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.