Can Churches Be Too Small?

Is there anything unhealthy about really small churches?

Photo by Nicolas Lobos on Unsplash

Last week, I wrote about the dangers of a church becoming too large. I’m sure for many readers I was simply preaching to the choir. A lot of Christians have either never felt right about megachurches or they’ve become disillusioned with them over the years. But can a church be too small? For quite a few of us, that might seem a strange question. Most of us could immediately challenge the idea that “bigger is better;” but then we might just assume that smaller must always be better. But is this true? Is the smaller the church the better?

I served as a pastor/elder of a house church for 3 years, and for most of that time the church met in my home. I’m very familiar with the joys and blessings of a simple church meeting in the home, and I understand quite well the reasons why Christians leave “traditional” churches for this kind of intimate, family-like setting. So I understand and sympathize with the thinking behind the house church movement. But is a modern-day house church or a “micro-church” really the most faithful way to live out the pattern of the church we find in the New Testament?

Steve Atkerson is even more familiar with house churches than I am. For over 30 years, he’s worked to encourage, support and help house churches and house church leaders. But his perceptions have changed regarding the churches in the first centuries after Christ. He came to understand the early churches met in the homes of wealthier members of the church (who had larger homes), and these large, semi-public villas all had an atrium that could seat anywhere from 50 to 150 people. This is the kind of “house church” described in the New Testament, and to whom the letters to the churches were written. (For more on this you can read my earlier post.) This understanding of a 1st century house church is obviously much different than 15 or 20 people sitting in a modern living room. The reality was actually that of a “villa church” more than a “house church.”

But this leads to the same question we had to consider in the last post (about abnormally large churches): Is there anything unhealthy about churches being too small? And—as with the last post—the question isn’t whether a small church can be wonderful and healthy. Again, I know they can because I’ve experienced it. I’m serving a wonderful, small church right now! No, I’ll word the question the same way I did for megachurches (only changing “large” to “small”): The question isn’t whether a very small church can be healthy; it’s what are the dangers all very small churches face, and is this the healthiest option for a church?

Here again I’m appreciative of the work of Steve Atkerson. His reflections have confirmed some of my own thoughts and observations, and caused me to think more deeply about aspects of micro-church gatherings I hadn’t considered before. So what are some of these weaknesses of too-small churches? I’ll note some—but first a reminder: This isn’t a house church vs. traditional church contrast; it’s one of a Roman villa-sized church model as compared with current micro-church models. This isn’t a call for everyone to return to a traditional way of doing church; it’s a fine-tuning of what we understand as the biblical model. Could meeting as a very small church (possibly in someone’s home) actually hinder us from living out certain biblical principles of church life?

Let’s start with a practical instruction to churches in Scripture. We’re told in 1 Timothy 5:17 the elders or pastors who lead and teach well should be financially supported. And notice this is speaking of elders (plural) who are supposed to be well paid. How many house churches or micro-churches today are able to pay even one pastor or elder who is devoted to leading and teaching the congregation? Atkerson notes: “Even if there is an elder, the congregation is usually so small he cannot be supported. Unless he is retired or is self-employed and willing to neglect his business, time devoted to the church in equipping, leadership, training, disciple-making, evangelism and teaching is in short supply. As a result, little disciple-making occurs.”

The New Testament churches were not only supposed to financially support certain elders who devoted their time to leading and teaching, they were to be shepherded by a team of pastoral elders. How many really small churches have a team of qualified pastors shepherding the congregation? Far too many micro-churches don’t have even one qualified elder or pastor. Because of this, there’s often a lack of biblical leadership and of deep, comprehensive teaching of Scripture. The fellowship may be wonderful, and the people may enjoy and even genuinely benefit from spending time together. But these churches are too often lacking the leaders and teachers God intended to be shepherding his church.

Some newer networks of micro-churches plan from the beginning for all their pastors to be—and remain—bivocational. They also often stress the surprisingly rapid training and releasing of these new pastors to plant new micro-churches. How are they able to train pastors so quickly? And how are these pastors all able to serve bivocationally on a permanent basis? When we look more closely, we learn a great many of these micro-church networks remove the need for regular, systematic teaching of Scripture. Instead of calling these leaders “pastors,” they’d be better described as evangelists or small group leaders. Many of these micro-churches are actually cells connected to a larger church, and the larger church is the one providing any needed teaching and training. So these groups aren’t really churches at all, but more like small groups.

The pastors of a church are to be making sure the whole body is being taught, trained and equipped. (For example, read Ephesians 4:11-13.) We need to see that every group in the church is being effectively helped to grow and mature spiritually. This doesn’t mean a massive, elaborate Sunday school is mandatory, but we need to ensure the children and youth of the church are being faithfully discipled. This requires more than just having a place for kids to color at the back of the room, or providing games to play or a video to watch in another room. It means true discipleship for every age group in the church.

The biblical design for the church body is a community of believers that’s large enough to have a healthy assortment of spiritual gifts. This is the way God intends for the body to grow, building itself up in love (Ephesians 4:16; 1 Corinthians 12:18-31; Romans 12:6-8). It’s wise for any small church to ask themselves if they truly have a healthy diversity of spiritual gifts. If this is problematic because of the church’s small size, it might be appropriate to question if the church is abnormally small.

We also take into practical consideration the differences between first century Roman culture and our culture today. Not only do we not meet in large, semi-public villas as the Romans did, we usually drive to the place where the church gathers together. This, of course, means we have to park a vehicle somewhere. In many neighborhoods, this can create a weekly annoyance for our neighbors, harming our relationship with those living around us and even hurting our witness to them. These kinds of problems have caused some communities to pass restrictions on regular church meetings in private homes. Instead of railing against these “godless” attacks, we need to hear the concerns of our neighbors and realize our setting is just not the same as the early church’s in many ways.

Steve Atkerson summed up these concerns when he wrote:

“Being too small is a violation of the New Testament norm. Intent on holding to the New Testament example of meeting in homes, some house churches instead violate other New Testament patterns such as having elders and consistent, quality instruction. It is far better to not meet in homes if it means having the blessing of elders and teachers and a diversity of spiritual gifts operating. . . . In all, to accomplish what the early church accomplished may necessitate not meeting in our modern homes (but rather some dynamic equivalent). Thus, the real emphasis should be on New Testament church principles, not simply meeting in homes [emphasis in original].”

I think this warning would also apply to many micro-churches today.

So, if a church is so small it’s unhealthy in some ways, does this mean the group shouldn’t continue to meet as a church? Not necessarily. Some churches start off very small and eventually grow to a healthier size; others may go through a period of time when their congregation is dangerously small. Many churches are still struggling to recover after the Covid shut downs. There could be many different reasons why a church might be inordinately small at a certain time.

But we shouldn’t get too comfortable with our churches being abnormally small. (And by that I mean abnormally small according to biblical principles of healthy church life—not comparing your church to some local megachurch!) We might need to ask what we could do to help our church grow—not to the point it’s perceived as a “success,” but to a size where it can be biblically healthy: with a solid team of pastoral leaders, able to financially support one or more teaching pastors, able to provide discipleship for every age group in the church, and having a diverse mix of spiritual gifts for the church body to be continually building itself up in love.

There’s nothing wrong with a church being relatively small as long as it’s biblically healthy. If it’s not, we need to prayerfully consider what can be done to help the church be more healthy. It’s not about whether your congregation is large or small—it’s about striving to be as biblically faithful and healthy as we can be.