that gift is part of his success in politics. I'm the opposite, never having been able to match faces to names even in the smallest of congregations. Thank heaven I'm just a layman.
But you have a good point, in that the small size of most Episcopal congregations usually results in excellent pastoral care when it is needed. Few need it intensively on a regular basis, unless "shut in". We count this as a great advantage, although it is rather making a virtue of necessity. Only a small minority of TEC parishes have more than a few hundred active anymore.
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
Our pastor thinks our congregation (about 250 on paper, 150 regular communicants, 80-something-90-something people on a Sunday) is about at its limit in terms of his ability to pastor in any real sense -- his knowing names and faces and understanding family and clan dynamics. We've already been researching the viability of establishing a satellite worship point/mission start in some community at the farther edges of where we draw members, and maybe having lay ministers take more of an active role in leadership there.
One issue that comes into play here, at least in rural/urban areas, is the ability of smaller churches to support a pastor. In my denomination, the ELCA, salary guidelines for pastors suggest to congregations that they pay their pastor a salary in the same general range as what a local high school principal -- a professional with a roughly equivalent education -- would be paid. This can be a real financial burden for churches. My own church can only afford our pastor because he's voluntarily taken a smaller paycheck...and because he's married to another professional person whose income helps keep their household afloat.
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Simul iustus et peccator
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Crśsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bartolomeo:
What do you believe is the ideal size? Are the steps that have to be taken to reach that size worth it?
I'd say the ideal size for a church is zero. The steps I've taken to achieve this are not only worth it, but supremely simple (don't go to church). I highly recommend this particular church configuration.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
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Avila
Shipmate
# 15541
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
In the late 19th c. it was fashionable for Protestants in England and Wales to build huge churches in the city centres, suburbs and villages, often in competition with those of other denominations. Sometimes they managed to fill them, more or less, but these structures often incurred lots of debt, were expensive to maintain, and were particularly vulnerable to changes in the local population. Many of them have since been demolished or converted to non-sacred use.
Snip...
When my Methodist church was about to close, my minister was quite happy to suggest that some of us would go off to the Anglicans/Baptists/etc. while others would travel slightly further to the nearest Methodist churches. I found his atittude a bit unnerving, because it implied that it was okay for our loyalty to Methodism to be easily discarded. He probably isn't the only minister to hold this view, but it seems inevitable that this more tolerant approach makes for less commitment, on the whole.
Surely the latter situation is preferable to the former where we all tried to convert each other as much as the heathen??
I would see that minister as recognising that some would be rooted in the Methodist style enough to travel out, but that for others worshipping in their own community is highly significant. And giving people permission/affirmation about their choices.
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
/Slight tangent/
Those familiar with Robin Gill's work "The Myth of the Empty Church" will know his thesis that the Anglicans and then the Free Churches, often in competition with each other, vastly over-provided church accomodation in the late 1800s, leading to a legacy of empty buildings which cost far too much to maintain. This created the depressing impression that faith was failing, wheres the real failure was logistical.
It's interesting how myth differs from reality. Many years ago Robin showed me the statistics for the church I was then serving, which had formerly had a large 800-seater building. The "myth" was that it had always been full "in the old days": yet in the very accurate 1904 church census, at a time often regarded as the apogee of church attendance, only some 400-odd had been present.
Gill further suggests that the Catholics took a different approach, often bulding large buildings but quite far from each other. These often were filled several times over on a Sunday, giving the impression of "success".
/Ends./
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
Baptist Trainfan
True. My comments above were informed by Robin Gill's books.
As for my former church, I was interested to discover that when it was built in 1872 it was designed to seat 1100 people. When it was damaged and rebuilt after WWII, the seating was only for 400. So the question is, was the original building never even half full, or was a congregation of approx. 1000 people decimated over the course of 2-3 generations?
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
When my Methodist church was about to close, my minister was quite happy to suggest that some of us would go off to the Anglicans/Baptists/etc. while others would travel slightly further to the nearest Methodist churches. I found his atittude a bit unnerving, because it implied that it was okay for our loyalty to Methodism to be easily discarded. He probably isn't the only minister to hold this view, but it seems inevitable that this more tolerant approach makes for less commitment, on the whole.
Our loyalty and commitment is to God and His Church, not any particular denomination thereof. Methodist, Baptist, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox - it's all Christ, it's all in Christ, and it's all of Christ. The differences are just window dressing.
