Tim Keller on Church Culture According to Size

Tim Keller has written a document entitled, "Process Managing Church Growth," which is very helpful in identifying the differences in church culture according to size. Here's an excerpt relating to the small church.

Specific Size-categories.
House- church- 0-40 attendance
Character: The “house church” is often (in urban areas) called a “storefront church” or (in rural areas) called the “country church.”

It operates essentially as an extended small group. It is a highly relational church in which everyone knows everyone else intimately.

Lay leaders are extremely powerful and they emerge relationally—they are not appointed or elected. They are usually the people who have been at the church the longest and have put in the most time and money to the work.

Decision- making is democratic, informal, and requires complete consensus. Decisions are made by informal relational process. If any member is unhappy with a course of action it is not taken by the church.

Communication is word-of-mouth and information moves very swiftly through the whole membership.

The pastor often is a “tent-maker” and part-time though a church of 10 families who tithe can support a full-time minister. The minister’s main job is shepherding, not leading or preaching.

How it grows: House-churches grow in the most organic possible way—through attraction to its warmth, relationships, and people. New people are simply invited and continue to come because they are befriended. There is no “program” of outreach.

Crossing the threshold to the next-size category: The house-church like any small group, gets to “saturation” rather quickly. Once it gets to 40+ people the intense face-to face relationships become impossible to maintain. It then faces a choice: either a) multiplying off another house-church or b) growing out of the “house-church” dynamics into the next-size category of being a small-church.

If it does not do either:

Evangelism becomes essentially impossible.

The fellowship itself then can easily become ingrown and “stagnant”—somewhat stifling, sometimes legalistic.

An ongoing problem for the stand-alone church of this size is the low quality of ministry to specific groups like children, youth, singles and so on.

If it opts for “a” above—and multiplies itself into another house-church, the two (and eventually several) house-churches can form an association which does things like youth ministry together. They could also meet for joint worship services periodically.

If it opts for “b” above—and grows out of the “house-church” size into a “small church,” it needs to prepare its people to do this by admitting the losses (of intimacy, spontaneity, informality) and agreeing to bear these as a cost of mission, of opening their ranks to new people. This has to be a consensus group decision to honor the dynamics of the house church even as it opts to change those dynamics.

Small church- 40-200 attendance
Character: This category includes churches that are just barely out of the “house-church” stage up to churches that are ready for multiple staff. But they all share the same basic characteristics.

While the relational dynamics are now less intense, there is still a strong expectation that every member must have a face-to-face relationship with every other member.

While there are now appointed and elected leaders, the informal leadership system remains extremely strong. There are several laypersons—regardless of their official status—who are “opinion leaders.” If they don’t approve of new measures the rest of the members will not support them.

Communication is still informal, word-of-mouth, and still relatively swift.

The pastor is still primarily a shepherd. While in a larger church, the people will let you pastor them if you are a good preacher, in a smaller church people will listen to your sermons if you are a good pastor.

Effective, loving shepherding of every member is the “driving force” of ministry—not leadership or even speaking ability. (A pastor who says, “I shouldn’t have to shepherd every member—I’ve delegated that to my elders” is trying to practice large-church dynamics in a small church environment.)

However, the pastor of a small church will (as the church grows) feel more and more need for administrative leadership skills. Small churches do not require much in the way of vision-casting or strategizing but they do eventually present a need for program planning, mobilization of volunteers, and other administrative skills.

Changes are still processed relationally and informally by the whole congregation, not just the leaders. But since the congregation is larger, decisions take a longer time than in either the house-church or the medium-size church. Ultimately, however, change in a small church happens “from the bottom up” through key lay leaders who are central to the “informal leadership system.” No major changes can be made unless you get at least one of these people to be an ally and an advocate for the change.

How it grows: Small churches also grow through attraction by newcomers to the relationships of the congregation. However, in the small church it is the personal relationship to the pastor that is the primary attraction to a new person. The pastor is therefore key to beginning two or three new ministries and/or classes/groups that bring in new people. He can do this by securing the backing or participation of one key “informal leader.” Together they can begin a new group, class, or ministry that will bring in many new people who were not previously attending the church.

Crossing the threshold to the next size-category: This church may eventually face the famous “200 barrier.” To make room for more than 200 people in a church takes a significant commitment to some or all of the following changes.

First change—multiple options. There must be a willingness to question the unwritten policy that every voting member should have a face-to-face relationship with every other member.
When a church gets to the place where the older members begin to realize there are members that who they barely know or don’t know at all, the complaint may come with a tone of moral authority: “this church is getting too big.” (Another form of this is the complaint that the church is getting “impersonal.”) Essentially, this attitude must change.

