Starting in 2020, utilizing a process called Change the Chip: Restoring Missional Passion and Re-imagining Local Church Ministry, The VITAL Initiative willembark on a journey to encourage small churches to multiply.The process starts with local pastors whorely on dynamic interaction with the Holy Spirit to provide the impetus to generatemultiplication among small churches.

Cynics question, multiply smallchurches? Ludicrous!Nonsensical! Small churches are failed large churches, led by out-of-touch pastorswho are left behind and left out of the latest trends in the church world. These smallchurchesdo not have professionalstaff, degreedworship leaders,state-of-the-art media and technology or trendy, up-to-date buildings.It would be an embarrassment. Terrible idea!Why would you consider multiplying small churches?

In reality, we need allsizes of mission-shaped, life-giving churches; mega-churches, large churches, medium-sized churches, small churches, and even house churches.Specifically, for the Church of God to FINISH the mission task God has set before us, it is imperative that we find a way to include small churches in the effort. I therefore submit the followingfive reasonsto multiply small churches.

SMALL CHURCHES ARE THE MOST COMMON FORM OF CHURCH

Across all denominations, small churches are the most prevalent, universalform of church, more people choose to worship in a small church than any other form.Small churches are the seeds we haveat our disposal and we have proven to excel at small church ministry.

The Church of God, like all other denominations, has a plethora of small churches. To update a previous study performed in 2012, I conducted a detailed study of church attendance in the Church of Godearlier this year. The 2019 study utilized self-reported attendance figures from 4,012 churches in twenty-five different states/regions in the United States, covering the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, North, Mid-West, and West. The results reveal that eighty percent (80%) of our churches have less than 100 in attendance and fifty-eight percent (58%) have less than 50. The real numbers show that the Church of God has 5,260 churches with less than 100 attending and 3,814 churches have less than 50. The statistics have remained the same over the years in spite of a proliferation of Church Growth promotion and marketing.

SMALL CHURCHES ARE MISSION STATIONS

Mission changes everything!Small churches are perfect for missional engagement on the margins of society. Mission should determine the size and shape of churches, not consumerist culture. We are in a mission field.Dr. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentuckyexplains, “the United States, following the sad example of Europe, is becoming a post-Christian culture—one in which decreasing percentages of Americans operate out of a Christian frame of reality. We are on the threshold of a radically new reality. This had better awaken American Christians to the new evangelistic and missions challenge right before our eyes and in our own neighborhoods. Our nation is becoming one vast mission field, with growing numbers of Americans who have virtually no knowledge of Christianity at all.”

SMALL CHURCHES CAN REACH 21^ST CENTURYSEEKERS

Christian Schwartz,the Founder of The Institute for Natural Church Development, directed the most widespread study of church growth ever conductedencompassing over 70,000 churches on six continents.Unpacking the findings from this massive study, hewarns that relying solely on larger expressions of church to impact our world for Jesus is intellectuallyflawed.He advocates strongly for leaders to recognize the relevanceof small churches in mission, “One of our most surprising discoveries is that (while there are some notable exceptions) the bigger a church grows, the worse it becomes both in quality and in its capability to reach new people for Christ. In few ways is the bigger church a better church.”

With the rise of new generations that place a premium on authenticity, community, and spirituality; the small church has some intrinsic advantages that must not be overlooked.Richard Flory and Donald Miller conducted a qualitative study of 100 teenagers in five major citiesentitled,“The Embodied Spirituality of the Post-Boomer Generations”. The study reports that teenagers today are not “the spiritual consumers of their parents’ generation, rather they are seeking both a deep spiritual experience and a community experience, each of which provides them with meaning in their lives,and is meaningless without the other.”When millennialsreport that they are not interested in church, they more likelymean they are not interested in belonging to a religious institution. However, they are unquestionablylooking for acombination of spirituality and community andthey feel they cannot live a meaningful life without it.Small churches provide this combination.

SMALL CHURCHES ARE REPRODUCIBLE

The more complex something becomes the more difficult it is to replicate. Small churches provide a powerful opportunity to increase ministry impact by multiplying at a simple, basic level. A simplistic way to understand this axiom is to compare thepropagationof elephantsandrabbits.

Author and pastor Brian Sandersdescribes the church as sent by God to gointo the world in variegated ways and places. Sanders furtherchampions the small church as being “as adaptive as a missionary team. Precisely because it is small it can be flexible and creative; in other words it can excel in the work of contextualization. The bigger and more established the church, the more established the algorithm for ministry, the weaker the church actually is at translating the good news into the language of the people.”

