How our church grew by shrinking

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Over recent decades, my church in south London has been one of the largest churches in our local community. We have been perceived as a vibrant, charismatic, multi-cultural and large congregation.

And during these decades, God has done many great things through our church: helping people find faith and be baptised, welcoming strangers, building connections across ethnic boundaries, as well as countless acts of service and some great community projects.

Pride

But as both the Bible and history continually remind us, the Church is not immune to sin. And like many institutions, we have been vulnerable to a sense of pride in our size and significance.  The scale and spectacle of the Sunday gathering has mattered too much. And this pride, like all sin, creates further vulnerabilities and fractures. 

Ten years ago, there was no shortage of people attending. We had multiple services, a packed sanctuary and an overflow room for people watching on a screen. But how many people were consuming rather than contributing?

People started travelling from a long way for the worship and preaching. But how much was the church authentically engaging and serving the local community? At times, I wondered if our most obvious local impact was making parking harder on Sundays.

And we had children and young people coming in good numbers, but how many adults were actively involved in the lives of these younger people? Often the only adult regularly engaged in the youth work was a full-time youth worker paid by the church.

Just as we all struggle personally with the tension between how we look on the surface and how we really are, it felt like there was a battle for the soul of our church. Do we settle for sense of superficial ‘success’ or a deeper path of discipleship?

Difficulties

But over the last 6 years our church has been on a very different journey. Our Senior Pastor moved on and a whole heap of difficult issues emerged and exploded. Members Meetings became fractious and painful and a host of people left.

On top of that covid struck, services went online and the number of people attending plummeted.  When in-person services re-started, we gathered as a very different church. 

In addition, both our Children’s Worker and our Youth Worker left and were not replaced. And furthermore, despite a good process and numerous interviews, we were not able to attract the right candidate for Senior Pastor. Some of the debates were arduous and painful.

Humbling

The impact of all this has been humbling. We became a smaller church with shorter, quieter services.  But we received great pastoral leadership from our interim and associate ministers. Hurts began to be healed, issues were addressed, relationships deepened.

We can now see these years as a time of ‘winnowing’. We have been cut back, painfully at times, but from this pruning new life has grown.

Shorter services meant more time to talk and build relationships. No paid youth and children’s staff meant others stepped up. We now have more adults engaging with our young people than ever before. We have run great outreach events at Easter and Christmas and we started a drop-in meal, The Vine, completely run by volunteers which has built relationships with those who are homeless and vulnerable.  

Hidden gifts

And a host of people have discovered new gifts in preaching and leading services. At last year’s Easter Day service, instead of one sermon, we had 5 different people (aged between 20 and 89) give brief talks on what the resurrection meant to them. It was fresh, inspiring and unforgettable because it unveiled hidden gifts within the congregation.

In the last 6 years our church has become less of a Sunday show and more of a community. More people are serving and less are consuming.

In terms of numbers we have shrunk, but in other ways we have grown. 

Healthy growth

The issue of ‘growth’ can be a controversial subject within the church.  The debate often becomes polarised between larger churches accused of ‘corporate’ approaches and others who defensively protest that ‘it’s not about bums on seats’. 

I believe healthy churches grow and that all Christians should want more people to receive and respond to the gospel of Jesus. It is perverse and wrong to be ‘anti-growth’.

But growth does not always come in the most obvious ways. Jesus is much more focussed on the faithfulness of his disciples than their number. The New Testament only mentions numerical church growth a few times in the book of Acts. And none of Paul’s letters to the early church discuss numerical growth at all.

Digging deeper

For our church, the years of pruning has prepared us for the next season. Earlier this year it has been great to welcome a new Senior Pastor and experience a renewed sense of energy and vibrancy. Numbers attending have already increased and some former members have returned.

But as a church, we need to remember what we have learnt in the difficult years. It is not about the size of our gathering but the faithfulness of our following. We are called to be a community of faith, not consumers of religion.

We want to grow by digging deep as disciples of Christ and focussing on Practicing the Way of Jesus. In doing so, we seek ‘the life that is truly life’ (1 Timothy 6:19).