Why Is It So Hard To Find Help To Pastor A Small Church Well?

Scrambling for morsels of truth about healthy small churches can make you feel like a pig digging for truffles.

No one is hiding anything from you.

There was a long season of ministry in which I had to tell myself that a lot. I had gone through a near breakdown after trying, but failing, to see the kind of growth in our church that I had been assured was inevitable if I only did the right things.

I spent decades working, praying, and learning how to be a better pastor. In addition to that, I learned and applied every church growth method I could find. In a three- to four-year span, the church grew—fast—from just under 200 to almost 400 in about 18 months. Then, faster than it had grown, it went into free fall. In less than a year we had far fewer people attending than before the explosive growth had started.

There was no visible reason why. I don’t know how small we ended up being. . .let’s just say, I didn’t need an attendance sheet to see there were fewer than 100 people in front of me on Sunday.

I almost left the church and the pastoral ministry during that season. Instead, I found health and healing with the help of God, my family, a great counsellor, and some extraordinarily loving and forgiving church leaders and members.

It took me years to discover why the free fall happened. Some of it was because of strategic errors we made that any church growth expert could have spotted, but mostly the cause was one only I could have seen, yet missed entirely.

During the church’s short, but fast season of growth, I was spiritually and emotionally unhealthy and unhappy, but I didn’t know it. Read More