Recognizing the influence of size on their mission prospects is tough for many congregations.
Size determines your relationship with your regional body more than with your community.
Your perception of your congregation may be at odds with that of your regional body.
When you create your congregation’s brand (your mission/vision statement), you are usually thinking about your relationship with your community. The perception of your regional body can make or break your attempt to move your congregation in the direction you want to go.
Congregations need to do some work before they turn to their regional body. Many lay people don’t know how their regional bodies think.
Regional bodies have an agenda that must be recognized. They need to find gainful employment for their pastors, matching them with existing congregations. Most of their function involves fitting clergy pegs into congregational holes. Theoretically neither pool is finite but the fact is that few new clergy positions are made and recruitment of pastors to fill new ministry roles lags behind need. Regional leaders often settle for working with what they have and like everyone else in the world, they work to make their jobs easier.
At the same time, congregations imagine that there is a large pool of pastors with the skills they need, eager to serve their efforts to transform their ministry. This is not realistic in today’s church.
Regional bodies do not have great firsthand knowledge about the congregations they serve. Regional leaders change every 4-6 years and may not have visited with your parish in decades. They know what they hear from pastors, who have a vested interest in what they share. They collect annual data on giving and attendance without information to explain the data. Your congregation may have a very thick file of anecdotes from previous pastors who may have been disgruntled for any number of reasons as they interacted with your regional body. Often this interaction comes when pastors are seeking a new call and no longer feel any loyalty to their existing congregation. Their carefully recorded observations may have nothing to do with your current situation. They may have been self-serving, untrue, or less than the whole story. But this private record carries a lot of weight. Your regional leaders will consult this file before meeting with you.
Too often that private dialog between pastors and regional leaders creates prejudicial branding for a congregation — for better or worse.
Congregations need to take control of their image. Reversing prejudice is never easy.
Congregations must learn to tell their own story without the clerical filter. Ideally, they must look for ways to stand out in the denomination. We’ll cover some ideas for this later.
For now, it is helpful to understand how regional leaders think. They think in terms of church categories. There is a place for each existing congregation in a prescribed structure that relates to size and therefore budget and the available pastors willing to serve as you plan your mission.
These are the four general categories.
1. Family Church
A family church is small with less than 100 members. Leadership in these churches is often influenced by family heritage. Clergy serving these congregations must recognize that members value the viewpoint of a few patriarchs or matriarchs who may have provided continuity through many pastorates. That’s a challenge for many clergy who want to be viewed as “the CEO.”
Regional bodies often consider these churches to be dying. Nevertheless, it is how most congregations start. They have a strength and social structure that can outlast many a larger church.
Family churches will likely have to settle for part-time clergy and receive very few choices in the search process.
2. Pastoral Church
Pastoral churches have about 100-200 members, too big to be controlled by family groups but still small. These congregations rely on pastoral leadership. There will be a council or vestry. It’s strength or influence will vary with the relationship they build with their pastor.
Pastoral churches are likely to be given the names of seminary graduates, second career pastors, part-time pastors or pastors winding down into their retirement years. Regional leaders may also try to place pastors who have failed elsewhere in this size congregation (beware!).
Most churches in the United States fit into these first two categories. Most regional bodies and clergy think that viability is in the next two categories.
3. Program Churches
The next larger churches have up to 500 members. Clergy love this size church because they can support one pastor and a small staff. They are often popular with new families or people in transition because (as the title suggests) they offer programs to fit specific needs. Regional bodies wish every church were this size or bigger! It would give them stability, too. The problem is that they are few in number with clergy vying for their calls and the career trajectory they offer.
Congregations of this size will be given several candidates to consider.
4. Corporate Church
Corporate churches exceed 500 members and may have up to 3000. These churches have little need for a regional body, but they get a lot of attention because they are able to contribute the bulk of the regional body’s budget. They are plum positions for clergy who want prestige. They always come with the responsibility for facilities and staff. Most churches this size have multiple clergy with specific skill sets and lay staff. Their challenge is to provide the personal touch that small churches have. They constitute a very small percentage of the total number of churches, but there is a tendency to assume that all churches aspire to be like them.
Corporate churches will have no trouble finding clergy interested in serving them.
In between each of these groups is a transitional category. Churches can grow from one category or shrink to smaller category. It is during these transitional stages that congregations are harshly examined or judged.
Your community is not thinking about where your church fits into this structure, but your regional body is. Their perception of your size influences your access to professional services, which influences your ability to meet your ministry potential.
Tough words but true. Congregations working on a branding strategy must grapple with how they are already viewed by their own denomination.
Is your congregation trying to move from one category to another?
If it is, seriously consider how you will tell your story to your regional leaders.
Do you see why the last step we proposed (self-study) is important? Too often congregations turn to their regional leaders for help with this process without realizing the prejudices already in place. Do some work before you turn to your regional body.