Is My Church Too Small?

(This article is an excerpt of Appendix D from the book Missions on Point: The Local Church at the Heart of Ecclessiology and Missiology, by David C. Meade.  You can purchase the book on Amazon.)

Most churches consider themselves to be small churches. Statistically, 92 percent of churches have an average attendance of less than 250. In our experience, smaller churches tend to feel that they don’t have the bandwidth or resources to implement the principles taught in this book. Many are skeptical of ever being able to be a strategically focused, missionary-sending church. As a church leader, you may be one who thinks:

• “My church is too small.”
• “We are a relatively new church plant.”
• “We are too rural to have the resources to do this.”
• “We’re just a house church.”
• “Our pastor is bivocational because we can’t afford to support him fully, much less give significant support to send one of our own as a missionary.”
• “Let’s keep doing what we are doing, supporting a few missionaries we know. Later, when we’re bigger, we’ll shift toward being a sending church.”

The well of human resources, finances, and expertise seems shallow. Everyone would agree with this evaluation … until there is a Kevin
and Melissa Langford moment, like in the Hopewell Bible Church story, when a young couple steps up and says, “We think God is calling us to be missionaries. We’d like our church to be our sending church.” At that point, hearts melt. Resistance turns into receptivity.

TRUST GOD AND TAKE THE FIRST STEP

Church leader, if you think you can’t become a sending church, that thought will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, through
faith and prayer, we’ve seen smaller churches succeed when they lean into the ideal goal of becoming a local sending church. It starts
with embracing the Bible’s message of the centrality and significance of the local church in His plan. Then the local church intention-
ally elevates missions involvement as an aspiration for their people. Teaching and exposing your church to the concept of God’s glory
on display in the local church also reinforces the members’ commitment to their church.

TAKE THE LONG VIEW

Commit to the goal of becoming a missions-sending church. Take some simple steps toward that goal:Is My Church Too Small?

1. Evaluate your present missions commitments and align them with your church values and the principles learned
   in this book. That is, support only those missionaries and ministries:
   1. with whom you can have a sustained personal relationship
   2. who focus on gospel proclamation and biblical missions goals
   3. who facilitate your church having a sense of ownership and participatory partnership in their ministry
2. Reach out to like-minded churches in your area or region that are similarly committed to your missions ideals. Perhaps a missionary candidate from one of your “missions consortium” churches will be the first sent one from among those churches.
3. Find a way to give your congregation more missions exposure through a few of them going on a field visit, a vision trip to a field (not a tourist trip), or a missionary care-shepherding trip.
4. Put out inquiries to learn from other small churches further down the path of church-centric missions sending. Adapt what you discover from them to your situation.
5. Empower and delegate ongoing missions education and communication to responsible missions lovers in your
   congregation.

PRAY THAT GOD GRANTS YOU A MISSIONARY CANDIDATE

Ideally, a candidate arises from among your congregation. However, other possibilities might be:

• a pastoral intern who turns into a beloved candidate “from” your congregation
• a new family that joins the church and has a young-adult child with dreams of being a missionary someday
• someone studying for missions ministry in a nearby Christian training school who makes your church their home church, at least for their student years

Missions insights gained as you teach through God’s Word have a long-term effect on the dreams and heartstrings of your people. Over time, God uses your priorities and passions to light a fire of commitment.

GIVE GOD THE GLORY WHEN IT HAPPENS

While it is true that your resources are limited, it is incredible what resources show up when the need arises. Local resources may be small, but God is so much bigger than we imagine. Below are a few true anecdotes we are pleased to share about small churches that have walked this path before you.

SMALL CHURCHES, BIG BLESSINGS

1. A small church in North Atlanta, Georgia, had a vision to provide gospel ministry to the refugees and disenfranchised
   from the war in Bosnia. By God’s grace, “coincidences” came together. Within a few years, nearly everyone over age fifteen in their church had ministered in the displaced persons camps there. Resident missionaries counted more conversions to Christ among Muslims in that handful of years than in the previous fifty years in the region. Read about it in John Rowell’s book, Magnify Your Vision for the Small Church (Atlanta: Northside Community Church, 1998).
2. A small urban church plant in Montgomery, Alabama, learned and became committed to the principles in this book. They were praying for opportunities. The Lord provided. Here’s an excerpt from an email dated March 2015:
   
   Our church’s vision for missions is about to explode! We challenged our church to spend one week of 2015
   in a cross-cultural missions context!… The Lord has blessed it mightily!!! We just commissioned nine peo-
   ple from our church to go to Ecuador for a week!! They leave Saturday!!!
   We have 3 [or] 4 people signed up to go to Kenya in July. We have five signed up to go to Clarkston, GA, in June. [Clarkston is the most ethnically diverse square mile in the U.S.] We have 2 going to Thailand in June. One is going to Nigeria in August. There are only 38 adults in our congregation, LOL!!!
   
   
3. A tiny church on an island in the Chesapeake Bay is very committed to church-centered missions. They haven’t had a paid pastor for fifty years. Yet God has used them to send half a dozen missionaries over the years. They also faithfully and strategically support at least a dozen others.
4. A small church in Southern California became the sending church for their pastor’s family to go to an unreached people group in the Muslim world.
5. A small church in Virginia committed to forming a multicultural team along with graduates from a Bible school they supported in Mexico. The goal of the team was to plant churches in the Middle East.
6. A small church in New Hampshire raised and steadily helped one of their own families become qualified and sent as missionaries in the Balkan region.

Small sending churches tend to serve more, give more, and send more missionaries per capita than large churches. No, your church is not too small.