Pastoring the Small Church

Remaining Faithful in a Big Church World

Moore

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781630870232
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione

With humor and candor, Eric Moore addresses common challenges that the pastor of the small church encounters on a daily basis. As the pastor of a small church, he shares stories from his own experience and provides biblical and common-sense solutions to the issues that pastors face. If you pastor a small church, then you are a key part of God's program. This book will encourage and remind you of the importance of your calling.

1

Whatcha Running?

“I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift . . .”

—Ecclesiastes 9:11a

During my college years, I had a 1969 Camaro. I bought it for three hundred dollars, and spent all summer using my hard-earned money to fix it up and to make it look good. I bought new rims, new tires, and put headers on the exhaust system. I replaced the old carburetor with a Holley® brand high performance carburetor. My stereo was state of the art. The worn out shocks were upgraded to the expensive air shocks that lifted the rear end high enough to get a nosebleed. To make it look even better, I tossed the big steering wheel and replaced it with a 7-inch diameter wheel, and I replaced the carpet with blue bathroom plush carpet of the day. The old paint was stripped, and new midnight blue metallic flake paint was applied with an additional coat of clear. As I told my buddies, a fly couldn’t land on the car without slipping and breaking its neck.

This car was my pride and joy.

One of the questions that the real hot-rodders (I was a wannabe) would ask is, “Whatcha running?” to see if I was “all show and no go.” In essence, they wanted to know what was under the hood. This question was always posed before they asked me if I wanted to race. Of course, I always had a reason why today was not a good day to race. Actually, no day was a good day.

This is what I thought the phrase, “Whatcha running?” meant, that is, until I began pastoring a church. Those of us who are pastors of a small church understand what “Whatcha running?” really means.

It is a phrase that pastors use when they get together and start the small talk. The comparison begins after the initial greetings and pleasantries in order to size up one another. As we have our conversation, inevitably someone says “Whatcha Running?”—that translates into, “How many people do you have attending on Sunday morning?”

Unfortunately, we are evaluated upon how many people we have in the seats. Inevitably, those of us who are not “running” as much as others want to include everybody in the count: the dads, moms, children, pets, dolls and anything else that we can claim as something that fills the seats. I have often wondered why that question sends a chill down my spine, and why it causes so much anxiety in my heart. Is it because I measure my self-worth as a pastor by how many people attend our church? No doubt there are many small-church pastors who feel the same way. They are faithful in preaching, faithful in outreach, faithful in trying to minster to their people, have read all the books, and gone to all the seminars. They have tried to do everything that the Christian marketing masters have told them to do, and yet, they find out that they are not “running” what they thought they should.

Of course, inevitably this causes discouragement when one has put their heart and soul into the ministry and the results are not what they anticipated they should be. Not only do they receive discouragement from other pastors, but also discouragement from well-wishers. Have you noticed how often well-wishers also want to know “Whatcha running?” They don’t use that phrase. They just ask, “How many people attend your church?”

How do you respond to that? Is it how many people are there on Easter? How many people are there on Christmas? How many people are there on Mother’s Day? Or how many people are there in the midst of the summer when everybody’s on vacation and it is just you and two other people in the church: one of them is your wife and the other is your kid?

“Whatcha running?”

It seems that whatever number you give is never large enough. After you have done the calculation in your head of adding the total attendance for the year and dividing it by the 52 Sundays of the year, subtracting the outliers of the high and low Sundays as to not eschew the statistical results for the purpose of plotting an accurate bell curve of results. When you give the most accurate number you can, it is always followed by a kind smile and statement, “Don’t worry, I’m sure it will grow.”

The metrics for growing a church are normally listed as the ABCs of church growth. The letter A stands for attendance, B stands for building(s), and C stands for cash. You can peruse any Christian bookstore and read some of the more popular church growth authors and you will see an emphasis (or over-emphasis) on attendance. The popular authors encourage us to spread a broad net to bring in all the people that we can. This is for the purpose of reaching them for Jesus Christ. If we are successful in bringing in many people, then we find ourselves in a situation where we either need to increase the number of worship services or enlarge our building. Either of these options shows that we are a successful church. Of course, the more that we have in attendance, the more money is given to the ministry and the more that we are able to do for the Kingdom of God.