MULTIPLYING CHURCHES IS STRATEGIC

The current strategy employed by most denominations todaysees small churchesas a problem.Their focus is on increasingthe size of local congregations and not the mission of the congregation. My friend Karl Vaters writes in his bookSmall Church Essentials, “What if by trying to fix a problem that isn’t a problem, we’re actually working against a strategy that God wants us to enact? A strategy that sees our small churches as a vital tool to be used, not a problem to be fixed?”Christian Schwartz, the Founder of The Institute for Natural Church Development adds,“The importance of celebrating small churches and aiming to multiply small churches is strategic. And it will increase.”

Last year, February 16, 2018, at the Kentucky Church of God State Prayer Conference, I was privileged to hear Dr. David Ramirezshare avisionary message with the ministers and laity in Kentucky.The challenge was to focus on the Great Commission call for the Church of God and he communicated that we need to offer more “doors” into the Kingdom, not fewer. He explained further usingdetails from a conversation he had with a local church pastor. The pastor shared with Dr. Ramirez that the Lord had blessed him to build a strong, healthy congregation of seventy people, to which Dr. Ramirez responded with, “Praise the Lord Brother! Now go do that ten more times!” The point is made, we need more doors into the Kingdom, not fewer.

Multiplying small churches must be incorporated into theministry philosophy of the Church of Godto ensure thatall resources and energies are leveragedtoward mission. We cannot FINISH the Great Commissionotherwise.

I have been a pastor for thirty-six years. I have always endeavored to be the best pastor possible and Idesire to see great results from the work I do in the ministry. I want the church I pastor to grow. I want to see people saved and lives changed forever. I want to seefamilies restored and my communitytransformed. I am called for this!

The dilemma I face becomesdistinctly obvious when Irealize that I can accomplish none of the things I desire. It is a rather odd thing that my desiresare focused on things that are beyond my abilities and out of my control.

You get the point. I am called to get out of the way so God’s grace and power can be revealed. John the Baptizer exemplifies this idea, in John 3:30, when he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease”Surely, I can get some credit and recognition for all these results. Really?

Whyare these results so important to me?

Ambition is dangerous! Ministry ambition is a misnomer. Ambition should have no place in ministry. I am not saying there should be no drive, initiative, or goals.However, I am saying, ambition willprevent us from seeing God’s will accomplished in our ministry. Why is ambition so dangerous. Ambition is commonly defined as an ardent desire for rank, fame, and power. It is self-centered and self-promoting. It stands in direct opposition to humility.Dr. Andreas Köstenberger, Research Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology and Director of the Center for Biblical Studies at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary says,

“Humility is a uniquely Christian virtue. In this fallen, sinful universe, with its “survival of the fittest” mentality, the prize goes usually to those who are aggressive, assertive, and pursue their own interests, even if this means stepping over others to get ahead. Considering others as more important than ourselves does not come naturally.”

Humility is the only attitude for a Christian, and especially a Christian pastor.Ministry is not about us. It is not about our talents, our personality, oureducation, our style, ourconnections, oreven our looks.Essentially,God sees our ministry and calling very differently than we want to admit, as stated in 1 Corinthians 1: 26-27 (NKJV),

“For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.”

I am not all that after all. I must operate out of humility, not ambition. I must fully understand that it is dangerous for me to steal the glory (credit) that belongs to God alone.Am I willing to follow God to the least and the last, the failed and the forgotten, and the weak and wandering? Humility will allow you to follow God where ambition will not go, and that is where He wants you to be in the first place.

“Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” (Philippians 2:3-8, NKJV)

Flawed thinking, organizationally, leads us to believe that the reason we have so many small churches in the Church of God is that the pastors and the people in these churches have not been exposed to the right plan or formula that will create respectable growth for them.  Thisfaulty thinking creates an environment for the “magic bullet syndrome” to infest the ranks of pastoral ministry, which leads to disillusionment, discouragement, and ultimately defeat.

The concept of the “magic bullet syndrome”refers to being obsessed with the belief that there is a simple and easy solution that will quickly solve complex issues.  This syndrome becomes debilitating when this obsession controls the thinking and drives people to pursue these illusions ofvictoryand success with reckless abandon.  The perils of the“magic bullet syndrome” were firstdiscussedby M. P. Dumont and D. C. Lewis in 1972 in the Massachusetts Journal of Mental Healthas it related to the burgeoningbarbituratecrisis(tranquilizers, sleeping pills, and similar drugs)of the 1960’s and 1970’s.  During this time billions of dosages of these drugs were prescribed to the public, which over time caused the public to view these drugs as the “magic bullets” for their mental health maladies.Dumont and Lewisidentified thisproblem and recommended a detailed method of reeducating the public to understand the proper use of these drugs.

