In September 1540, Spanish conquistador Garcia L’opez de C’ardenas and a handful of his comrades happened upon something no other European had ever seen before: the Grand Canyon. It’s difficult to imagine what they must have felt. L’opez didn’t keep a journal or record his experience in a travel log. We only know that he hurried back from the edge of that deep chasm as soon as he saw it, gripped with awe that was almost painful to behold.

Novelist Walker Percy (1916-1990) believed that L’opez was not only the first European to see the canyon, he was nearly the last to see it in its original state, with no prior expectations. This is because the explorer–tired and thirsty after a twenty-day march across the Colorado plateau–stumbled upon the gorge. He was just trudging along, and there it was.

As for the rest of us, our experience of the Grand Canyon is determined by our expectations. Popular culture has immortalized the iconic road trip out West, which invariably includes a stop by the great gorge. Even if we’ve never seen it for ourselves, we’ve seen enough movies, postcards, textbook photos, and television specials that we have a pretty good idea of what it looks like.

As a result, all of us after L’opez come anticipating “the authentic Grand Canyon experience” as it is defined by the experts–the filmmakers, photographers, and authors. The way we rate our encounter is based, in large part, on how well it conforms to the expectations these experts create.

What is true of the Grand Canyon, strangely enough, is also true of churches. Many ministers and churchgoers have surrendered their judgment about what constitutes “the authentic church experience” to a small group of experts. These experts write books, speak at conferences, and typically lead large and influential congregations. Because of their success, we imagine them to be great Christian pioneers who are part of something we have never seen–the “real” church experience. Over time, the experts have done for church what postcards and PBS specials have done for the Grand Canyon: They’ve made it difficult for us to appreciate our own experience because it doesn’t measure up to theirs. We have lost the ability to see and judge our success for ourselves. All we can see is the disparity between what our churches are and what they are “supposed” to be.

Ambitions and Revisions

When I accepted my first post as pastor, I was entirely seduced by the experts’ description of ministry success. No doubt you’ve heard the story before. There are endless variations in the particulars, but the arc goes something like this: At some point in your life you sense a clear call from God to enter the ministry. It makes a better story if this happens after years of success in a lucrative secular career or a period of profound and sinful rebellion. After a time of preparation–whether in seminary or through a careful perusal of church-planting materials–you take a position in a small church. Over the next several years, your ministry grows. You see people reconcile with God, lives are changed, and you feel confident you are squarely within God’s will. You’ve found your calling. Either your church plant grows rapidly or you move from church to church–usually (and fortunately) to increasingly larger, more vibrant congregations. Soon your peers recognize your success and a publisher asks you to write a book about your story. You share it at conferences. You have arrived.

I didn’t have the dramatic conversion story, but I was confident in my heart of hearts that this story would someday be mine.

So when I took my first pastorate in a small church in the middle of nowhere, I had a big vision for that rural congregation of fifteen or so. I assumed it needed to grow exponentially, as my home church had. And I assumed it needed everything that made that happen at my home church–midweek programs, professional musicians, a dynamic youth ministry. Never mind that the church didn’t have enough members to run a single program, any money, or any youth. I was the expert, after all (or I’d read the experts’ books, at least). It was fortunate for them I came when I did. I was God’s man, I thought, to lead them to the “real” church experience.

But something happened to me there that I hadn’t expected. First, the congregation helped me recognize that the small church is fully equipped to carry out the mission of God in the world. They didn’t need me to put them on course. They didn’t need to be more staffed or better resourced in order to effectively disciple their current members and make a significant impact on the surrounding community. Everything the church needed had been given it by God. I began to recognize potential and strengths where the experts had trained me to see limitations and liabilities. In fact, I began to believe that the smaller church actually is uniquely equipped to meet the particular ministry challenges of the 21st Century.

The overwhelming majority of pastors are living this second story, the narrative of obscurity. According to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, there are 177,000 churches in America with fewer than 100 weekly worshipers and another 105,000 churches that see between 100 and 500 in attendance each week. On the other hand, there are only 19,000 churches–or 6 percent of the total–with more than 500 attendees. Megachurches (regular attendance over 2,000) make up less than one half of one percent of churches in America. The narrative of success may be the one people write books about, but it is not the typical one. We have allowed the ministry experience of 6 percent of pastors to become the standard by which the remaining 94 percent of us judge ourselves.

Everywhere I go, I hear pastors beginning to question the experts. Though their stories are not often told, I have seen small churches from Chicago to Los Angeles making an enormous impact for the kingdom of God, precisely because they have rejected the advice of the experts. They, too, have begun to see potential where the experts have trained them to see liabilities.

We need to deconstruct some of the prevailing assumptions about church ministry success.

