In 1990, our family moved to Walnut from Pasadena to open a real estate office. (We closed that office a year ago due to the downturn, but that’s another story.)
We started attending a small church that met at an elementary school, because we knew a few people there and because the pastor was our client – we sold him his house. 🙂
We’ve been at this same church for just about 20 years now. Many of my friends have left, and that pastor is now at another church. Staying at a church for this long is no small feat for me. I am the type of person who quits easily. I don’t finish craft projects, I almost quit grad school at the last semester, I like to make changes in my life once in a while. I make my husband move furniture around, just for a change. Previous to this I attended several churches for shorter periods of time.
Why did we stay at the church for 20 years? I really don’t know, other than it’s God plan for us. And as a result, I see the many benefits of being at a small church.
Many people think that a small church is “unsuccessful” while big churches with lots of people are “successful”. This is simply not true.
God purposely reduced the size of Gideon’s army from 32,000 down to 300Â to accomplish his work. I am not saying that we should desire to remain small, or that we should not try to reach more people to come to our church. I am saying that the size of a church is not the main focus. God’s work can be accomplished, no matter the size, big or small.
Here is what I’ve found to be the benefits of being a part of a small church:
1. You learn to focus on God, not people. In a large church, there is inevitably a lot of socializing and friendship connections. This is a good thing, but it can also be the only thing that keeps people going to church. They go because their friends are there. But in a small church, there is potentially less distraction. A young woman in our church gave her testimony saying that she came to our church because she didn’t want to go to a large church with lots of single men to distract her from God. (Ironically she ended up marrying one of the few single guys at our church…God works in mysterious ways.)
2. Things are simple. There’s not a lot of bureaucracy. If I want to start a discipleship group, or bring flowers to decorate the church, no one would object.
3. There is personal attention and people know you. Yes, people can still slip through the cracks. But if you go to a small church, you would expect to participate actively, or you will have to put up with being hounded by people who keeps asking you to get involved.
This past Sunday, I had only 4 kids in my Sunday School class. “A”, a fourth-grader said to me, “I like it like this.” I kind of like it too. With only 4 kids, we can do a lot of fun stuff that you can’t do with 20 kids in a class.
But I reminded A that we should always welcome new friends, and not be too comfortable being with our small group of buddies.
Of course, I am the first to admit that our small church has many shortcomings. But why focus on those? If we believe God has a purpose for our small church, then we can be assured that He will accomplish it. Maybe He is using this church to grow just a few specific people… maybe He is using this church just to grow me.