Pastors Irwyn Ince and Mark Vroegop call pastors and ministry leaders to focus on faithfulness, reminding them that God controls the size of their churches. Church size isn’t a definitive measure of a church’s health—effective shepherding can be found in both small and large congregations. An ideal church is one where people are known, loved, seen, and protected under the gospel, no matter the congregation’s size.
Transcript
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Mark Vroegop
I think everyone has an emotional attachment to a particular size of a church, like when you think close your eyes, what’s the perfect church size, we kind of have this idea. So let’s settle the issue for everybody once and for all. So, give me a number. What’s the perfect size for the church? Probably the church that you’re pastoring right now. Right? Right. So is there a seriously? Is there a perfect size? Or is there an ideal size for a church? I mean, think about that. And
Irwyn Ince
I think the answer is no, there is not an ideal size. For a church. One, it’s important to note, we don’t actually get to determine what the size of any congregation that we pastor is, that is the Lord’s doing, yes, we put our, you know, our feet to the work and our hands to the plow. And we try to disciple people into equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. But But whether it’s church is 50, or 5000, is as a, as a congregation is not actually up to us at all. We might think it is, but it’s not. And so, there’s a sense in which, particularly for pastors, and ministry leaders, to, to really and truly leave that in the hands of the Lord, to say, what does it mean for me to be a faithful pastor, a ministry leader, in this place, and, and give the any increase over to the Lord. I’ve been read parts of churches, hundreds and hundreds of members, parts of churches, 100 members or less, and seeing God be faithful in all of them. Now, I feel sometimes for parishioners, it’s a little bit more challenging to be a part of a come into a smaller church context where you can’t hide, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re identified very early and easily. But I would also say, even at a large church, if that church does hospitality, well, those people aren’t able to hide either. Absolutely. Right. And so and so the other thing I will say that, that I think is important, is that it is also sometimes determined by cultural contexts. And, you know, just talking about here in the United States, if you’ve got community so for example, we’ve, we’ve, we’re have a network in our denomination of Mandarin speaking pastors, who are looking to plant churches that engage Mandarin speaking Chinese immigrants, well, we’re not expecting that those churches are going to grow to be 2000 member churches, right, just don’t have the numbers there. And that’s very true for immigrant and refugee communities. When we strive to see churches planted and ministered to people from those contexts, who really, very often do for the sake of, I would say, a cultural comfort or no, not saying this in a disparaging way, but you’re in a foreign place. And, and it’s disorienting, can be disorienting to be disconnected from those cultural things, as you’re trying to live out or engage the Christian faith. So sometimes there’s a need for culturally contextual, contextual specific congregations that we might expect to be smaller than others. So I think we have to just consider a number of things when we’re when we’re trying to process a what is an ideal church size? So I mean, Mark, you’ve had a large congregation.
Mark Vroegop
So we’ve wrestled with this question deeply, because I’ve made a statement before we have 2600 members. And my comment to our elders number of years ago was, if we can’t Shepherd 2600 members, well, we shouldn’t have 2600 members. And so my thing about church size is whether it’s a few 100 Or a few 1000, what has to happen is the that congregation has to figure out ways to care for one another, and specifically for elders to be able to shepherd the flock of God. And so in our situation, we’ve had to work really, really hard. Dividing the congregation up into we call them parishes. And so we’ve got 40 Elders and 50, deacons all assigned to various parishes, so that when somebody joins our church, they come through that parish model to break down the congregation into groups of, you know, 150 to 200. Because a large church it’s it’s easy to get to fall through the cracks, right? same time a small church, it’s also really easy to not do shepherding Well, in the sense that it’s more like a family more like a clique that’s hard to get into. Right. And so sometimes shepherding happens really poorly in small churches, but can happen really well in large churches or the reverse happens. So one of the keys is to realize that size in and of itself isn’t necessarily an indicator of whether or not a church is healthy, or that it’s the ideal size. The question is, what are the leaders doing to try and make the most of the shepherding opportunity related to the people. And so a church could be too on 50 and hardly ideal, or it can be 3000 and the ideal, I think it just depends upon the theological and pastoral commitments of the church and the people who are involved so that they can really live out what it means to care well for each other because I think that’s really what the ideal church is. It’s where people are known and loved and fed and protected under the banner of the gospel.
Irwyn Ince
That’s really, really good. take home point. Church size is not necessarily the indicator of Church Health, so we’ve got to get that right. Yeah.
Irwyn Ince (MAR, Reformed Theological Seminary; DMin, Covenant Theological Seminary) serves as the coordinator of Mission to North America and adjunct professor of pastoral theology for Reformed Theological Seminary. Ince is also a Board member of The Gospel Coalition. He has contributed to the books Heal Us, Emmanuel and All Are Welcome: Toward a Multi-Everything Church and authored The Beautiful Community: Unity, Diversity, and the Church at Its Best and Hope Ain’t a Hustle: Persevering by Faith in a Wearying World. He and his wife, Kim, have four children.
Mark Vroegop (MDiv, Cornerstone Seminary) has served at College Park Church in Indianapolis since 2008. Mark is the author of multiple books including Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament.
