Church Planting Opinion: Smallness as an advantage
Church plants are not supposed to be competitive with other churches. You have other mountains to climb and other battles to fight. You try to do your best not compete with the established churches in your city. The point is to reach new people for Jesus and get unconnected people back into a church, not outperform the church down the road.
So, when I say smallness as an advantage, I don’t mean competition against established churches. The only thing we are competing with is the world. Smallness can be a competitive advantage in our battle against Satan.
What are small churches inherently good at? Lots of things.
First, small churches are usually much better at meeting new people. When you have twenty five people, it is pretty obvious when someone new shows up. You don’t need a system, just a pair of eyes. If you have 250, it is a little bit harder. If you are a small church, you have enormous “friendly” potential as a small church.
I would make it a point to personally follow up with anyone who comes to a service and is not connected to a church. A personal email or social media message from the pastor goes a long way. Better still if you can grab coffee with them to hear their story and how you can serve them.
Second, small churches are much better at getting people involved. Your church plant probably needs help right away doing a number of different things. There doesn’t need to be a long process that precedes people volunteering. More than that, you can help people feel valued. Once people stick around for four or five weeks, we’ll email them asking if they would like to help out. Our campus ministry used to say, “involvement breeds commitment.” Get people involved.
Third, small churches can do remarkably unscalable events. When you are 15 or 30 or 50 people, you can have house parties, you can go on trips together, you can have retreats, you can go out for food together, you can have beach days, pool parties and hiking trips. Just because you won’t be able to do a thing when you are a big church does not mean you shouldn’t do it now. In fact, now is the perfect time to do something a larger group couldn’t do. Plus, you might never be a big church.
How can you turn smallness to your advantage? Stop stressing about all the things big churches can do better and figure out how to help the kingdom of God with the size of church you have right now.
Do you want a free ebook of lessons, principles and stories from the front lines of church planting? Click here.
