Encouraging a new view of small churches

Although smaller churches dominate the religious landscape in Canada and the U.S., congregations with attendance figures of less than 75 tend to get a bad rap in church growth circles. Lewis Parks, director of the small church initiative at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., has made it his mission to do something about the myths and half-truths that tend to distort thinking about small churches, and he shared his ideas with Leadership Council in mid-October.

Drawing upon an approach known as “appreciative inquiry,” Parks reminds us that:

God loves small churches, too.
A small church is not necessarily a failed larger church. The large church is not necessarily the future of Christianity. It takes small, mid-sized, and large churches to accomplish God’s purposes.
Small churches are not exempt from the call to health and vitality in ministry. In every small church, something works.
What we focus on in the church (large, mid-sized, or small) becomes our reality (Philippians 4:8).
People in small churches have more confidence to journey toward the future when they carry forward the best parts of their past.

Small churches that esteem the best of their past and what works in the present are capable of producing “provocative propositions” to take them to the future.

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