Maybe you remember the skit on “Sesame Street.” Ernie wants to learn to play the saxophone, and Mr. Hoots is ready to teach him. There is only one problem. Ernie is clutching his beloved duckie for dear life. Mr. Hoots explains to Ernie that to learn to play the saxophone, “Ya gotta put down the duckie.”
After spending my entire pastoral career working in large churches, I started a decade-long attempt at retirement (at which I am still failing miserably). Then, in 2016, I encountered a small church in a part of town I was unfamiliar with, where I had the opportunity to experiment with a training hub for young adult leaders: approximately 30 individuals who cycled through over five or six years.
The magic of this project was that the young people – students, professionals and recent graduates – were not just helpers. They were partners. Week in and week out, they carried the load of the church’s operation. Less than half of them were active in any church when they joined the hub, but this beautiful church held space for them to be not just spectators but real agents of ministry.
And my heart has not been the same since.
These days, on any given Sunday morning when I’m in Nashville, you’ll find me in one of two small Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) worshipping communities (around 30 congregants on a Sunday), both of which are bilingual (Spanish and English). These people have become my people. They laugh at my stumbling Spanish, and their warm embrace speaks more than mispronounced words ever could. They have been my teachers, my coconspirators, my prayer partners in fearful times.
Yes, I get to preach three or four times a year — but I am not their pastor. In fact, neither of these churches even has a pastor: installed, supply, commissioned lay or otherwise. The load of the ministry is carried out every week mostly by young people, supported by a wildly generous team of volunteers. Actually, “volunteers” may not be the right word. No one ever recruited
them to clean up after service, to vacuum, take out the trash, or wash the coffee pot. They see what needs to be done, and it gets done.
“For whoever has despised the day of small things…” Zechariah 4:10
By God’s grace, these two churches have multiple people with a theological education: some formally ordained, others theologically trained with no formal credentials, some trained in the U.S., some trained in their home countries, some working full-time jobs elsewhere, some pretending to be retired.
Things to love about small churches
Along this eight-and-a-half-year journey, I’ve learned a few things about small churches that I absolutely love.
Desperation can be a spiritual gift.
Many small church leaders (usually volunteers or very part-time folks) don’t need a crystal ball to see what lies ahead. Most can see that they are carrying an outsized maintenance load to keep up a building that is much larger than they need. They see that they can no longer afford a full-time or even half-time pastor and that their pews are populated with members whose heads are gray or bald.
As a result, many small churches are much more open to innovation, collaboration and outside-the-box thinking than are their large-membership sister churches down the road — churches with extensive staff, programming, budgets and endowments. In small churches, the people who care (that is, who care about more than having their funeral in the church someday) know that trying harder to do better at what hasn’t worked will not move their church forward. So they can be remarkably open to new winds of the Spirit.
No one is anonymous.
A small church is a place where you can be known. For the past seven years, I have observed with delight a tradition carried on by my Latino siblings. When they walk into church, they almost always personally greet everyone in the room before sitting down themselves — maybe with a handshake, perhaps a hug, maybe a masked fist bump, but everyone gets acknowledged by everyone.
Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a 2023 health advisory about the risks of loneliness and isolation. In that context, being known, being seen, just tends to happen when there are so few people that everyone really can know everyone else’s name. This practice embodies the Zulu greeting sawubona, which translates to “I see you.”
No one expects perfection.
Almost no one attending a church of 20 to 30 people is coming for its production value. In the larger churches where I have served, grammatical mistakes in the bulletin or newsletter can reap blistering critiques directed at the person responsible (all intended in Christian love, of course). In a big church, you’ve got to pay attention to the little stuff — at least the little stuff that people see, like grammar, spelling and formatting.
In a small church, almost nobody cares if there is a dud note on the piano, a misspelled word in the bulletin, a technology malfunction or a lack of donuts because the person on snack patrol forgot. Those with a high need for perfection don’t stay for long! Members have long since disavowed the illusion of perfection.
Don’t get me wrong. I hate bad grammar as much as the next obsessive-compulsive, English-major pastor who did get an A in advanced grammar class in college. (I’ve been waiting for the chance to share that tidbit for 45 years! Did I mention I’ve also run a marathon?) But given the limited time I have left on this earth, I’m delighted to worship in a place that is better at knowing people’s names and stories than at following the rules of grammar.
Special events can be really special.
In my large-membership church days, the bulletin was full of events to attend every single week. Our small churches, however, might hold three events a year, so those events matter. On Easter Sunday, we host an egg hunt for our community, featuring approximately 1,000 eggs. In August, we run a back-to-school event and offer gift cards for school supplies. These events are not just for fellowship that focuses on our own people. On these days, our attendance swells by double or triple our normal size as we celebrate our community.
Challenges of small churches
While small churches can bring out the best in us, let’s be honest. At times, they can bring out the worst. Being part of a small church can be challenging, and we bring some of that pain on ourselves.
Beware the power of no.
I have seen small churches led by those with little to no power in their personal lives, who seem to revel in exercising the power of saying no. Instead of working with the “yes … and” rule of improv (which keeps things moving and keeps momentum building), these folks may choose instead to find fault and put up roadblocks in the face of every attempt at creativity. (For someone looking to complain, the small church offers plenty of imperfections to choose from — see the third bullet in the previous section.)
And these churches wonder why young people are staying away in droves. Young people have good reason. One can easily see why most young adults view the church as the last place to support their crazy, wonderful ideas for making the world just a bit kinder. As one young adult told me, “The church is the place where great ideas go to die.”
We’re broke.
