The Perfect Church

Ok we all know that doesn’t exist, but what about the perfect size church?

Is there such a thing? Obviously lots of people like mega-churches (5,000 or more) or there wouldn’t be mega-churches.

Transversely there are a tremendous amount of people who enjoy small churches (100 or less) as there are thousands of them throughout the world. In fact the average church in America is about 75 people.

I’m really enjoying the current size of our church, on Sundays we typically have 150 adults and 50 kids in attendance. There are probably 200 adults and 75 children who are regular attenders.

Over the last six years we’ve grown slowly but surely. We had about 30 adults and 10 children on our first Sunday (May 5th, 2002). We grew to about 50 adults by the end of that summer. Over the next few years we grew to about 75 and then in 2005 we moved to a permanent storefront building and we grew to a consistent 100 adults each Sunday. This last April we moved once again to our current building which seats close to 200 and we’ve been fairly full almost every Sunday since.

As churches grow they change. They take on a different feel.

When our church was 50 people it was really cool; just a big family really. I knew everyone’s name, including their kids. I connected with just about everyone each Sunday. Things were simple. I worked part time for the church and had no other employees to worry about. But there were drawbacks. We couldn’t do a lot of outreach because of lack of funds. When visitors showed up they were underwhelmed with the turnout and dissapointed with the lack of ministries and opportunities within the church. With 50 people to choose from there were many gifts we were lacking and you can only do so much.

As our church transitioned to 100 adults we took on a different look. I was now full time and able to devote myself fully to ministry. We were still in a dinky little building downtown but we packed everyone in there and the church seemed full and lively. We were able to do more outreach, including two large scale outreaches that I really can’t believe we pull off. I was still on a first name basis with all regular attenders, but we began to have more visitors and I began to lose track of the growing population of children. We were able to bring our worship leader on part time and things began to get busier as we had to get more organized.

I see this transition happening again as we continue to grow and hover around the 200 adult mark. We have a myriad of ministry and fellowship opportunities going on. Our mid-week service has the same attendance as we used to have on Sundays. Stewart, our worship/office/graphic/gopher guy is full time and we have “regular” office hours. We have a soup kitchen with a part time staff member, a bookkeeper, a color copier (that needs constant repair), and 50 women attending the ladies Bible study that is offered on both Thursday morning and evening. Although I really try, I don’t know everybody’s name (especially the kids) and there are times that there seem to be more new people than regulars on a given Sunday. Although I think it’s sad, the new people seem to stick around more consistently. Oh and my favorite thing of all (well not really) we’re getting new chairs! Real church chairs that have padding and stack.

Is there a perfect size church? Probably not. I don’t think I would like to pastor a mega-church as they seem so impersonal and ineffective in the area of discipleship. Not to mention our whole town is only 10,000 people so I don’t think a mega-church is part of our future. Nor would I want our church to be 50 again as smaller churches are so limited in what they can do.

I think 300-500 people may be the perfect size church as you can do a lot in the area of missions, outreach, and practical community service and still retain that personal family atmosphere.

If we ever grow to that point I’ll let you know if it’s perfect or not.