My Musings as a Pastor of a Small Church

People are often surprised when they visit our ministry at New Hope. For many, they come expecting our ministry to be much larger in size than it actually is. I suppose some of this expectation is fueled by our online presence as well as the various projects I personally engage in throughout the week.

Quite honestly, I somewhat enjoy the surprise (or even the body language of disappointment from time to time) that people express. You see, we currently have two campuses that together total maybe 100 adults…just maybe.

People often ask me, in light of my background in leading both larger and smaller ministries, what I think is better. My answer: They both have challenges.

For the larger church, I think one of the greatest challenges is to NOT think that you’re superior or more legit than a smaller ministry. Unfortunately, I have witnessed several leaders of large ministries change their body language or tone of voice when they come to realize the size of the ministry I currently lead. Let the ignoring begin. Seriously? Yes. Contrastingly, I’ve also seen people’s postures change when they come to realize that I’ve created some projects and events that they respect. Suddenly, I become someone they want to listen to. This is equally unfortunate. One minute I’m a nobody and then the all of a sudden I magically turn into someone important.

Note to self: Becoming a big-time Christian celebrity is not my goal in life nor is treating fellow human beings as less than equals. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that we should treat others better more highly than ourselves.

For the smaller church leader, I think one of our greatest challenges is to NOT buy into our tendency to cover our own inadequacies and wants by projecting negativity towards larger ministries. We must not exist to compete against the mega. If criticizing a larger ministry only makes you feel better about yourself and your ministry, isn’t that nothing more than narcissism fleshed out? Let’s stop saying that we are more authentic, intimate, real, and people-focused. In my opinion, these kind of comments are arrogance verbalized.

I’ll be honest. It is extremely difficult not to feel like a failure in a culture that measures success by numbers. Furthermore, the insecurity that most of us leaders, both in larger and smaller ministries, work so hard to hide can cause us to hold a delusional perspective on who we are and the significance of what we’re doing.

Let’s not forget that we’re on the same team. We’re suppose to be ONE CHURCH. Embodying the belief and practice that we ought to treat others better than ourselves will take us a long way towards unity.

Unlike an airplane emergency drill, please get oxygen to the other person sitting next to you before putting it on yourself. Get fresh air to the other and hopefully they’ll do the same for you.

 

14 Comments »

1. Great article. Very helpful. Thank you.

   Comment by @vicpass - Jul 06, 2010 @ 11:15 AM

2. “I’ll be honest. It is extremely difficult not to feel like a failure in a culture that measures success by numbers. Furthermore, the insecurity that most of us leaders, both in larger and smaller ministries, work so hard to hide can cause us to hold a delusional perspective on who we are and the significance of what we’re doing.”

   -this was powerful for me; thank you for writing this article.  hope to see you soon!

   Comment by LV Hanson - Jul 06, 2010 @ 12:14 PM

3. Off of the same quote that LV pulled, it is very sad to see that in any industry, whether it be in ministry or a secular company, numbers tend to be the deciding factor and measuring tool of success. When it comes to purpose and integrity…Numbers cannot measure these things. Whether one hundred lives changed or one life changed—Your actions are a continued influence that cannot be measure by numbers—-I have to constantly remeber that I am not a failure—I just remeber that this life is not my own and each breath and each moment requires surrender. Loved the insight!!! Thank-you Charles Lee.

   Comment by Rena Kosiek - Jul 12, 2010 @ 03:22 PM

4. you made 2 statements that I picked up on. 
   The one quoted above:  I graduated from Pastoral education and have yet to pick up a church as full time.  I feel like a failure.  Passed over by a guys with better perma-grins and pressed suits.  16 years later my ministry is to be a pastor informally and relationally.  I still feel like a failure, but at least I feel like I make a little impact. I now feel like maybe I’m to start a church plant.  wresteling with it for sure.

   the second one: “Let’s not forget that we’re on the same team. We’re suppose to be ONE CHURCH.”  I’ve called churches, associations and more to try and gain wisdom on how start a church plant.  0 have returned a call or even bothered to e-mail a simple “I’m too busy for you” response.  The Ego of those with higher credentials is nauseating to the lost world.  Your approach to a non-ego centric ministry is appealing to me because of the impact i’ve seen in peoples’ lives and because of my journey.  I feel kind of like the prophet Amos.  The shepherd w/o any credentials who could only say “God told me to do it”

   Thanks for your words.