In the church, the“magic bullet syndrome”describes the currentpredicament that pastors find themselves in today. Every pastor wants the church they serve to grow, so we passionately seek for answers.In our desperation weattend meeting after meetingto hear the latest formula or plan that will break the barrier that we cannot break or usher in a new season of increase for us. We have been led to believe that all we need is the right formula or plan, a “magic bullet”.We arespellbound by catchy titles for conferences and books that promise us simple, easy, and quick transformations for our struggling churches. We are even taught to surround ourselves with successful pastors (those that serve a larger church than you do) because they have the words of the “magic bullet” and you could not possibly gain anything by associating with fellow pastors that are serving in a church like yours.Ed Stetzer wrote about our dilemma in a recent article,

“As a speaker at a number of conferences each year, I continue to see pastors and leaders going from one workshop to another searching for “THE” answer. They show up and hear amazing stories about implausibly happy people who willingly follow a new vision for their lives and their church.

They have heard all the strategies and promises, but for many small-church leaders, the conferences, led by rock star celebrity pastors, are like “ministry pornography”– an unrealistic depiction of an experience they’ll never have that distracts them from the real and wonderful thing.

In other words, the lust of the megachurch distracts them from the mission of their church.”

“Ministry pornography”? Graphic but true. The search for the “magic bullet” consumes pastors. Our identity is wrapped up in adopting the latest style of ministry, introducing the newest formula for success, and being in the group with the cool pastors. On a large scale, pastors arecaptive to the “magic bullet syndrome” and have been enculturated topassively wait for the successful pastors to hold a conference or write a book so they can emulate the success of those pastors.In 2017, Thom Rainer wrote a blog that listed the “magic bullet syndrome” as a roadblock to revitalizing a churchand further wrote, “the magic bullet syndrome never works. Never.”If we are going tofulfill the mission task God has for us, we must shatter the “magic bullet syndrome” that dominatesour thinking and hinders the work of the Holy Spirt.

Truths that will change your thinking and shatter the “magic bullet syndrome”.

Thank God for the great leadership training opportunities that are available for Church of God pastors today, leadership development is important and beneficial.  In fact, during my Organizational Leadership Master’s program at Colorado State University, I was inundated with hundreds of leadership styles and organizational paradigms that are being implemented across the globe to lead in these chaotic days.  As pastors we should study leadership programs, principles, and paradigms, but should these concepts form our core competencies for ministry? There is a notion being advanced by some that declares a deficiency in leadership skill and technique among pastors is keeping our churches small and killing our movement. Is this an accurate assumption?

To answer these questions, we must first and foremost look at what the Bible says to pastors and about pastors.  For instance:  

The language of Scripture seems to be focused on a more relational aspect of pastoral ministry as its fundamental reality; the relationship of a shepherd to his flock.  Dr. H. Lynn Stone in his book, Cost and Calling emphatically states,

“The designated mission of a pastor never changes. Their calling as a pastor – their designated mission – is to shepherd sheep. In the Bible the Greek word for “pastor” always means a shepherd. In the English-speaking world today, the word “pastor” most often is used in a different manner. It is used primarily in a professional sense simply to designate the leader of a church congregation. Its usage tends to emphasize leadership and leadership-principles, rather than the oversight work of taking care of a flock. In many ways this is unfortunate.”

Lee Eclov, an adjunct professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School writes, “When God calls pastors, He endows us with a certain spiritual instinct for the work, a shepherd’s heart.” The work of the pastor is spiritual and takes place among the flock of God which is unlike any other organization on earth.  Pastors must be directed by the chief Shepherd in order to fulfill their confirmed assignment and each pastor’s assignment is distinct. However, as a shepherd feeds, protects, and guides the sheep; the pastor feeds, protects, and guides the flock of God that the Father has entrusted into their care. These three cardinal duties form a foundation from which all pastoral ministry flows. 

Caring for a flock is not attractive.  There are no frills, no thrills, and no accolades; but it is what we are called to do.  Creating relationships with people that are broken, hurting, scattered, confused, angry, self-centered, carnal, sinful, and sometimes mean is difficult and demanding; but it is through these relationships that God restores and redeems fallen humanity.  For this reason, we must be careful to shepherd the flock of God as we lead them to green pastures. For a pastor, leading must come from a shepherd’s heart. In the book, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, John Piper warns of the danger of replacing the spiritual nature of pastoral ministry with professionalism.  Piper does not deny that ministry can be enhanced from education and professional training. However, he cautions that nothing should supersede the spiritual nature of the work of the pastor. 

Ministry is professional in those areas of competency where the life of faith and the life of unbelief overlap. Which means two things. First, that overlapping area can never be central. Therefore, professionalism should always be marginal, not central; optional, not crucial. And second, the pursuit of professionalism will push the supernatural center more and more into the corner while ministry becomes a set of secular competencies with a religious veneer.” 

In our world today people are not just looking for someone to follow, they are searching for someone to care for them and somewhere they can belong.  Take advantage of all the leadership training you can, but never forget the calling to be a shepherd.