The Blessings of Being a Small Church

All week we’ve been thinking and praying through John 6:1-14 and what it means to live in God’s way of doing things, which often includes seeing the small, valuing the small, and powerfully using the small.

On Sunday, Brenna Rubio mentioned about how we are a small church - and are glad to be so. So your devotional task today is to think about City Church and how you feel about us being small. What are the gifts of being small? How has God used that in your life? How might God want to use our smallness in the kingdom? To help ponder these questions, below are some highlights from the great little book Small Church Essentials by Karl Vaters. This may seem like strange devotional reading, but we’re going to give it a try… and see what you hear the Spirit saying to you and respond in prayer.

There’s not a single New Testament command to the church that can’t be fulfilled by two or three people who love Jesus.  Your church doesn’t need to be big to do the Jesus stuff well… and the Jesus stuff is all that matters.

If your ministry and your church finds its greatest kingdom effectiveness within a smaller setting, you’re not stuck, you’re strategic.

On average, about ⅓ of the big church principles can be applied in a church of 200 and about ¼ in a church of 100 or fewer.

Outside the walls is where Jesus did his best work.  Why should his followers be any different?

Big churches can’t do it alone.  There are too many smaller places in the world where they just won’t fit.  Small churches can’t get there by themselves either.  There are often huge tasks that need the immediate deployment of massive numbers of people and resources under unified leadership.  We don’t need fewer big churches or fewer small churches - we need more healthy, active, passionate churches of all sizes, working together.

Instead of talking about “growth” let’s talk about “increasing our capacity for ministry,” measured by kingdom impact.

If something is broken, you can’t fix it by making it bigger.

Jesus didn’t wake up this morning depressed by the size of your church.  You may have; sometimes I still do.  But Jesus isn’t worried even a little bit… He delights in your continued faithfulness, just as He mourns with you in your struggle to cope.  And He’ll be with you as you prepare to do it again this week - faithfully, prayerfully, even tearfully.