   Comment by C Parks - Jul 13, 2010 @ 09:25 PM

5. Thanks everyone for your comments. I’m moved by your honesty and vulnerability in stating your thoughts.

   LV, you’re amazing friend. Need to catch up soon!

   Rena, “I have to constantly remember that I am not a failure-I just remember that this life is not my own and each breath and each moment requires surrender.” Love it. Often, the most basic and simple insights can get us back on track. Thanks for sharing.

   C Parks, wow. I really appreciate your willingness to share your journey. So sorry to hear about the lack of reciprocal interest you’ve experienced. Love to see how God uses your experiences to produce something beautiful. If God told you to do it, stay faithful.

   Comment by Charles Lee - Jul 15, 2010 @ 02:17 AM

6. I pastored in a very small town with two churches: “the big church” and ours.  There was a lot of negativity about them, but I became best friends with the pastor there, and I encouraged our smaller church to look at what we did well.  Our church became known as “the friendly church” - which really fit us.  And that wasn’t negative, like the “small” label was.

   Comment by Rev. Run - Jul 15, 2010 @ 07:39 AM

7. Numbers should never be the measure of a church.  Humility and faithfulness however should be at the top. 

   Thank you for bringing this topic up Charles.

   Comment by RC - Jul 15, 2010 @ 10:12 AM

8. I agree with Charles’ comments about the numbers issue.  We’ve been in the mega church, where my husband was worked way too hard, for the numbers.  Yet it was a much better atmosphere than the two small churches he now pastors.  At least there was real outreach going on.  The small churches are, as you say “narcissistic”, to say the least.  There is a spirit of “we will not change” for anyone, for the community, to reach others in need, we want what we want. . . . tradition.  It’s really a waste for what my husband has to offer.  I can’t imagine the desire to be in small church ministry again.  We are frozen out, and burned out.  God help us pay attention to the world in need.  God bless you!

   Comment by Catalina - Jul 15, 2010 @ 11:42 AM

9. Great article… We live in a success-driven culture that instantly idolizes “success” and “numbers”. There are so many factors that contribute to church growth such as marketing, money, location, etc. We have no idea how most churches were started and the support (or lack thereof) they’ve had. The church is ONE body but is manifested in many local “bodies”. Bodies can come in all shapes and sizes: big, little, athletic, over-weight, skinny, etc. Valuing and esteeming others better than oneself is humbling recognizing that what we have (regardless of size) is a gift from God. Thanks Charles!

   Comment by Steve - Jul 15, 2010 @ 03:48 PM

10. Great thoughts. As a pastor of a small church in a small rural area I can relate to your comments. I have been at this church since 1991 and have come to realize that we will never be a big church and that needs to be ok. The biggest church in our town is about 400 people on average on Sunday so I would say we are a small town full of small churches.

    One thought that I have been thinking about is how I can get caught up in what the the bigger churches are doing. I sometimes find myself just watching them do what ever they do and forget the what God has called me do in the context of my church.

    Our church has taken advantage of large church programs and resources and are affiliated as a Network Church of LifeChurch.tv. This has allowed us to offer quality and innovative ministry to our community.

    It is interesting that since we have a large facility (an old National Guard Armory) and are well connected in our community people are surprised on how small our church is actually. We average under 100 people on Sunday

    One of the lessons I have learned about ministry is that no matter how small or large of church may be we have a huge mission to take on. We have to be creative, innovative and have to work with all that we have in our approach towards this mission. We have a great big God that will supply all our needs and is more powerful than any issue we may face.

