I have nothing against small churches in general. In fact, most of my past 10 years have been spent in small churches. I think that one question that needs to be asked of any church, is are your fulfilling Jesus’ command to “make disciples?” I do realize that making disciples may for a season show itself qualitatively rather than quantitatively, but at some point you have to be able to say, “here is how God is working in the lives of the people in this church.”

- In general, are small churches ‘bad’?
- Are ‘good’ ones plants that will grow and split again?
- Are ‘good’ churches only ones that are actively seeking to grow? What about ones that want to grow without selling out to church growth thinking? And maybe aren’t making any headway?
- We hear of missionaries faithfully working for decades in countries where converts are measured in twos and threes. Is there a place for that kind of work in ‘dead’ churches in this country?

I wonder if the ’success in numbers’ mentality has such a grip on American christians that those of us who deplore the concept are still driven by it in many ways.

This post was chosen as newsworthy at Sensus Divinitatis News….

Does this mean in order to better organize the Evangelical Church we would have to eliminate 80% of the Pastors?

Werther, the numbers are about average attendance not membership.

Steve Scott, the standard deviation for my sample graph is 431.45. Not that standard deviations are that useful with this sort of data.

Fr. Orthohippo, I have no idea what the modal size would be, but seeing as 50% of churches have less than 75 people, I think it would be safe to assume that it is less than 75.

Willoh, up in Canada, often two smaller churches will share a Pastor.

To all discussing finances, I have found that as church of 80 can generally support a full time Pastor.

Mike Bell