Faith Works 10-2-2026
Jeff Gill
What small can’t do, what large can’t do either
___
We were just talking about size and local church life; I have my own biases as to what the “right size” is, but I’ve lived long enough to know my personal preferences aren’t cosmic let alone divine truth.
I read years back something in a ministerially oriented publication that most clergy are best at serving a congregation about the size of the one they grew up in. That may be true. There are complications here in application: for one thing, I saw in the 1980s a significant move to seminary training of people with no church background. A generation earlier that would have been both more unlikely, and also the ordination system of most churches wouldn’t support it. But many ministers I know today didn’t grow up in church.
There’s also something about the averages that makes this hard to assess, about being best at what you’re used to (which sounds like a truism when you put it that way). I grew up in a congregation which saw 150-200 most Sundays, with Christmas Eve and Easter up over 300 to 400 some years in the 1960s. That church, like many of its type, is down to closer to 50 a Sunday now.
Myself, over the years I came into a number of churches which may have had hundreds or even a thousand “on the books” as members, but in the crucial “how many show up” metric, they were 100 or so most Sundays, 200ish for the big days. I helped get most of them up to the 150 neighborhood on an average, but found getting past that and staying there, well, challenging.
Is that because I’ve served traditional style worship type churches my whole time in ministry? Surely that’s part of it. Could it be I just don’t have the gifts and graces to get a congregation to push past the discomforts and challenges of growing over 150 a Sunday consistently? I’m probably not the one to answer that question.
The mid-sized church, nowhere near mega in any way, but larger than a “small church,” is what many observers note is steadily vanishing from the American religious landscape. Like retail, to make a dangerous comparison, the old Mom & Pop stores on Main Street, or even more hazardously, corner taverns, have largely vanished, and we have the extremes showing growth: big box retailers, and very small boutiques. The middle is hollowing out.
Ryan Burge, the noted demographer and analyst of mainline religious trends and wider faith developments, wrote earlier in this year a book about just this: “The Vanishing Church” by Brazos Press. In it he talks about the hollowing of American Protestant Christianity, and what it means for the national discourse in general. I commend it to your attention if you’re interested in churches of the sort we’re discussing here.
His last two chapters invite us to think about first “How Polarized Are We, Really?” (which is pretty bad, if you ask me, but there’s still a pretty large middle ground) and finally to stand on hope, affirming that “Not All Is Lost.”
Middle-sized churches all over the Midwest, which is all I can speak to personally, have gone from 150 a Sunday to 75 or even 50. Small congregations of 40 are more like 20 or 12. They can’t support a full-time minister, which is what they’ve been used to since not long after V-E Day, even though the historian in me notes it wasn’t a norm for the century before the Depression (which like COVID, complicates all sorts of statistics).
Should they all just close? I’m with Ryan: no. But many will. The moderate center has a place, but it’s going to have to work differently. Let’s come back to that idea, and apply both some hope, and practical thinking.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s preached in almost every sized church you can think of, and what’s in common is key. Tell him what you think unites faith communities at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
What small can’t do, what large can’t do either
___
We were just talking about size and local church life; I have my own biases as to what the “right size” is, but I’ve lived long enough to know my personal preferences aren’t cosmic let alone divine truth.
I read years back something in a ministerially oriented publication that most clergy are best at serving a congregation about the size of the one they grew up in. That may be true. There are complications here in application: for one thing, I saw in the 1980s a significant move to seminary training of people with no church background. A generation earlier that would have been both more unlikely, and also the ordination system of most churches wouldn’t support it. But many ministers I know today didn’t grow up in church.
There’s also something about the averages that makes this hard to assess, about being best at what you’re used to (which sounds like a truism when you put it that way). I grew up in a congregation which saw 150-200 most Sundays, with Christmas Eve and Easter up over 300 to 400 some years in the 1960s. That church, like many of its type, is down to closer to 50 a Sunday now.
Myself, over the years I came into a number of churches which may have had hundreds or even a thousand “on the books” as members, but in the crucial “how many show up” metric, they were 100 or so most Sundays, 200ish for the big days. I helped get most of them up to the 150 neighborhood on an average, but found getting past that and staying there, well, challenging.
Is that because I’ve served traditional style worship type churches my whole time in ministry? Surely that’s part of it. Could it be I just don’t have the gifts and graces to get a congregation to push past the discomforts and challenges of growing over 150 a Sunday consistently? I’m probably not the one to answer that question.
The mid-sized church, nowhere near mega in any way, but larger than a “small church,” is what many observers note is steadily vanishing from the American religious landscape. Like retail, to make a dangerous comparison, the old Mom & Pop stores on Main Street, or even more hazardously, corner taverns, have largely vanished, and we have the extremes showing growth: big box retailers, and very small boutiques. The middle is hollowing out.
Ryan Burge, the noted demographer and analyst of mainline religious trends and wider faith developments, wrote earlier in this year a book about just this: “The Vanishing Church” by Brazos Press. In it he talks about the hollowing of American Protestant Christianity, and what it means for the national discourse in general. I commend it to your attention if you’re interested in churches of the sort we’re discussing here.
His last two chapters invite us to think about first “How Polarized Are We, Really?” (which is pretty bad, if you ask me, but there’s still a pretty large middle ground) and finally to stand on hope, affirming that “Not All Is Lost.”
Middle-sized churches all over the Midwest, which is all I can speak to personally, have gone from 150 a Sunday to 75 or even 50. Small congregations of 40 are more like 20 or 12. They can’t support a full-time minister, which is what they’ve been used to since not long after V-E Day, even though the historian in me notes it wasn’t a norm for the century before the Depression (which like COVID, complicates all sorts of statistics).
Should they all just close? I’m with Ryan: no. But many will. The moderate center has a place, but it’s going to have to work differently. Let’s come back to that idea, and apply both some hope, and practical thinking.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s preached in almost every sized church you can think of, and what’s in common is key. Tell him what you think unites faith communities at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
No comments:
Post a Comment