Often the key change that a congregation must allow is the move to “multiple options”—such as more than one Sunday service, or putting more emphasis on small group ministry than coming to the one, unified, corporate prayer meeting, and so on.

As a general rule, multiplying options creates a “growth spurt.” The single best way to increase attendance is to multiply Sunday services. Two services will immediately draw more people than one service did. Four Sunday school electives will generally draw more people than two Sunday school electives. Why? Because when you give people more options, more people opt!

Second change—a willingness to pay the cost of an additional primary ministry staff person.

It is a sociological fact that a full-time minister cannot personally shepherd more than about 150-200 people. At some point any human being loses the ability to personally visit, stay-in-touch, and be reasonably available to all the people.

The minister’s “span-of-pastoral care” can be stretched with part-time or full-time specialty or administrative staff, such as children’s workers, secretaries, administrators, musicians, etc. There are variations to this figure depending on a) the minister’s personality and energy level, and b) the local culture. For example, the more white-collar community tends to demand far more specialized programs and therefore you may find in such a place that you need a full-time ministry staff for every 100-150 in attendance.

But eventually a second “ministry staff” person must be hired. This is commonly another ordained pastor, but it could be a lay person who is a counselor, overseer of small groups, supervisor of programs who does lots of shepherding word and teaching, etc. It is important to be sure that this second staff person really can grow the church and thus “pay for him/herself.” So, for example, it may not be best to have the second ministry staff person to be a youth minister. It would be better if the first ministry staff person was a small group minister or a minister of evangelism and outreach. Or, if the senior minister is excellent with outreach, the second staff person could be more of a pastor/counselor who complements the gifts of the first minister and works with those inside. Initial staffing must be “for growth.”

The tension that often occurs in a church this size is that the church is big enough so the pastor begins to feel burned out but is not big enough to financially support a second minister.

Third change—a willingness to let power shift away from the laity and even lay leaders to the staff.

As you get this size barrier the old “everybody-must-come-to-consensus” approach to decision-making becomes far too slow and unwieldy. Why?

1) In the small church approach to decision-making, it is considered impossible to proceed with a change if any member is strongly opposed or especially if it appears that a change will actually result in some people leaving the church.

2) As a church nears the 200 barrier, there now is almost always someone who experiences a change as a loss. Therefore,

3) No changes ever can occur unless many decisions that used to involve the whole membership shift to the leaders and staff.

But it is not just that the laity must cede power to the leaders. The lay leaders must also cede power to the staff and volunteer leaders.

In a smaller church it is usually the lay leaders who know more about the members than the pastor. The lay leaders have been there longer and thus have more knowledge of the past, more trust from the members, and more knowledge of the past, more trust from the members, and more knowledge of the member’s abilities, capacities, interests, opinions, etc.

But once a church gets beyond 200 it is the staff that knows more about the church members than the lay leaders and increasingly the new members (in particular) take cues from the pastor(s) rather that from the lay leaders.

Increasingly the lay officers board (elders, etc.) will not be able to sign off on absolutely everything and will have to let the staff and individual volunteer leaders make decisions on their own.

Fourth change—a willingness to become more formal and deliberate in assimilation and communication. For a church to move beyond this barrier it usually must stop relying on communication and the assimilation of newcomers to happen “naturally” without any planning. Communication will have to become more deliberate and redundant instead of “word-of-mouth.” Newcomers will have to be folded in” more intentionally. (For example, every new family could be assigned a “sponsor” for six months—a member family who invites the new family over to their home, sits with them in the new members’ class, and so on.)

Fifth change—the ability and willingness of both the pastor and the people for the pastor to do shepherding a bit less and leading a bit more.

The next size-church requires: a) a bit more vision-casting and strategizing, and b) a lot more administrative know-how. The pastor of the medium size church will have to spend much more time recruiting and supervising volunteers and programs to do ministry that in the smaller church the professional minister would have done directly. This takes administrative skills of planning, delegating, supervising, organizing.

In the next-size church the pastor simply is less available and accessible to every member. Even with the hiring of additional ministry staff, every member will not be ale to have the same access to the senior pastor as they did before. Both the people and the senor minister need to acknowledge this “cost.”

Sixth change—will moving to new space and facilities be crucial to breaking this growth barrier? Sometimes, but not usually. Usually the key is going to multiple options/services, staffing for growth, and making the other attitudinal changes mentioned above.