High Achievement on Low Resources- Leading and Working in the Small Church

“If only”… we repeat this phrase many times in our life for many situations. If only we had a little more money, we wouldn’t be struggling so much every month. If only we had a little bigger house, we wouldn’t be so cramped. If only I had a better education, I could get that job. If only…. It is a statement of lack, of not having enough to do all that we would like to do or be all that we would like to be.

Sitting in the small church, this little two word phrase comes to mind often. If only, we had more people, money, land, resources, help, ideas, programs, children, younger couples, faithful givers…

That’s the one thing about small churches they are… small. There are a small number of people to do the work. A small budget to keep the lights on and do ministry. There is usually a small amount of property to work with. There is a small staff.  So, how does all this smallness make a big impact?  How can the small church achieve without big staffs, big money, big buildings or a big number of people?

There are thousands of small churches, for every large church or mega church, there are multiple more thousands of churches that run a hundred or less in worship. The army of small churches is large. The resources that God currently has invested in these churches is enough to expand the Kingdom of God at an amazing rate. Think of it this way for a moment- if revival were to break out in the smaller churches, the Kingdom of God would grow faster and reach farther than if it did in the larger churches. Why? There are more smaller churches. There are more people attending smaller churches. There are more locations of smaller churches (in fact smaller churches reach communities and areas where no larger churches exist).  It is simple math- the potential of the small church is great!  Here it comes though… “if only” they could/would make that kind of impact.

Below are a few key principles to make the most of what you have in the smaller church. If you are a leader, teacher or worker in a smaller church, you can and should believe that God intends to use the resources He has put into your church for great Kingdom impact.  In my previous article, “The Little Church that Could”, we made the case for everyone to believe that the smaller church can be a key part of Kingdom growth.

So, let’s stop dismissing the role of your church, no matter how big or small it may be. Let’s get past the “if only” and work with what God has invested in us. Let’s stop thinking that we have to have more before we can be a useful part of the Kingdom of God… and let’s get to work with what we have at hand and have high achievement in the smaller church.

1) Work to your strengths and on your weaknesses

Several years ago I was sitting in a breakout session at an evangelism conference when the presenter made this analogy that I will paraphrase

“The church is like a physical body, if you want the body to excel you have to shore up its’ weaknesses and take care of its’ deficiencies. You can’t excel if you are sick, you have to spend the money to get well. You can’t excel if you are malnourished, you have to go get some food.”

Now at some levels I would agree with him, but for the small church it begs the questions: where do we get the money to buy the medicine? What person will drive us to the doctor? Who is going to pay for the food?  The church, any church, great or little, mega or small, has weaknesses. There is not a church around who does not look at themselves and see areas that need to be shored up, worked on or changed.

Now in the larger church, this analogy is easy to put into practice. What we lack, we buy, we bring in a specialist, we create a new ministry.  In the smaller church we run into a whole set of problems trying to do this.

This is, I believe, one of the mistakes we make in leading a small church- putting all our time and resources into trying to fix our problems or filling in all of our holes.  When you lead a smaller church, with limited resources, use those resources to work to your strengths, don’t exhaust people’s time and energy trying to fix all that is wrong. In other words, make the most out of what you have. Do the most good with the resources God has placed in your hand. Spending all of your time, resources, energy and effort to try to fix every problem ends up accomplishing little and becomes a vicious cycle because your weaknesses and problems will never end.  Work to your strengths and on your weaknesses.

Take a look at the passage below:

I Corinthians 12   18 But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be.

Right now God has strategically placed people within your body to accomplish His purpose for your church- to fulfill the Great Commission, to be Christ in your community, to minister to the ‘least of these’.  You may think that you are riddled with too many weaknesses to be effective, yet if you believe that Scripture above, God has placed the people you need in your body already. The problem may be that you are looking at the resources at hand to try to do a task that you are currently not called to do or worse, you look at the limited resources at hand and fail to try to do anything with them.

Practically what does this mean?  If you have 50 people in your congregation- you may not be called to do a big event that requires 200 people to run. But if you look at your 50 people and find their strengths, there is a lot you can do with 50 people and the power of the Holy Spirit. Here is where you have to stop looking to copy what someone else is doing and look at your 50 people as 50 of God’s servants He has placed here to do ministry.

