Why Size Matters

In 1983 Arlin Routhage wrote a nifty pamphlet that has become the standard analysis used by church consultants anywhere. The pamphlet is entitled "Sizing Up a Congregation" (available on-line). Anyone involved in leadership is wise to read at least the section of the pamphlet that applies to their churches.

Routhage breaks down congregations into four sizes: Family, Pastoral, Program and Corporate. These break down largely along the lines of size and structure. For example, many family sized churches cannot afford and do not have a pastor. Program sized churches need critical masses of people and lay leaders to function. The numbers are clearly up for grabs and you can get into all sorts of arguments of the “angels on the head of a pin” variety over where these breaks occur. Below is one model (mine) and you will see it differs from Routhage’s numbers. My numbers have some good research behind them but are admittedly as arbitrary as anyone’s.

Note that I added “Cell” at the bottom and “Mega” at the top to Routhage’s list.

Most church consultants would agree with those additions.

So what is the point of all of this? Well, this is really a developmental model. Churches grow through these stages. Indeed, they have to grow these in sequence. It simply is not optional to skip from a Family sized church to a Program sized church in the same way as it is not optional for an infant to go from pre-verbal communication to formal-operational logic (to borrow some language from Piaget).

A Tool for Understanding.

Using a developmental model helps us understand the dynamics and potential of our own church. For example pastoral sized churches often rush into “doing program” rather than simply doing an exceptional job of being a pastoral sized church.

Let's focus on the development of a pastoral sized church for a moment. Leadership shifts from the founders to pastor (a difficult transition in any church but all the more so in our anti-authoritarian environment)*. Old decision makers are finding that they don't have the control that they once did and if fights emerge that drive newcomers away, the church will not develop as it should. Moreover, the focus of a pastoral sized church is the pastor. The pastor becomes the major reason new people join the church and the pastor is intimately involved in every aspect of church life - from finances to worship. The Pastor will be grooming leaders but is leading primarily by relationship. There are typically a number of cells that can either cooperate or end up in tension, but these revolve around the pastor who has taken the place of the "parents" of the family sized church. Communication between leaders and laity is vital.

Just as is true with the Pastoral sized church, certain dynamics of leadership are at each wave in this developmental progression. These dynamics have the potential of either decimating initiatives if they are resisted but can be used to great advantage if they are understood. Leaders who understand these developmental structures, and cooperate with them, will be far more effective leaders just as parents of a four year old who understand what four year old’s are supposed to be doing developmentally level will be far better parents.

How This Helps.

This model of church development gives us two very important pieces of information:

1. It tells us what is possible in our church.
2. It tells us what our issues are and what we have to be doing.

No. 1 keeps us focused and guilt free. In recent non-profit board retreat I attended, one of the members said that we had to develop the ability to say “no” so that we could say “yes.” That has become a mantra for us on that Board. When people come along and tell the leaders that they should be doing X, then we can subject that to the question, is X “stage appropriate”. This understanding allows us to focus on what we need to do in the moment and allows us to provide a rationale as to why were are doing certain things but not others.

No. 2 gives us a model for organizing ourselves. Routhage and others help us understand what we should be doing with our human, financial, social and cultural capital (more on that later). If we are a pastoral sized church, we need to focus on the work that a pastoral sized church needs to do. Every initiative, every action of leadership, every group within the church can be seen as fitting into that puzzle. This tells us exactly what our work is to be – to create the very best family/pastoral/program/corporate church we can create. We don’t need to worry about the developmental stages except our own.

The good news is that if churches do their developmental work properly at each stage, the next stage will transcend and include the good lessons learned. If not, then the church at the next stage will exhibit pathologies which will limit growth and the ability to work effectively in the world.

Remedial Work.

Oftentimes, if a church is having chronic problems at one stage, it is because it is either failing to address the new realities or it has failed to do the work it needed to do at a prior stage. We have addressed the first issue above - it involves getting the leadership to focus on what needs to be done at that particular stage of development.

Some church issues may be rooted in the past. For example, a dysfunctional pastor (or laity) can create bad dynamics at the pastoral stage that go on to effect the program sized church. For example if the transition of leadership from the founders to the pastor did not occur as it should have, the foundation for leadership in the program sized church simply isn't in place. Oftentimes these churches require the organizational equivalent of therapy. They need to go back to do the developmental work that was not done when it should have been. One way to gage whether this is a problem in your church is to look at Routhage’s pamphlet with ruthless honesty and ask if his descriptions of healthy function are accurate to the history of your community.

Next in the Series: Getting The Frogs Into The Wheelbarrow.

To start this series at the beginning, go to Bullfrogs In Wheelbarrows.
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1. See, Robert Latham’s Moving on From Church Folly Lane for an excellent treatment of this pastoral to program transition.

© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.