Bigger, Better, and the Kingdom of God

While I was writing this chapter, I attended a large pastors conference on the West Coast. For two days, I worshiped with over 3,000 other men and women who are deeply committed to Christ’s work through the local church. At its best, this sort of gathering is sublime. There is something deeply moving about the experience of joining in one voice with a massive crowd of fellow worshipers. The combined energy is empowering and infectious. Theologically, such an experience in a Christian context serves as a foretaste of eternity, when all of earth and heaven will join in the praises of God.

This experience reminded me of what draws us irresistibly to large-church ministry. We love being part of something larger than ourselves. We all want our ministries to matter. When Christ returns, each of us wants to hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

The father of modern missions, William Carey, articulated the desire of every Christian’s heart when he challenged his peers to “expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” And, earthly creatures that we are, the surest evidence we have of the significance of our ministries is numeric growth. When our numbers swell, we feel confident that we have invested our talents wisely. When they shrink, we are inclined to believe we need to redouble our efforts. Ultimately, our desire for the measurable results of success is motivated by faithfulness to God’s mission and our calling.

But there is a danger in our desire to do big things for God, for our pursuit of success dovetails with a powerful American temptation: the appeal of celebrity. The instinct is as old as America itself. And more to the point, the nation’s first celebrity was a preacher. As early as the 1700s, evangelist George Whitefield was already keeping careful (if inflated) count of the crowds that flocked to hear his preaching. The larger the crowds, the more successful he deemed the effort. Whitefield’s popularity has left an indelible mark on our self-awareness as pastors.

A popular large-church pastor recently said at a conference: “If numbers are not important, then why does the word numbers come up so often in Scripture?”1 On the surface, that seems like a fair question. After all, there appears to be a link in Scripture, particularly in the book of Acts, between the faithfulness of the church and its growth in size. Consider these passages: “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). “Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened; and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it grew in numbers” (9:31). “So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers” (16:5). These passages appear to establish a clear pattern. When the church is faithful, the Spirit works and the church grows.

The Scriptures say, “About three thousand were added to their number that day” when Peter preached at Pentecost (Acts 2:41). Reading backward, it’s easy to imagine that what began that day was the first megachurch–Jerusalem Community Fellowship. If we take a closer look at the first chapters of Acts, however, we find that it wasn’t a large, central congregation that was born.

The 3,000 who became believers after Peter’s sermon were from all over the known world and were in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost. These new believers may have met together for a season, but most of them likely returned home when the festival ended, taking the gospel with them all around the Mediterranean.

Moreover, whatever Christians remained in Jerusalem after Pentecost were dispersed by persecution shortly thereafter. Acts 8:1 says that all the believers except for the apostles “were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.”

These insights should adjust our mental image of the size and success of the early church. The 3,000 that responded to Peter’s message were dispersed over an area twice the size of Texas and separated by the Mediterranean Sea. Pentecost may have been the first mass revival in history, but it did not create the first megachurch.

Instead, Acts 2 records the birth of many small–even micro–congregations. The rest of Acts repeats this theme. Acts 9 tells us that it was not a single church that grew in numbers, but “the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria.” These small congregations didn’t meet in a single building. They met in homes, synagogues, and public spaces. In the passages where Scripture records the increase of numbers, it is usually testifying to the growth of the church universal, not a single congregation.

The apostolic church, those scattered, small, and fervent congregations, spread Christianity throughout the Roman Empire in a matter of a few centuries. Sociologist Rodney Stark estimates that at the end of the first century there may have been only 25,000 Christians in the entire known world. By the fourth century, before the Roman Emperor Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity, there may have been as many as 20 million. This growth occurred through the combined efforts of small churches scattered abroad.

The congregations that made up the early church didn’t have the impressive presence many ministries have today through television, radio, and the internet. They didn’t have campuses and facilities and programs. They didn’t have educated clergy. God used the combined faithfulness and strength of dozens of under-resourced, poorly staffed, badly programmed, and unprofessional small churches to change the world forever. All they had was the gospel of Christ and the Holy Spirit. That was plenty to expand the kingdom of God across the entire known world. That is plenty still today.

In fact, instead of illustrating the dominant narrative of success, the Bible testifies to the narrative most pastors experience–the narrative of obscurity. Sometimes faithfulness to God’s work results in the sudden shrinking of a group of followers. People left Jesus in droves when His teaching struck too near the bone (John 6:60-66).

From our perspective post-Easter, it can be difficult to remember that Jesus’ ministry, by all worldly standards, was a profound and extraordinary failure. As He drew His final breaths, He was utterly alone. At one time, He had an impressive following. Everyone knew His name. He attracted crowds wherever He went. But the nearer He drew to the conclusion of His calling, the deeper He slipped into obscurity.