Now as you look at your congregation, what are these folks good at?  What is it that they do well?  Maybe your church is really good at building relationships, welcoming new people but not good at confrontational evangelism. Then you need to leverage that strength by putting people in fellowship opportunities. So instead of doing a door-to-door campaign, your going to invite the neighborhood to a cookout or children’s party or a free car wash, where your folks can mingle with the community and serve them. Maybe the men in your church do not attend the men’s breakfast Bible study, but they are very handy. So instead of trying to force them to attend, contact the local council on aging and find some seniors who need handyman projects done and minister to your community.

Anyone can nitpick a congregation apart, but if you are going to lead this group in the small church, find their strengths, find their sweet spot, and use it to your advantage to build the Kingdom. It is why God has them in your church at this time.

2) Be strategic in your organization

This second point follows the first one very closely. Organize your church for ministry, not maintenance. Many smaller congregations have their time and resources drained by poor organization. They are overloaded with committee work and often the same people are on two or three different committees. If we are serious about making the smaller church effective at achieving Kingdom growth, then we have to free up our limited resources for ministry…. and what is the number one resource today- time.

Belt-tightening is often thought of when it comes to working with limited financial resources, but we don’t seem to be as good at tightening up our time resources.  With fewer people to work with, fewer servants on hand, prioritize their time to accomplish Kingdom work first.  So often the smaller church fills “key” positions first- finance committee, deacons, property committee, ushers… yet when it comes to leadership for Kingdom growth, these positions go unfilled. We seem to place a higher degree of importance on maintenance, placing people in areas of service that keep our church going, when we need to free up people’s time for participating in outreach, ministry, compassion and service to the community.

I have talked to many pastors, and have experienced it myself often, who struggle to engage people in ministry. Yet the very people we are looking for to participate in ministry are already on the property committee, taking their turn in the nursery, working in the kitchen… and then we wonder why they don’t come out on a Saturday to work at our children’s outreach event. As leaders, you have to be aware of helping your workers to prioritize their time. You cannot escape the fact that we, by the committees and teams we ask people to work on, tell them what is important. You cannot say Kingdom growth is important to us, when you have filled your workers time with maintenance work.

It is a bold step to change the organizational structure of a church, but if we are serious about achieving impact in the smaller church, the resources we have must be prioritized for the most important things… and keeping the church painted, the carpet cleaned, controlling the budget and a personnel handbook are not the priorities of the church. Would you like to stand before God as a leader and tell Him, “Look, we kept the books tight, the flowers watered, the hymnbooks in the racks, the kitchen stocked, enforced our by-laws….”.  Do we really believe that God would say, “well done good and faithful servant”?  We have to organize to bear the fruit of the Kingdom- making disciples of all nations- and use the resources He has placed in our hands for His purposes.

3) Don’t be afraid to invest what you have

Here is one thought that will free up your view of money in the small church. Stop referring to your budget as what you have “spent”, rather look at your budget as what you are going to invest in the Kingdom of God. Investment implies one thing- return. When I spend, I think of money leaving my account, never to come back. When I invest, I am looking to build on what I have.

In the smaller church where every dollar has to do the work of two dollars, spending is expensive, even small amounts of money can be seen as an issue. But if we look at our resources and see everything we do as investing, then it is not an expense, but growth. For example, your utility bill can be expensive, or we can look at it as an investment to have lights on so people can see their Bible as we study or have the heat on so people will feel comfortable attending. You can look at your literature order as expensive or as an investment in discipling your congregation. That money you need for your outreach project, can be expensive or an investment in seeing people come to know Christ as their Savior.

Whatever amount of money you have, don’t be afraid, with the leadership of the Holy Spirit, to invest it in the Kingdom of God. We can foolishly spend, but investment in the Kingdom of God always provides returns. Listen to what Jesus says to Peter:

Luke 18  28 Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!” 29 ”I tell you the truth,” Jesus said to them, ”no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God 30 will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come,eternal life.”

If we are stingy with our resources, believing that if we hold on to them we are better stewards, then we are spiritually mistaken. In a worldly sense, you may be right to be tight on spending and keeping what you can in reserve. But in the Kingdom of God, those who sow little into the ground reap little in return…another way of saying that if we don’t invest our resources in the Kingdom of God, we will be ineffective, and achieve little for the Kingdom of God.

2 Corinthians 9    6 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7 Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.

