Small congregations are crucial local laboratories. They are places of indigenous experimentation. Small congregations are diagnostic centers tasked with figuring out what the good news sounds like and looks like in each community. To help grow the kingdom in the years ahead.
The late Phyllis Tickle helps explain. She reminds us that there are predictable, roughly 500-year cycles in our faith tradition. Within each 500-year cycle, new experiments emerge at the margins and edges alongside older, established practices at the center.
Around the end of each 500-year cycle, there’s a major transition. We collectively—and irritably—sort out what to keep (because it’s working and faithful) and what to get rid of (because it’s not). This sorting results in a kind of chaotic Church “rummage sale” of structures and practices. And, not surprisingly, it’s marked by immense change and heightened anxiety.
Sound familiar?
But the results of this irritable sorting process are also reassuring, according to Tickle. Because somehow, after each transition, the Church doesn’t collapse, shrink, and die. Somehow ministries expand. New things are unleashed. Outrageously, some of the small, unexpected, unlikely experiments work. And from these experiments, we end up with more local models. More indigenous innovations. For more people. In more places. And with a greater diversity of forms and practices.
God shows up.
But there may be a new wrinkle in the ancient pattern that Tickle describes. Currently, we are abundantly confident in the successes of our large congregations. And our confidence may be changing the rules of this rummage sale. Especially in the United States. We may be preserving and replicating general worship models that work in well-resourced, large settings. And overlooking everything else—like the messy, unpredictable particulars of small settings.
We are not exploring how large and small congregations might work differently, then teaching the strengths of each. Instead, we are looking for successful, one-size-fits-most answers with a troubling result: we are gathering all the kingdom’s eggs into one big basket. And missing the margins and edges where local ministries might be incubating unnoticed.
Please note. This is not a plea to save all small congregations. Human organizations have life cycles. Not all can or should be saved. There are unhealthy congregations of all sizes.
Instead, this is a call:
- To unleash small congregations—differently.
- To see God present in the workings of small congregations—differently.
- To reimagine worship through small congregations’ distinctive communities—differently.
- To make small congregations (again) local laboratories, indigenous innovators, and good news diagnosticians.
Answering this call won’t be easy. It will take us to unexpected, unsettled, untidy edges (as it always has). It will require experimenting, flailing, and learning. And we will have to learn how to do this work with and not simply for small congregations. So we don’t return to merely replicating one model.
The historical pattern is pretty clear. Some small congregations and unlikely ministries will resource the Church through the next great transition.
Ultimately, returning to the practices of local laboratories should feel familiar to the Church. It’s rooted deeply in our tradition and incarnational theology. It also resonates with God’s outrageous preference for doing new things with scoundrels, wafflers, and uppity outsiders (bless all of our hearts).
Really.
About the writer
Teresa J. Stewart is a writer, teacher, speaker, and creator in love with small congregations. For nearly 20 years she has written worship resources for them, studied their strengths, shared their successes, and offered workshops just for their challenges and advantages.
Her work starts with this simple truth: small churches are different from big ones. And small churches have superpowers and distinctive gifts unavailable in big settings. The kingdom of God is already among us.
Visit Teresa at smallchurch.org. Her best-selling book for small churches is titled The Small Church Advantage.