Multi-Site Session 3

Can you we have our cake and eat it too?

Dave Ferguson speaks of the “genius of the and,” the ability to pursue and achieve two things which are opposed to each other.

• Brand-new and yet trusted.
• Staff with generalists and specialists.
• Less cost and greater impact
• New-church vibe and big church punch
• Move there and stay here
• More need and more support
• More outreach and more maturity.
• Simultaneously Growing Larger and Smaller

Why would Ferguson want to grow smaller?

Churches that are Large in Size tend to be Small in Discipleship, and therefore Small in Impact.

Christian Schwarz,in his bookNatural Church Development, concludes that smaller churches are actually healthier than the mega churches:

“The evangelistic effectiveness of mini-churches is statistically 1,600 percent greater that that of the mega-churches.”

He looked at 170 variables and identified which factors were most negative. The third was size. Size was damaging to effectiveness.

Willow Creek: Reveal Study

“We were wrong.” They’ve poured millions of dollars into programs which they thought would move people to FD, but hasn’t worked.

“Spiritual growth doesn’t happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. And, ironically, these basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage.”

It seems to me the larger you get, the less you can monitor spiritual development, and the more you must depend on structures and programs to gain traction with your people.

Why is Bigger is a challenge for discipleship?

•Community is stronger in smaller communities and weaker…
• Relational investment is deeper
• Accountability is stronger…
• Flexibility is stronger…
• Communication is stronger…
• Direction is stronger…
• Leadership is stronger…

In bigger environments, unless you have a genius who can both create structures for discipleship on a micro level, and an intense leadership to monitor and maintain those structures, people will fall through the cracks. The amount of energy and brain power needed for this more than most of us have. The Bigger you get, the Smaller you have to get. The Bigger you get, the more difficult it is to get smaller. People tend to hire CEOs, and not pastors to run their church-city.

• Willow Creeks Passion for Discipleship is stellar.
• Willow Creeks Infrastructure is second to none.
• Willow Creeks boasts of a 80% involvement in Small Groups, but small group involvement isn’t enough.

Because of the enormity of the church, it’s taken 30 years to discover the ineffectiveness of how they cultivate discipleship. That’s the challenge of Big.

Why Small isn’t enough?

Let’s take Schwarz findings and add them to the discovery of Ronald J. Sider.

In Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, compares the moral condition of the average church attender with the average non-believer. He discovered, citing several national pollsters, that in America there is virtually no moral difference between church attenders and non-church attenders.

This is significant because over 90% are smaller churches. It’s not necessarily the size either.

House Church Model?

Some would say that the church isn’t small enough. They would argue for a House Church model where no more than 15 or 20 people join. When they grow beyond that, they split off and form another house movement.

Though I think this is a legitimate model, I don’t think it’s the only model. Nor do I think that it’s the most effective model.

• It’s not the only legitimate model. The response to ineffective gatherings of 80 to 100 people within the context of a Sunday Morning service isn’t disbanding the group into 10 groups of 10 who form independent clusters. That may help. It simple installing and promoting a rich and intentional small group structure. It appears that this solution is too much, like given morphine for a mild headache.

Disciples met in the Temple Courts and from house to house.

• It’s not the most effective model: Unknowingly, they’ve limited their missional velocity: The mistake they’ve made is kind of like a person driving a Chevy Corvette taking mountain corners no faster than 30 mph because everytime he’s seen Chevy Geo Metros taking corners faster than 30 they flip and the driver dies. He concludes that all Chevy’s flip at 35mph and faster.

o He’s responded to the limitations of a bad chevy by concluding that all chevys are bad. Limited the potential of his good Chevy because of the limitations of a bad Chevy.

o Like wise, many within the house church movement, they’ve responded to the limitations of bad large gatherings by concluding that all large gatherings are bad –limit the potential of good larger gatherings for their movement.

Solution

I think that the best model would marry Missionally Driven Large Gathering, with a rich and robust Missionally Driven Small Gathering. This combines both the Incarnational and Attractional elements vital for maximal impact. Consider this diagram. Here