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Hail Gallaxhar
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Avila:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
[b] In the late 19th c. it was fashionable for Protestants in England and Wales to build huge churches in the city centres, suburbs and villages, often in competition with those of other denominations. Sometimes they managed to fill them, more or less, but these structures often incurred lots of debt, were expensive to maintain, and were particularly vulnerable to changes in the local population. Many of them have since been demolished or converted to non-sacred use.
Snip...
When my Methodist church was about to close, my minister was quite happy to suggest that some of us would go off to the Anglicans/Baptists/etc. while others would travel slightly further to the nearest Methodist churches. I found his atittude a bit unnerving, because it implied that it was okay for our loyalty to Methodism to be easily discarded. He probably isn't the only minister to hold this view, but it seems inevitable that this more tolerant approach makes for less commitment, on the whole. [/qb]
Surely the latter situation is preferable to the former where we all tried to convert each other as much as the heathen??
I would see that minister as recognising that some would be rooted in the Methodist style enough to travel out, but that for others worshipping in their own community is highly significant. And giving people permission/affirmation about their choices.
I'm not saying that different denominations should be at each other's throats. We should certainly learn from each other and work together. And I'm currently the secretary of an ecumenical Churches Together meeting. But I think the situation needed to be handled with a little more sensitivity, especially since these are people who had spent most of their lives working for the Methodist church. The minister's comments gave the impression that the Methodist Church doesn't really care if people leave, which suggests that their presence isn't all that important either.
Perhaps it's not so much what the minister said, but the way that he said it. I know that a local preacher who was present on that occasion also found his comments a bit strange.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
Sometimes I feel that the ideal size of a church I'd want to be in would be 1 ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
I can identify with some of the stresses mentioned in the blog linked to in the early posts of this thread. And it so happens our numbers are within the 'transitional' band mentioned (although the numbers have been at this level for many years).
There are tensions between those who believe we should continue to offer what we do well already (which is quite distinctive from other churches in the area) -and welcome all those who recognise that that is what they need and come along, and those who believe we should develop ever more exciting initiatives to attract more people, even if this means duplicating approaches used by other churches in the area. We have won some, but also lost some using this approach.
Interestingly, the numbers in the main church may not be growing, but we are doing rather well at increasing the number of choristers. Probably because the interplay between music and liturgy is something our church is known for, and is attractive in its own right.
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bartolomeo:
I think it would be helpful if those of you contributing to this thread could give approximate Sunday worship attendance figures along with your characterization of any place of worship as small, medium, large, mega, etc.
In Britain a small church might be 30 or less, medium 30-100, large 100-250, very large 250-400, mega 400+.
Out of the roughly 10,000 churches in the Church of England I doubt if more than a few dozen have regular Sunday congregations of over 250, and a handful over 400. Maybe fewer.
Baptist and Independent churches are on average the same sort of size, perhaps smaller on the whole. Methodist and URC churches in England tend to be even smaller these days. The so-called New Churches have a reputation for being very large, but in practice only a few of them are.
The largest congregations by far round where I live are the Roman Catholics - most seem to be n the hundreds and some places have going on 2,000 regular mass attenders, split over many masses. But that's because there are a lot fewer parishes.
Hey, I can check that on the handy RC Archdiocese of Southwark Deanery Statistics website. Our local RCs have 10 churches, 7 parish priests, and 6 other priests.
Looking at the Anglican Diocese of Southwark website for a similar (but not exactly identical) area I find 38 churches and I believe there are slightly more clergy than churches. So if numbers of churchgoers were similar (I think they probably are) the RCs would have nearly four times as many at each church.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
The cell church people say the ideal size is 12. After that, the group should divide. How does this work in practice. I once attended a cell church conference here in the UK, and one of the speakers admitted that the cells didn't seem to be able to divide in the UK as they do in the USA,and the conference didn't focus a great deal on the multiplication aspect. But I imagine that in the Western world as a whole, maintaining the momentum for growing and dividing these small groups would be extremely hard work. We just don't expect church life to be so difficult.
Also, the role of the minister is presumably undermined in this set-up, which would probably discourage most ministers from promoting it. I suppose there would be a role for bishops overseeing a whole network of cells, but no denomination could afford to train and pay enough ministers to enable each cell to have its own minister. There might be roving theological tutors and preachers, but essentially, each group would have to be in charge of generating its own strongly evangelistic spiritual life, and would have to produce its own strong leaders.
On the plus side, Christians would no longer have to own and maintain a whole raft of large, money-hungry buildings. If they wanted to bring several cells together for a big event, they could just hire a large hall.