All of this sounds extremely spiritual, and it probably is, but it usually does not work for the small church pastor. The pastor of a small church has probably tried a number of evangelistic efforts to little or no avail. The building that he uses is probably old and in need of repair. The budget does not change much from year to year, because the same people that were giving last year will be the same people giving this year. No wonder he is discouraged when he runs into church pastors whose churches are growing by 10–25 percent per year, with an increasing budget and building expansions. We have all heard it, “If it is healthy, it should be growing.” So what is the problem?

I would like to propose an additional letter to the ABC’s of church growth: letter D for Depth or spiritual growth. Often (but not always), the churches that are effective at doing letters A, B and C are not doing a great job at letter D. On the other hand, small churches have the greatest opportunity for spiritual growth. In many respects, they have the small group community that many of the large churches are trying to emulate.

Large churches have their share of challenges. Two of these areas are living in genuine community and discipleship. In the book entitled, Move, Bill Hybels states,

18 percent of our congregation—more than 1,000 people—had stalled spiritually and didn’t know what to do about it. Many were considering leaving. And some of our most mature and fired up Christians wanted to go deeper in their faith and be challenged more but felt as if our church wasn’t helping them get to the next level.1

One of the advantages of a small church is the close contact that the pastor has with his sheep. Community and discipleship emanate out of the small church.

I am reminded of a few select passages in Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. Usually we go to chapters four and five of 1 Thessalonians for the purpose of explaining the eschatological events regarding the Rapture and the Day of the Lord. However, in doing that, we often miss the purpose for which Paul wrote concerning those events. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17, Paul gives the details regarding the Rapture, but in verse 18 of that same chapter, he tells the Thessalonians, “Therefore comfort one another with these words.” In chapter five, he continues to explain the events regarding the Day of the Lord. When he gets to verse 11, he tells them “Therefore, encourage one another and build up one another.” He continues on in verse 13 of the same chapter telling them to “live in peace with one another.” In verse 15, he tells them to seek after that which is “good for one another.”

As you can see, there are a number of verses with regards to the body ministering to the body. Ministry happens in close-knit relationships. Generally, people have to know one another in order to minister to one another effectively. This is where the small church has its advantage: real community happens in small groups. Once again, the small church by definition is a small group.

As pastors, our challenge is to get the small church to look outward, while not getting discouraged with the poor results. The small church has been criticized for being ingrown and introspective rather than missional, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Real spiritual growth will include outreach to the community. The goal of the small church pastor is to lead his people to live with the tension of the needs of the body of Christ and the needs of the masses. Both are important to the Lord.

I love the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation. I’ve heard my share of sermons on the church of Ephesus and the church of Laodicea. I am amazed at how often non-large church people will automatically associate the church of Laodicea with large churches. “See, pastor, large churches are condemned by God for relying on their resources.” I am intrigued by this form of biblical interpretation. Hopefully, they didn’t learn this from one of my sermons. In my experience, God has used large, Christ-centered churches to be a great source of support. I believe God raises up large, medium and small churches to His glory. However, small churches (and their pastors) can have an inferiority complex if they are not careful. This should not be.

Whenever this inferiority complex begins to creep into my thoughts, I remind myself of the church of Philadelphia in the Book of Revelation. There is something intriguing about this church. Jesus stated,

7 And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this: 8 ‘I know your deeds. Behold, I have put before you an open door which no one can shut, because you have a little power, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name.’

Although this church had “a little power,” God had opened a door that nobody could shut. Let me repeat this in case you just drifted. God had opened a door that no person could shut because this church had little power, and had remained faithful to the Lord. Is this not the plight of the small church? We have...