The reason the Church is failing is because large churches are failing.

In today’s Alban Weekly post Steve Willis points out that even in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the Protestant Church was at its statistical peak in America, one denomination’s statistics showed 44% of all congregations had fewer than 100 members and 73% had fewer than 250 members.

Small churches have always been the backbone of the greater church.

Today, church hierarchies eye small congregations and label them “dying.” They’ve maneuvered their governing documents to make sure they are the primary, if not sole heirs. They even actively attempt to speed the death process along.

During the halcyon days of the American Church, the vision was that small will become big. This is America! There are only three sizes of eggs—large, extra large and jumbo. We worship at the altar of big. Big churches must be better churches.

Why are they still outnumbered by small churches?

In postwar America, Christian pastures looked to be forever verdant. Denominations which operated for decades with a president (now upgraded to bishop) and an assistant and secretary, began to grow staffs of eight, nine or fifteen. The support of booming suburban churches made this hierarchical growth possible.

In many cases, these churches were booming because of white flight from the cities. They were already benefiting from the assets of the small churches. Today they are returning for what they left behind.

Smaller churches were never large supporters of hierarchy. They could support a small denominational office, but never at the modern levels. Truth be told, they received very little attention or benefit from hierarchy, so it is easy for them to question benevolence dollars sent in that direction.

But now the big churches of the suburbs are struggling with dramatic drops in attendance and giving. Some have lost a third of their members. Some half. It will be a while before they can’t pay their own bills. Half of 1500 still leaves 750 supporting members—triple the size of an average church. Nevertheless, the dreams of unending growth and prestige are fading. In order to continue the same level of support for hierarchy, they have to sacrifice their own mission.

That noise you hear is the sound of the church imploding.

It is hard to let go of the flagship hierarchies we’ve created, even when no one really knows what they do! They are part of our brand! After all, we gave them power, and they WILL use it to survive!

How do we keep funding the system we thought would grow and grow back in the post-war boom?

We target the small churches—the churches that were always small, never planned to be very big, had carefully paid their own way, are probably debt-free, but now struggle to meet the expectations of hierarchy. They compete with larger churches for leadership talent, which now expects minimum salary packages that are similar in every church regardless of size.

In historic Lutheran polity (still practiced in places) a church that chooses to close can still determine what to do with their assets. But some synods—the ones with unwieldy hierarchies—have actively made sure that it never comes to that. They look for any opportunity to impose their administration (which under the founding documents is also supposed to be voluntary). They use all kinds of terminology that hoodwinks lay people.

• You’ve been designated a “mission development” church. You think you are getting special help. “Mission development” status can give your regional office control of your assets. The lay people don’t see it coming.
• You have an interim pastor. Those interim pastors report directly to the bishop.
• The last resort: something that doesn’t appear in their governing documents except by incremental tweaks of their constitutions which are now in conflict with the founding corporate documents: involuntary synodical administration. This has become a euphemism for theft. Has ISA (as they cutely call it) EVER been about administration?

All of these methods are ways of diminishing the influence of pesky lay people. They are a means to control—first of the people, then of the people’s assets.

These methods are coming into play more frequently today. The big suburban churches can’t afford the hierarchy they have come to rely upon.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America got by for almost all of its 25-year history by passing hefty deficit budgets—filling the gap with the assets of closed churches. It has been only the last couple of years that they were able to boast of a balanced budget. Even so, their projected incomes have been off by six figures. Only the spin has changed. They can boast of the balanced budget and soft-sell the shortage in funds.

They won’t be so beneficent when they analyze the budgets of the small churches whose assets they covet.

Small neighborhood churches are not necessarily dying. Our communal vision is clouded by greed. That faulty vision is keeping the hierarchies from doing their job in supporting the small churches.

From Willis’s article:

We see our situation through the same spectacles that the domi­nant, secular American culture views the world. The problem is not that we are getting smaller and more peripheral. The problem is a lethargic faith imagination and a graceless cov­enant love….

The small-church lament is not about being left behind. It was always behind, always out of step, and always at the margin. The small-church lament is that things are not as they should be. And that lament has a long, important tradition in the life of covenant people. Angry protestations about declining mem­bership rolls and budgets do not offer a prophetic word to the church. But paying closer attention to people and places and speaking out about who people are and what they are created for carry the potential for genuine transformation.

Today’s small church lacks professional leaders who can embrace their potential. The failing suburban model needs the assets of the cities and rural areas, the places from which they drew their members 40 years ago.

In coveting small church assets, church leaders are doing grave disservice to the churches they serve. Assets which are valued only to fill irresponsible hierarchical shortfalls are assets squandered. Properties in well-populated neighborhoods are sold to replicate a dying model in a new location for a few decades. In doing so, they have squandered the assets of the communities who provided them—at considerable lay sacrifice. In their struggle to control the assets of member churches, they violate the lay leadership — who are the source of all hierarchical wealth.

The Church is shooting itself in the foot.