The average church size in the United States is 70, and there are enough small churches that one would think, upon reflection, that perhaps people have chosen to cluster in small churches because of specific benefits; these would include the following:

Intimate and tightly-knit

Like a small town: easy to know what others are doing and what they are learning

Spiritually close

Some churches are small because their communities are small, or declining. Over time cities and towns change, and in many parts of the country, the small community is the norm and not the exception. Many churches, however, face the 200 barrier unrelated to the size of the community where they are located.

Most small churches in larger communities are small for social reasons, not spiritual reasons. We do not find biblical mandates for small fellowships anywhere in Scripture, and time and time again believers are charged with the task of unending outreach. Sadly, some small churches are small because the members want it that way, regardless of the biblical imperative for outreach.

Furthermore, in most small churches the staff and lay leadership are performing so many tasks that many of those tasks fall outside of their primary and secondary spiritual gifts. The net result is a group of believers serving in ministry roles they were not equipped to serve in, leading to frustration, mediocrity, and eventual burn out. If you look closely at a warm, tight-knit small church, you will find a lot of tired leaders doing ministry in areas they do not enjoy performing tasks they were not meant to do.

The 200 barrier is caused by several converging factors listed below. Several of these factors are very clear and easy to identify and correct.

Congregation Mindset

A small congregation, for the most part, has a "small" mindset and might even hold "small" as a spiritual value. Many think that larger churches are not godly because people actually attend them. Crowd-drawing then becomes a "secular" success instead of strategic ministry. To the contrary, many people attend larger churches because the service is done with excellence and the lay people can serve in their area of their giftedness and experience.

Many small-church congregants enjoy the fact that they all know and love each other, and hold tightly to their right to vote on everything. These mindsets must be changed in order for the church to grow, and the biblical mandate for evangelism must be explicitly taught.

A more difficult issue to pinpoint is the struggle with the sin of pride that some small-church congregants possess. Some people have a strong need to be known and loved and they cannot get that attention and status in a larger church. Sometimes without even realizing it small churchgoers will thwart every attempt to grow the church because of their own self-satisfying interests and their own need to be noticed. This "big fish in the small pond" disease is death to a growing church and must be confronted and eliminated.

Leader's Qualities and Choices

Pastors of churches between 0-200 tend to make choices to herd sheep instead of herd shepherds. Although some of these choices are based directly on the congregations' expectations to be "pastored" directly by the pastor whenever they need him, at other times these choices reflect what the pastor himself expects from his own leadership.

Pastors are tasked to equip the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4). One specific implication of this is the time consuming task of pastoral counseling. If pastors are truly to be equippers for ministry, then most senior pastors should immediately stop counseling everyone and set up lay leadership to handle much of the counseling load. How much better would the kingdom be impacted if people received counsel from someone who had the spiritual gift of discernment instead of the senior pastor who might not possess this gift in counseling situations?

Pastors of smaller churches also continually fall into the "manager's trap," where most of the time the leader is micro managing different ministries instead of letting go of the leadership reins and releasing ministry. Failures will happen with this strategy, but major successes will be won when people are mobilized and receive the call to do ministry in the trenches. Here are some specific behaviors of shepherds that limit the size of a flock and the contrasting behaviors of sheep ranchers who understand how to release ministry into the hands of others:

Five Behaviors of Sheep Herders:

Five Behaviors of Sheep Ranchers:

Leaders who want to see their churches grow must be biblical in their theology and effective in their leadership. The two are NOT in conflict! Help your church grow and be the leader God intends for you to be.