Faith Works 9-25-2026
Jeff Gill
Size, scale, and seeing other people in church
___
We were just talking about hyperscale data centers and megachurches and the right size for a faith community.
It’s not a simple question. I am used to hearing people say an ideal church is one where everyone can know everyone. In this part of the Midwest, congregations of 70 to 100 a Sunday were once quite common, a hundred such or more in this county in the mid-1900s.
The idea that a religious community is best in the smaller range is echoed by a debate I’m on the edges of in a different context, about schools and education. You can find quite a few smart educators who will say the idea school system has about 150 to 250 tops per graduating class, which fits my experience and I’m happy to agree with that. This would mean a high school of 600 to a thousand.
But my beloved spouse graduated from an urban high school where her graduating class was some 1,200 students, and commencement was at the state fairgrounds. She isn’t a highly extroverted person, nor from financial privilege, but she states that her high school experience was just fine by her. This slows me up from saying a high school as a whole should never be larger than a thousand students in the building.
My own personal experience and preferences makes me think a Christian local assembly should be about 100 to 150 a Sunday, and if it got larger, should probably split off to found new churches, to maintain the human scale of personal relationships. But in 2026, and not just recently, to have a full time ordained minister with a full time compensation including health care coverage of some sort requires you have (generally speaking) 150 to 200 a Sunday. Anything less than that, and you’re probably not really offering a full time compensation package.
So economics pushes the idea of a larger church, even if you can’t all know each other, more like 200 or more a Sunday. Yet I’ve had conversations both recently and years ago with folks looking for a larger church simply because, well, they wanted to attend somewhere that was big enough that everyone didn’t know them, and know their business. They see a small congregation, and they suspect they’ll be a trustee in half a heartbeat just because they have a pulse and two brain cells to rub together.
In fact, back in the late 1970s, my relatively elderly great-aunts started attending a very early non-denominational mega-ish-church in the Chicago suburbs (Christ Church Oakbrook, you can look them up), in large part because they wanted to go somewhere two retired teachers could attend and not be dragooned into teaching Sunday school. The size, and yes, the relative anonymity was attractive.
And not very long ago on a community board, a person asked the social media throngs about churches to attend, mentioning “it needs to be big enough I can just kind of fit in without standing out.” Yeah. Okay.
Look, it’s easy to snark. Those of us used to smaller, more familial congregations might say the urge to blend in and be anonymous in a larger church is a subtle sort of sin itself, a desire to not have to serve and just be one among many. But if you’ve served long and well, and want to just worship: a bigger worship service can be very soothing.
I am not saying everyone attending a mega church is just wanting to fade into the woodwork, but it’s part of the appeal. Even more so is the guarantee that a big church has a big youth group, and youth often crave the comfort of numbers, too.
What is the right size for a church of whatever type? How can we know what’s the right size for us?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s still thinking about size and community and anonymity. Tell him what you think at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
Size, scale, and seeing other people in church
___
We were just talking about hyperscale data centers and megachurches and the right size for a faith community.
It’s not a simple question. I am used to hearing people say an ideal church is one where everyone can know everyone. In this part of the Midwest, congregations of 70 to 100 a Sunday were once quite common, a hundred such or more in this county in the mid-1900s.
The idea that a religious community is best in the smaller range is echoed by a debate I’m on the edges of in a different context, about schools and education. You can find quite a few smart educators who will say the idea school system has about 150 to 250 tops per graduating class, which fits my experience and I’m happy to agree with that. This would mean a high school of 600 to a thousand.
But my beloved spouse graduated from an urban high school where her graduating class was some 1,200 students, and commencement was at the state fairgrounds. She isn’t a highly extroverted person, nor from financial privilege, but she states that her high school experience was just fine by her. This slows me up from saying a high school as a whole should never be larger than a thousand students in the building.
My own personal experience and preferences makes me think a Christian local assembly should be about 100 to 150 a Sunday, and if it got larger, should probably split off to found new churches, to maintain the human scale of personal relationships. But in 2026, and not just recently, to have a full time ordained minister with a full time compensation including health care coverage of some sort requires you have (generally speaking) 150 to 200 a Sunday. Anything less than that, and you’re probably not really offering a full time compensation package.
So economics pushes the idea of a larger church, even if you can’t all know each other, more like 200 or more a Sunday. Yet I’ve had conversations both recently and years ago with folks looking for a larger church simply because, well, they wanted to attend somewhere that was big enough that everyone didn’t know them, and know their business. They see a small congregation, and they suspect they’ll be a trustee in half a heartbeat just because they have a pulse and two brain cells to rub together.
In fact, back in the late 1970s, my relatively elderly great-aunts started attending a very early non-denominational mega-ish-church in the Chicago suburbs (Christ Church Oakbrook, you can look them up), in large part because they wanted to go somewhere two retired teachers could attend and not be dragooned into teaching Sunday school. The size, and yes, the relative anonymity was attractive.
And not very long ago on a community board, a person asked the social media throngs about churches to attend, mentioning “it needs to be big enough I can just kind of fit in without standing out.” Yeah. Okay.
Look, it’s easy to snark. Those of us used to smaller, more familial congregations might say the urge to blend in and be anonymous in a larger church is a subtle sort of sin itself, a desire to not have to serve and just be one among many. But if you’ve served long and well, and want to just worship: a bigger worship service can be very soothing.
I am not saying everyone attending a mega church is just wanting to fade into the woodwork, but it’s part of the appeal. Even more so is the guarantee that a big church has a big youth group, and youth often crave the comfort of numbers, too.
What is the right size for a church of whatever type? How can we know what’s the right size for us?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s still thinking about size and community and anonymity. Tell him what you think at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
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