It can often feel as though smaller churches cannot compete with larger ones. By compete, I don’t mean that in any negative way. I just mean it can be all too easy when you’re a little church to look to much larger churches and wish you could do all the things they do. It is usually the precursor to taking another hard look at yourself and realising that you are in no such position to do most of it.
Nevertheless, two things are worth saying. First, the call on all churches is not to do what bigger, better resourced churches can do. Rather, the call on all churches is to make disciples, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and to teach them all that Jesus commands. Any church of any size and resource-level is in a position to do that to some degree.
The second thing worth saying, for all those things that larger, better resourced churches can do better than smaller congregations, there are things that the smaller church can do better than them. There are clearly some great things bigger churches can do that smaller churches can’t do so well. But the same is true in reverse. There are things smaller churches can do better than their bigger counterparts. Rather than focusing on the various things they can’t do, small churches do better focusing on doing well the things that they can do, which they may even do better than bigger places.
So, with that in mind, let me list a few of things that small churches can and should be able to do well. They don’t require great resources and they should easily be within our grasp. In no particular order, here are some things.
Prayer
It doesn’t cost anyone anything to pray. You can pray on your own, you can pray with a couple, you can pray with 10 people. You don’t have to be big to be good at praying. In fact, there are some ways it might be easier to pray more effectively when you’re small. You can know each other’s needs more easily and intimately, you can quickly fire out prayer requests and pray for them, you can devote yourself to prayer just as easily and readily as anyone else. All churches can pray; little churches can do this just as well, if not sometimes better, than bigger churches.
Welcome
Large churches can also be welcoming. But the best welcome in a larger church tends to require a great deal of practice and organisation. There need to be teams and systems set up to make it happen. But in a smaller church, it is much easier to notice new people. Welcome can happen much more orgnanically. Again, you can welcome people incredibly well even if you only have a couple of people. You don’t need a great deal of resource (if any) to make people feel welcome either. If you can get this right, you are likely to do a far greater job of retaining visitors to your church.
Teaching
The Word of God should be a priority for all churches. Whilst having a full-time pastor does require some resource, knowing that the Word should be central to all we do, if your resources are going to go anywhere, using them to appoint a full-time pastor dedicated to teaching and preaching would be a wise investment. A church that is praying hard, welcoming people meaningfully and whose teaching is solid is a church that any godly Christian should be open to joining.
Community presence
All churches are called to make disciples. Making disciples requires good teaching – passing on the faith once for all delivered to the saints – but it also requires reaching out to bring those who are currently outsiders into the church. Whilst little chuches may not have a great deal of resources (financial or human) to pour into large-scale evangelistic events and activities, they can nevertheless be a good presence in their community. All of us can live, work, operate, go to shops, use ameneties and join clubs in our community. The more we do this, the more we will have contact with people. The more contact we have, the more opportunity we have to speak of Christ, point people to him and direct people to the church where they can hear about him further. The kind of presence we have in our communities might differ depending on size, but we can all have a good presence in our communities.