Our denomination has recently circulated some material to encourage small
churches; it’s full of practical and imaginative advice about how to serve such
congregations.
But the advice has come from theUSA , where the
definition of a small church is around three to four times the number of
members that we would expect to find in a "small" church here. And there would be
no way that such a church in this country could even contemplate paying for
much in the way of ministry.
But the advice has come from the
I’ve been doing more reflecting on my concept of the “Hospice Church”
where an ageing congregation of less than a dozen members in a town going into
recession are still willing to roll up for worship if someone else provides the
resources of leadership. I was a little disparaging of them in an earlier post.
But there are some strengths in that situation and I am going to explore them.
Too often we have told the congregation of under 30 people that they
really should “make a decision” about their future when they were actually already
working on it. Too often the wider church has imbued the small church with a
sense of failure. Too often, we have put before them programmes and strategies
and ideas that may be appropriate for a medium or larger congregation.
But we
have forgotten that the small church is not just smaller, it is different…