What may be worse for us is that Jesus promises a similar fate for His disciples–and that includes you and me. “All men will hate you because of me,” He says in Matthew 10:22. And in Matthew 24:9, “You will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.” That message does not sell many books.

I don’t mean to be overly dramatic. My point is simply this: Our dominant narrative of success is not supported by the story of the New Testament church. Scripture makes it hard to claim congregation size as a foolproof mark of faithfulness. No doubt all of us can think of large churches that we suspect are large because they have compromised the gospel to draw a crowd. Conversely, we can think of other churches that have grown exponentially precisely because of their faithful preaching of the gospel. And for every small church that fails to grow despite its commitment to outreach and disciple making, there is another that continues to shrink because it is petty, mean, and uninterested in the mission of God. Until we stop measuring our success in terms of numerical size and growth, we may be unable to accurately analyze the faithfulness of our ministry.

New Sight for Sore Eyes

What is at stake here is not simply an academic definition of ministry success or failure. At its core, how we imagine success in the church directly reflects our assumptions about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,” Jesus explains, “which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches” (Matt. 13:31-32). The obscure, the small, the insufficient–such are the means God uses to bring about His kingdom. These are words of life for the small church pastor and any other Christian longing to see the results of his or her obedience. Though at first and on the surface the work of God appears insignificant and inconsequential, it mysteriously yields a harvest of overabundance.

In fact, it appears that what God delights in most are the tiny efforts that yield results that only He can take the credit for. Christ’s starting lineup was a band of fearful, unqualified disciples. Today, with all of creation at His disposal, He chooses to mediate His message of good news through a community He calls the church. That church–your church and my church, such as it is–is God’s mustard seed.

Embracing the Vision

When we forget the principle of the mustard seed, we risk forcing our own vision of the church, or the prescribed vision of experts, onto our congregation. In our efforts to live the narrative of success, we view the small church not as God’s mustard seed but as an obstacle to be overcome. We then rely on our vision to bring about the success we desire. We do this at our peril.

Disturbed over the gap between the church in Acts and the German church in the late 1930s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together to explain genuine Christian community. In the first section of the book, the person who comes under the fiercest attack is the pastor Bonhoeffer calls the visionary, the person who has “a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and [tries] to realize it.” Bonhoeffer has strong words for this visionary, for the person we might call the “expert” in Christian community:

The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure… . So he becomes first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.2

This visionary could be the pastor or member of a church of any size. The defensive and testy small church pastor who wants to see his mini-congregation become mega is every bit as much the visionary a large-church pastor might be. Similarly, the desire to stay small is just as dangerous as the ambition to grow large. “Every human wish or dream,” Bonhoeffer says, “that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive.”3

With Bonhoeffer’s words ringing in our ears, our challenge is to learn to see the church as it is. Perhaps, surprisingly, it is not only small church pastors who have begun to recognize these strengths. Some large-church pastors are beginning to realize that small churches are actually better equipped than their larger counterparts for meeting today’s ministry challenges. So, as many small churches are straining to become large, a few megachurches are learning to channel the small-church vibe.

It’s ironic, if you think about it. Larger churches are spending their considerable financial and personnel resources to re-create the small-church experience. Meanwhile, smaller churches are expending extraordinary energy and resources, burning through clergy and volunteers alike, in an effort to get big. We mustn’t let our preoccupation with size cloud the perception of reality that these larger churches are awakening to: The small church is a strategic organism with unique gifts for carrying out God’s mission on earth.

By strategic, I don’t mean that the exponential numeric growth of an individual congregation is the goal. I simply mean that the small church is uniquely equipped to fulfill the Great Commission. Of course a given local church must be committed to making disciples of its current members and to be actively involved in the mission of outreach and evangelism in its community. All the necessary ingredients are in your church right now–for the congregation that has eyes to see.

Of course, there is a challenge inherent in this claim. Embracing small-church ministry may mean facing criticism from colleagues or family members who wish you would move on to a more “successful” ministry. It is difficult to remain content about your mustard seed when birds are landing in another church’s branches.

The single greatest problem with small churches is perception. Low attendance, small budgets, and limited staff are not, in and of themselves, problematic. What is problematic are the insecurities and defensiveness that result when we fail to live up to expectations of success established by a handful of churches.

As a dear friend and mentor of mine likes to say, you can do two things with expectations. You can meet them, or you can change them. I say we change them. To do that, pastors of smaller churches must help their people learn to see for themselves. Or more precisely, to see the world as Jesus sees it. And that means the pastor must help his people value the mustard seed and view the church as if they were the first people ever to lay eyes on it, to put aside unreasonable expectations, cast their seeds, and trust God for the harvest.

Foot Notes

1. Perry Noble, live from the Unleash conference in March 2009.
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (NY HarperCollins, 1978), 27-28.
3. Boenhoeffer, pp. 27-28.