Small membership ... big hearts

A small-membership church is defined, by some, as a church that has fewer than 150 worshipers per Sunday. Most small-membership churches (“small-membership” because there is no such thing as a “small church”) I know would love to see 150 at worship. Something like 75 percent of churches in America can be defined as “small-membership.” Some church-development experts find this a disturbing trend and are calling for small-membership churches to be more deliberate about outreach and evangelism. The adage is, “if you’re not growing, you’re dying.”

On the one hand, I agree; many churches remain small or decline because it appears that the members don’t seem interested in bringing the message of Christ to others. As a veteran small-membership church pastor, however, I can attest to the fact that there are other reasons a church declines. For example, a church I served on a circuit that lay on the Dawson-Forsyth county line would probably grow if it were in a different location. It was at the end of a dead-end dirt road and was rumored to be haunted!

The people didn’t build the church at the end of a dirt road; the road was once a throughway when the area was still very rural. Unfortunately, a major company bought a very large tract of land that crossed both sides of that road and made it into a wildlife/ forest preserve, blocking off the road. Traffic re-directed and the always-rural family church did not have the resources to relocate.

I can also attest to the fact that the majority of these churches would love to bring the message of Christ to the world. They would also welcome young people with open arms and do all they can to make them feel welcomed. The stereotype is that the older folks are sticks in the mud and will not tolerate, say, young peoples’ taste in music or worship style. That is false. I’ve had many people over 70 say, “If we’re gong to reach young people, we should sing some songs that they like.” It’s a right-out sin that our churches represent such demographical gaps: generational, cultural, racial, and ideological.

While there often aren’t large children’s programs in small-membership churches, I know people who teach Sunday school to one or two children faithfully.

I can’t help but chafe every time I hear someone say, “We changed churches so our kids could have a better children’s program.” Have they not thought that their children ARE the smaller church’s children’s program? I can only sigh at such a consumer mindset being applied to a community of faith.

My children are growing up in small-membership churches. They’ve never participated in fancy children’s and youth programs in their own congregation. They’ve not been in a church that sends its youth, if there is any, on missionary trips abroad or takes a group of children to sing at a nursing home. I don’t believe they’re missing that much, though.

What my children have grown up with are congregations full of people who are glad just to have them there.

When my younger daughter was a toddler, she sometimes wriggled loose of my husband and wandered up to the chancel area after me — and people found it not disturbing to worship, but an enhancement of it. An older couple in one of the churches on the circuit, having no grandchildren of their own, sort of adopted Lillian as a surrogate grandchild and had her sit with them in the pew with coloring books and other quiet toys to play with; she sat still for them!
At nine years old, she sings in the only choir we have in our current church.

My older girl remembers the woman who always gave her a stick of gum and the way another woman would make sure to compliment her appearance as she grew into teenager-hood.

My children are growing up loved in Christ in a hands-on, personal, un-professional way and I think it’s sad that more children do not get this experience.

Years ago, when my husband had a car accident, word spread so fast that the waiting room was filled with people from our congregations on the circuit before we arrived in the ambulance.

When my dad died right after I moved to a new appointment, some women, though they barely knew me yet, drove over two and a half hours to an area they didn’t know, to attend his funeral just because they wanted to be there for me.
When I serve communion, I can address each person by name. People have called me to say, “Josephine is dying and is asking for you,” and I’ve been able to be there to pray with them as they went to glory.

Of course, members of a healthy medium, large, or mega-church also support each other, have pastors that get in their car and speed to make it to a person’s last breath, and are nice to children; the congregation wouldn’t grow if they didn’t! It’s just that small-membership churches are often growing in Christ, too, and their value is overlooked.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a way to measure the kinds of things that make a small-membership church anything but a small church?

Sally Oakes is pastor of Bethany United Methodist Church, 607 Rivers Road, Fayetteville, GA 30214. Phone: 770-964-6999 or 770-964-6992, or e-mail bethanymnc@bellsouth.net.