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bartolomeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
This blog that I found at random from Google, I think, explains where my church is- between 165 and 225.
I think that that blog, and the received wisdom from print publications (which are, after all, authored and published with an eye towards saying things that will encourage people to buy them) has a bias towards the idea that making churches bigger through steady growth is a Good Thing (tm).
I don't know how intentional it is but it seems to me that LCMS and LDS manage church size by combining small churches and splitting large ones apart. Perhaps this is a Better Thing (tm) because it avoids the real and perceived "transitions" and "chasm crossings" involved in size changes.
I think the point is not so much to encourage growth for growth's sake. I think they ask the opposite question that you ask in the op: what is the non-ideal sized church. Their answer is, a church with too many members for one pastor to handle, but not enough members to be able to pay for and lead multiple programs so that the pastor can focus on pastoral care. There is nothing wrong with smaller. You just want to avoid a situation where a pastor has too much to do and not enough assistance or resources to draw from.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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lilyswinburne
Shipmate
# 12934
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Posted
The ideal church size should be small enough, with few enough financial encumbrances, that attendees are not constantly harassed for money. It is very disheartening to want to hear something uplifting on a Sunday and instead hear talk about money.
Posts: 126 | From: California | Registered: Aug 2007
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Bartolomeo
Musical Engineer
# 8352
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
When my Methodist church was about to close, my minister was quite happy to suggest that some of us would go off to the Anglicans/Baptists/etc. while others would travel slightly further to the nearest Methodist churches. I found his atittude a bit unnerving, because it implied that it was okay for our loyalty to Methodism to be easily discarded. He probably isn't the only minister to hold this view, but it seems inevitable that this more tolerant approach makes for less commitment, on the whole.
There are (U.S.) examples like the Congregational Church (now part of the UCC) and the Presbyterian Church which at one time had an agreement in place to avoid building competing churches. They divided up the country geographically to achieve this goal. The few places that have a UCC and Presbyterian church in the same town either have churches that predate the agreement or have a UCC church that was part of the E&R church prior to its merger with the Congregational Church to form the UCC.
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"Individual talent is too sporadic and unpredictable to be allowed any important part in the organization society" --Stuart Chase
Posts: 1291 | From: the American Midwest | Registered: Aug 2004
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
How do people know where to go to church (should the mood take you) when there are lots of tiny cell churches? I'm used to a big prominent building in every town and village, so you know where to go to church. Lack of an obvious building, to my mind = doomed to failure over time.
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Retired, sitting back and watching others for a change.
Posts: 34626 | From: Cream Tealand | Registered: Jun 2001
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Avila
Shipmate
# 15541
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chorister:
How do people know where to go to church (should the mood take you) when there are lots of tiny cell churches? I'm used to a big prominent building in every town and village, so you know where to go to church. Lack of an obvious building, to my mind = doomed to failure over time.
Our local contact list for churches in one community I work has the Catholic methodist and parish churches with church address, service time adn clergy tel number. In contrast the local independent that has just moved from a community hall to homes is listed as just a contact name & number and service time with the instruction to call to find out venue!!
Only the bravest visitor there, and a challenge to maintain the mystery of a mystery worshipper!
Posts: 1305 | From: west midlands | Registered: Mar 2010
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chorister:
How do people know where to go to church (should the mood take you) when there are lots of tiny cell churches? I'm used to a big prominent building in every town and village, so you know where to go to church. Lack of an obvious building, to my mind = doomed to failure over time.
Almost every district in the UK has a prominent Anglican church, doesn't it? So if people really want to find a local Anglican church, they don't have to look too far.
To my mind, the reason why the CofE can maintain its churches over a long time isn't because those churches are big, but because the CofE has money. It willingly maintains tiny congregations in expensive buildings because it believes its mission, above all, is to have a presence. But such a noble goal can only be achieved by generating a lot of cash somewhere else.
Other denominations don't have such a head start in terms of investments or land, or the visibility and influence that comes from being an established church. Their congregations are always going to be in a more precarious position. In terms of cell churches that meet in homes, perhaps they need to develop more of a presence on the internet, since they don't benefit from buildings as a showcase. On the other hand, since most evangelism is relational, most new members probably occur because of friendships with people who are already attending the church. This is probably preferable if your meetings occur in a space that's actually someone's home.
I think it would be disastrous if the smaller denominations all fizzled out and left everything to the CofE.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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