Seven Reasons Why We Need to Move Beyond the Church Size Debate

It is predictable.

Any time I write about anything dealing with church sizes, some of the discussion degenerates into a debate about the best size church. It happened last week when I wrote some positive words about smaller churches. It has happened in the past when I wrote some positive words about megachurches.

We need all churches. All sizes of churches. We need more churches. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. Allow me to point out seven reasons why a debate on church size bears no good fruit.

1. Church health and church size are not synonymous. There are many healthy small churches. There are many healthy large and megachurches. And there are plenty of unhealthy churches of all sizes.
2. Conflict is not unique to a particular church size. Indeed some level of conflict is in every church. There are times where conflict is more visible in the smaller church because everyone knows everyone. But that does not mean conflict is not present, and sometimes intense, in larger churches.
3. Categorical statements are harmful to the body of Christ. “All pastors of large churches care about are the numbers.” “If a small church was doing was it was supposed to do, it wouldn’t be a small church.” Such categorical statements do no good. Indeed, they do harm. Why should we even participate in such conversations?
4. The body of Christ is diverse; that is good. In 1 Corinthians 12, the Apostle Paul lauds the diversity of the individual members of the body of Christ. Similarly, there is diversity in the…