Small Is the New Big

Or why I never want to pastor a large congregation

Photo by Terren Hurst on Unsplash

(A five-minute read.)

Over the course of my ministry, I’ve had a number of opportunities to pastor much larger congregations. I don’t say this to brag or boast, but to simply give context for what I’m going to share—and to let you know that I practice what I preach.

But whenever such opportunities present themselves, I always think to myself (among other things), Why would anyone in their right mind ever want to pastor a big church? It doesn’t make sense to me. It sounds like something that would crush my soul.

As with most occupational fields, pastors typically want to “climb the ladder.” And usually “climbing the ladder” consists of progressively pastoring bigger and bigger churches.

You start with a church of 50 and then maybe a few years later you get a church of 150. And then 300 and then 700 and then 1,000. And maybe even someday you’ll find yourself pastoring the equivalent of a “megachurch” in my denomination (i.e., a church that is connected to some sort of Seventh-day Adventist institution—like a hospital or university—since that is essentially the only place we have really large congregations).

That is the “pastoral dream.”

For me it sounds like a nightmare.

I’m sure there are many reasons for my distaste for the idea, including the fact that I’m a Millennial (and, from what I understand, Millennial/Gen Z pastors are less interested in “climbing” the pastoral “ladder”).

But more than anything, I like—and feel fairly convicted that the story of Scripture promotes—ministry that entails intimacy, connection, and vulnerability. I want to know the people I lead and I want to be known by them. I don’t want to stand on a stage and perform for the “nameless” masses. That feels inauthentic and—to some degree—transactional.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve pastored some very small churches that had very big dysfunction.[†] So “small” isn’t automatically better.

But I would much prefer leading a church of 40 or 50 committed, happy, and healthy followers of Jesus than a church of 400 or 500 (even if those 400 or 500 are committed, happy, and healthy as well).

Why do I say this?

Again, for the above reasons: intimacy, connection, vulnerability.

I’d also add discipleship.

I don’t think the original intent of Christianity was to be obsessed with trying to figure out how to get as many people as possible into a room together. That seems to be one of the great metrics of Christian “success” today though. We are infatuated with numbers. So much of our determination about whether a program or event was “successful” is based on how many people showed up (we’re always obsessively asking the question, “How many people were there?”).

And so often pastors judge their self-worth and effectiveness based on the same thing.

But drawing a larger crowd can often be hallow for many reasons—including the fact that you start to feel like you must keep performing to get the crowd to keep coming back.

The intent of Christianity is not to draw a crowd though. The intent of Christianity is to connect people—to Christ, to themselves, to one another, to the world—in a way that helps them become more fully human. It is to ground them and form them and shape them and move them in love.

And I generally tend to think that the larger the group is the harder it is to pull that off. For many reasons.

I also tend to think that our current cultural moment—at least in the West—has a greater appetite for smaller over bigger. Small is the new big. Small has more cultural cachet.

Though you’ll certainly still find plenty of people who go to megachurches, I think you’ll find even more who are done with performative Christianity (in all senses of the term “performative”).

Ellen White, my favorite theologian, was thus perhaps prescient on this point when she wrote in 1900 that Christ’s “work was largely made up of personal interviews. He had a faithful regard for the one-soul audience.”

The “one-soul audience” is where the good stuff happens (a three- or four- or twelve-soul audience ain’t so bad either). It’s where real life happens. It’s where we can truly know and truly be known.

Very little of that can really happen by being a face in the crowd. Unfortunately, though, that’s generally the primary spiritual diet for most Christians—showing up to a room once a week and passively sitting through a program. Rinse and repeat.

Granted, I realize that being a face in the crowd is the safest place for a person sometimes. Getting vulnerable and personal and intimate isn’t always, well, safe. So I’m not saying there’s no place for a larger gathering.

I also like to sing with a bunch of people. That, to me, is the greatest value of a larger crowd. There’s a reason many people get electrified by being at a concert.

But being in a large crowd can’t serve as our primary—and especially not our only—spiritual diet. And yet so often it is.

If I had my way, Christian organizations wouldn’t be allowed to have regular gatherings (“church services”) that have more than 50-80 people in attendance. Maybe no more than 25-30.

And no Christian organization would be allowed to build a “church” that seats more than that (it’s funny how much the size of our physical spaces influences our attitude as to whether we think a program was a success or not. Even I hate to have only 25-30 people show up for a program in a room that holds 250-300 [or even 100], when I’d feel perfectly content to have 25-30 people in a room that holds . . . 25-30 people).

And no Christian would ever be able to ask again, “How many people were there?” That’s largely an irrelevant question which doesn’t reveal much.

So, again, give me a group of a dozen (or two or three) Christ-followers who are committed to the way of Jesus any day over a larger group that’s committed to being a crowd.

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[†] My apologies to any former members of mine who are reading this—though I suspect that if you’re reading this, you are already well-aware of the dysfunction. And you are probably well-aware that I may have contributed, or been the main cause of, that dysfunction.

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Shawn is a pastor and church planter in Portland, Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational and embodied expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.