How many small churches are sitting on a million-dollar piece of unused property while they keep singing “We’re broke” as if that refrain were the church’s defining anthem? When a church is struggling under the weight of outsized property maintenance or a pastor’s salary (or usually both), sadly it has little reserve energy for anything beyond survival.
It’s worth asking, “Survival for what?”
Imagine a small church of 30 or fewer members starting from scratch. The last thing they would do would be to overload themselves with overhead costs. I believe that one reason these two small bilingual churches are thriving is that they have minimal overhead, thanks to sharing space with another congregation.
Beware the broken record.
Small, desperate churches sometimes cling to the strategies they know so well, and maybe even try to improve on them. “Maybe if we get the bulletin printed a day early. … Maybe if we had a nicer sign-up sheet for the bazaar. … Maybe if we got better organized in scheduling our preachers. … Maybe if we had shorter session meetings.”
Maybe … you’ve been there.
An obsessive focus on incremental improvement or efficient maintenance of the status quo can keep a church from asking the more complex, more critical questions…
There’s nothing wrong with any of these priorities, but they simply will not propel a small church into its next chapter or to greater thriving. An obsessive focus on incremental improvement or efficient maintenance of the status quo can keep a church from asking the more complex, more critical questions, like these:
- Is it time to consider doing something more creative with our building — something that might generate revenue and align with our mission?
- Who is not at the table right now that we need to listen to and learn from, so we can be a different kind of church 10 years from now (or even still exist 10 years from now)?
- What roles could we hire young people to do in our congregation? And how might we nurture them into a missional community that helps our congregation cocreate our future?
- What small risks can we take today that might help us become a more financially viable, more vibrant, more community-focused church?
Ways to make small churches thrive
Let me offer a modest proposal for creating a contagion of thriving, small churches — churches that focus on mission more than maintenance, on abundance more than scarcity.
Find a singular mission.
Just because a small church can’t do everything doesn’t mean it can’t have a big impact. I know of a church that dwindled to seven members and then developed a singular focus on creating a worshipping community for people with special needs and their families. This focus now underpins their only worship service. A number of churches support their worship and ministry by renting out their extensive space to nonprofits. Our small bilingual churches have focused on creating space and sharing resources for immigrants in our community. Whether it’s diapers, food staples or toys, we’re always collecting something for our neighbors outside the church.
Get creative about property.
A thriving small church cannot be consumed by property management and maintenance. A church with fewer than 30 people in attendance has no reason to maintain a building of 10,000 to 50,000 square feet. The attempt is an almost certain recipe for burning out and discouraging volunteers. This suggestion doesn’t necessarily mean selling the building. A growing number of experts help churches think creatively about innovative alternatives to carrying an outsized property load until the endowment is depleted.
Invest in young people.
Most small churches practice collective hand wringing, repeating tired choruses such as, “Where are all the young people?” “We used to …” “Without young people, we are just a dying church.” Unfortunately, most small churches’ attempts to attract young people are reduced (at best) to social media outreach or maybe even the hiring of a children and youth director, even when the church has exactly zero people in the interested demographics.
I have learned a little secret, one that I’m amazed is still a secret to most churches, large and small: Young people are not looking to be assimilated into well-publicized programming put on by baby boomers and Gen Xers. Young people today want to be agents, not spectators. (You may recall that Jesus’ disciples were treated as agents, not just as audience.) We’ve seen it work. Hiring young people to take on leadership in a congregation is a much more direct way of getting their buy-in and enthusiasm than trying to talk them into attending programs run by older generations.
One word of caution: I’m not talking about simply assimilating young people into the church’s culture, which rarely works. If you want young people to be a part of the fabric of your church, they need to be honored as co-creators of the church’s future, not just as passengers on an old bus that likes its route.
If you want young people to be a part of the fabric of your church, they need to be honored as co-creators of the church’s future, not just as passengers on an old bus that likes its route.
Get creative about leadership.
Small churches keep following a well-worn path for leadership: namely, they take a significant financial risk by hiring a single pastor (full-time or part-time), fully expecting that the new (usually young and inexperienced) minister will be able to grow the church out of its current malaise.
I’m not saying it has never worked. I’m saying I’ve never seen it work, not once.
This traditional approach can put immense pressure on the pastor to produce, that is, to get results … quickly. It can also set congregation members up to become unfiltered critics of the pastor when their would-be rescuer does not deliver the anticipated miracles. Small churches have other ways to provide leadership beyond betting on a single individual.
As we consider how hard we can find it to change our thinking about small churches, I’m reminded of “Sesame Street’s” Ernie, his rubber duckie, Mr. Hoots (“Sesame Street’s” jazz-loving owl) … and Nate Stucky, the founder of the Farminary at Princeton Seminary. Stucky became legendary for his prophetic call for God’s people to “put down the duckie.”
Maybe you remember the skit. Ernie wants to learn to play the saxophone, and Mr. Hoots is ready to teach him. There is only one problem. Ernie is clutching his beloved duckie for dear life. Mr. Hoots explains to Ernie that to learn to play the saxophone, “Ya gotta put down the duckie.” For Stucky, the topic was keeping the Sabbath. He challenged his students that if they hoped to practice Sabbath, they would need to let go of their ideals of productivity — their own “duckie.”
The same principle applies to our approach to small churches. Are we willing to put down the duckie of the ways we have always measured health in a church, based on butts (in seats), budgets and buildings? Are we willing to put down the duckie of assuming that the goal of the small church is to stop being small? Are we willing to put down the duckie of all those pet strategies we fearfully cling to in an effort to “save” the small church?
If ever there was a time, this is it.
Let’s put down the duckie.
