When your best members leave the church
"Most pastors will not be pastoring growing churches. Admit it. We think success is a growing church and failure is a shrinking church. Sometimes those are true. More often not, I believe." - Thornton
"Most pastors will not be pastoring growing churches. Admit it. We think success is a growing church and failure is a shrinking church. Sometimes those are true. More often not, I believe." - Thornton
"I see solid, educated, selfless, dedicated pastors around me who are full time clergy in churches of 40 to 60 in attendance. Is giving by a group this size enough to support a full time pastor adequately? Do members give per capita sufficient to cover a $50,000 or more salary cost by their minister? Depends, I suppose, on the church." - SBC Voices
"I’ve tuned into many webinars and read many articles on this topic, but the majority of them seem to address re-entry from a large church perspective. But as a small church, our situation is different. How can we safely re-enter? Here are some guidelines I hope will be helpful." - F&T
"...since these misconceptions about small churches keep persisting, let’s take a look at them, one at a time: 1. Small Churches Are Not a Problem: Just because a church is small does not mean that it is broken, lazy, visionless, ingrown, poorly led or theologically faulty." - Church Leaders
"Being small does not mean that something is broken. But if something is broken, you can’t fix it by making it bigger. Bigger fixes nothing." - Church Leaders
"As the COVID-19 pandemic forces the church to restructure worship and establish online giving, pastor Michael Cooper told Baptist Press most of his members are not accustomed to tithing and giving online." - BPNews
"Larger churches will have a more difficult time staying larger. At least, that is my postulate according to our early research. And to be clear, I am defining a larger church by the size of its largest worship service, not by its total attendance." - Thom Rainer
"What is taking place to give us such optimism and hope? Allow me to share five reasons. I must admit I was surprised at some of the research I found on this topic." - Thom Rainer