People Spots Online
Produced by James W. Moss, Sr., and Church Consultants
Provided as a service by New Life Ministries

Understanding Quality

by James W. Moss, Sr.

Covenant Church is a very, very large church. Covenant averages in the thousands. It seems to have a quality ministry in so many areas. That is marvelous. Faith Church is just down the road. They are averaging 75. In fact, three of their key families have just started going to Covenant. The people at Faith are discouraged, despondent, and wrestling with what they should do. It is obvious they can’t compete with giant Covenant.

First of all, Faith Church has to realize it is not competing with Covenant. People who can go to Covenant and be really happy wouldn’t be happy at little Faith Church. But conversely, there are many people who would appreciate the ministry of the smaller church and don’t want to be lost in the crowd at giant Covenant. Should Faith Church close, the ministry that Faith Church should do won’t be done by anyone.

Recently, a new phenomenon has developed. A number of the people from small churches who have gone to the super churches and stayed anywhere from six months to two years have grown weary of being lost in the crowd. They discovered it was nice to have the pastor know them by name. They have returned sometimes to the church they left and at other times to a different but much smaller church. Others have just dropped out. No one missed them.

Smaller doesn’t necessarily mean ineffective. The key to quality in ministry in smaller churches is to make a conscious effort to do two to three ministries very well. In fact, in a very small church, you might strive to do one ministry well. Ministry doesn’t have to be offered in all areas. However, the ministries offered need to be well done.

Quality in even one or two areas has two side benefits. First, it will help build the church’s corporate self-image. Second, it will help to build a community image. Quality in ministry in a small church won’t necessarily attract people. For a long time I assumed that quality would attract people like a magnet attracts iron. Unfortunately, that was a mistaken assumption.

New people come to a church because of a variety of outreach ministries. Quality in ministry will help you hold the new people who walk through the door. However, it won’t provide a magnetic attraction. Outreach is the things a church intentionally does to walk people through the door once. Evangelism is the one-on-one sharing our faith with another so they can be believers too.

Specifically in the view of this article, one of the potential strengths of the small church is the capacity to encourage the building of relationships. The people who choose the small to mid-size churches are doing so in the hope of building some solid relationships. Simply speaking, they are looking for friendships. So small to mid-size churches (an average worship attendance up to 150) should work on this strength by creating opportunities to build relationships.

The preaching and teaching ministries of churches are always important. However, for small and mid-size churches, building relationships are critical. This occurs in the various fellowship aspects of the church. Part of the genius of the Sunday school of 75 years ago was the class meetings. They were the monthly fellowship times away from Sunday morning. I still urge small groups that feature teaching to have a monthly or at least a bi-monthly fellowship time away from teaching. This is where relationships are built and nurtured. This is cultivating the strength of the church.

Some teach that people want to be anonymous. That may be true of the people who go to the giant Covenant Church. But it is not true of the people who go to little Faith Church.

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July 23, 2005. Volume 8, Issue 12. People Spots Online is prepared by James W. Moss, Sr., and Church Consultants. It is provided as a service by New Life Ministries, www.NewLifeMinistries-NLM.org. Articles may be duplicated and reproduced in any way with proper credit. A new article is produced about every two weeks. To be added to a list to receive these messages directly by e-mail, send a request to churchconsultants@yahoo.com.

Understanding Quality

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