Small Church

“In my experience, the search process usually takes longer for smaller churches. With limited financial resources, most small churches cannot provide a full-time compensation and benefits package for their pastor and his family, which often requires the pastor to serve in a bi-vocational capacity.” - BPNews

“Cornerstone is part of the fastest-growing group of congregations in America: the minichurch. According to the recently released Faith Communities Today study, half of the congregations in the United States have 65 people or fewer, while two-thirds of congregations have fewer than 100.” - RNS

“Do they hate these songs? Are they bad singers? Am I singing out of tune? … The church was newly established and small in number, and—to put it kindly—the singing in our gatherings was uncomfortable.” - TGC

“To say rural pastors and rural congregations are forgotten is probably less true than to say rural churches and pastors (and really, small churches and their pastors everywhere) are often underrepresented and underutilized in denominational leadership and overlooked by Christian publishers and conference organizers.

“Being the only staff focuses conflict on just the pastor. Bivocational pastors have to deal with time and conflict management in ways that large church pastors often do not. Holding two or even three jobs has its own challenges.” - BPNews

“Theodore Cuyler took on this question in his book How To Be a Pastor…. His answer is straightforward, his reasoning compelling. It is worth considering today. ‘I answer unhesitatingly, the small church.’ …He offers a three-pronged defense of his position.” - Challies

“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?

“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