    God Bless

    Comment by Steve Kirkeby - Jul 15, 2010 @ 06:41 PM

11. Rev Run, it is interesting how language can alter perspective. Good point.

    Catalina, it sounds like you and your husband have been through a lot. Will be praying for you and your ministry. May God refresh your soul. Honored that you stopped by to give your honest input.

    Well said both Steve’s!

    Pastor Kirkeby, love how you are integrating some of the best practices and resources to fit your context. So practical. You’re absolutely right - the mission is too big for any one church! Well said.

    Comment by Charles Lee - Jul 15, 2010 @ 06:49 PM

12. Love it.  I have served as a pastor in both larger and small churches and resonate very much with what you shared and am inspired by your gracious way of expressing it. Thanks.

    Comment by Frank - Jul 15, 2010 @ 09:01 PM

13. Charles, thanks for this perspective! It is so important to remember that sharing faith is not (or at its best should not) be a zero sum game.  I think it’s personal egos that create that environment.  There’s a very simple truth that small and large churches alike can look at for perspective - nature abhors a vacuum.  When we allow God’s will to be done, those spaces of “nothing” are filled with something.  Mega churches will always fall short in being all things to all congregants.  Small churches can never have the same reach in the community.  But as many have pointed out, it isn’t about the numbers.  The only real number that is important is one.  Have you brought God’s love to one person?  Have you authentically connected one unconnected soul?  If so, does not God see your ministry as a success?

    Comment by Christopher Wiseman - Jul 18, 2010 @ 06:25 AM

14. Good article .. Thank you very much
    I want to know your point of view in this article

    Scalability and User Interfaces.

    A friend of mine was showing me the brand new web based ERP system that was developed for his medium sized company. He was very happy with its usability and ease of use. He showed me how you can drag and drop employees on the organization chart to change their positions. It was really easy to use.

    But it had one flow, it was not scalable. Usually when we talk about scalability in our business we mean how an application can be able to take a larger number of users without changing it. But here was a slightly different type of scalability, user interface scalability. Simply put drag and drop works very well for small data sets. When he was showing me the drag and drop on the org chart there were only a few dozen people on the org chart. If that org chart was fully populated with hundreds of people drag and drop would be much harder since you will need to scroll. Now imagine that you have a thousand employees, not only will you need to scroll a lot but you will also need to filter or search to find the correct person.

    There are solutions to make drag and drop scale, like adding filters and having a two pane screen where you filter in one part of the screen and then drag and drop to the other part of the screen, but in all such cases the speed and ease of use of drag and drop is reduced, and more logical choices for large data sets will be better. One such choice is the right click and move to menu that is common in many email clients. You right click on the element you want to move, you select move and then you get a filterable selection box of where you want to move your element. Of coarse the issue with right click these days is that you can not implement it well for the ipad for that you need to read my blog post about the ipad and its effect on web design.

    So what seamed like a good interface will actually be useless once the number of employees grows or once you start to actually deploy the system and put your data in it.

    At El Motaheda Web we are well aware of these issues and we choose the systems that we offer you with care. Most systems we use will work equally well for a small company as for a large company with thousands of users.

    Let us take a small example from WebGUI which is the content management system we use to power all our web sites and the web sites of our clients. Although WebGUI has drag and drop within a content page, where you can re-arrange parts of a page by dragging and dropping, you have a different interface for rearranging the pages withing a web site. Why, simply because if generally you will not have more than 10 elements in a web page, so drag and drop is perfect, but you can have thousands of pages in a web site and here drag and drop is not really suitable. WebGUI can handle thousands of pages easily, our site mashy.com has over 50,000 pages and the official portal of the Ahly club ahlyegypt.com nearly as many pages as mashy.com.

    Comment by ElMothaeda Web - Jul 22, 2010 @ 05:01 AM

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