Galatians 6   9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

Be creative when resources are slim, but do not use a lack of resources for an excuse not to do ministry.  With the internet and advances in technology there are a ton of resources that are free or relatively inexpensive that you can use for outreach and ministry.

www.mailchimp.com is a resource you can use for an email campaign to visitors or people in the community, creating html emails that look professional… for free.

www.vistaprint.com you can order business cards, many times for free, to distribute in the community, postcards that you can mail or any number of things, all relatively cheap

www.vflyer.com is a resource I have used to develop great looking flyers that can be emailed or printed for free.

What about staff and people?  Every smaller church would love some more staff help. Did you know that just about every seminary, Bible College or Christian College has students that are looking for experience?  Most of these students that are looking to go into ministry would love to have an opportunity to lead ministry and have something to put on their resume. Internships, and small part-time positions are appealing for these up and coming leaders. Your church an be a part of investing in the future of the Kingdom of God by hiring one of these students as an intern, paying a small stipend and giving them a title to put on their resume for the next position. You get an energetic  and willing leader, they get experience to help grow the Kingdom into the next generation.

Just because there may be fewer resources in the smaller church, does not mean there cannot be a great supernatural impact for the Kingdom of God. Being small is not an excuse nor is it a reason the church is not making progress in growing the Kingdom.  Be wise, and be good stewards of the resources God has placed in the body so that you can achieve what God has designed for you to do.

The Little Church That Could- Leading and Working in the Small Church

Our sanctuary seats about 8,000 people… and we come close to filling it twice on Sunday.

We recently bought an NBA arena to hold the 40,000 plus that attend every weekend.

We baptized over a thousand new believers this year.

We had 1,200 kids at Vacation Bible School this summer.

According to Outreach magazine, the 100 largest churches in America have a combined average attendance of over one million people each weekend.

If any of these sound familiar then you might attend one of the thousands of mega churches in the United States. These large churches dominate the Christian scene- their pastors preach at large conferences, their ministries are written about in papers both religious and secular, they are the focus of magazine articles and books, their strategies are turned into best sellers….

As Paul Harvey would say, “and now for the rest of the story”….

The Hartford Institute says that the median church in America has about 75 attenders on an any given weekend.  About 60-65% of the churches in the US have less than 100 in attendance. The majority of churches are single staff member churches, with only a senior pastor as ministerial staff working with volunteers. Most annual church budgets hover around the $100,00 mark, about the same figure as a weekly offering at the average mega church. And multiple articles tell us that the large churches keep getting larger and the small church keeps getting smaller.

The numbers, the sheer size of the mega churches, can make the “average” church pastor and congregation seem small, ineffective and sometimes, if they let it, insignificant. But there is loads of good news for the smaller church, and that is what I want to focus on in this article.  Now, this is not an article bashing the large church or complaining about the mega church or bemoaning the fact that members are leaving the small church to go to the larger churches. Let’s set the record straight, large is not bad, small is not good, we so badly need to get over the jealousy and pride and get on with doing Kingdom work and ministry.

The most common issues or problems that the smaller church runs into are:

• limited number of workers for ministry
• inadequate budget for ministry or additional staff
• inability to keep up facilities to current or modern appearances
• lack of children or youth to attract younger families
• discouragement among the congregation

There are a lot of issues and problems facing the smaller church today, and this is meant to be the first in a series of articles that is meant to help and encourage small church leaders and members. The last point of the above list is where I would like to begin, because from what I have seen of the smaller church, discouragement is one of the largest issues facing the smaller church.

I have always liked the children’s story The Little Engine that Could. It’s a story about a train that is stranded and needs an engine to pull it over the mountain. The little blue engine takes on the task and this little single engine train has to work hard to make it over a mountain. While the train is heavy and the mountain is steep, the little engine makes it over the top by repeating the phrase “I think I can, I think I can”.  It makes for a cute and encouraging children’s story.

Unfortunately, many churches today are repeating the opposite phrase when it comes to reaching the community and experiencing growth- ”I don’t think we can, I don’t think we can”.  Have talked to a couple of churches recently and this mantra, while not explicitly stated, comes through in our conversations.

“We just haven’t been able to reach people here in this area”.  “It’s hard to reach people here”.  “If only we had (people, space, workers, etc) we could grow”.  You could probably fill in your own phrase that you have heard, or said, at different times from frustrated pastors or discouraged church members.

The focus often times shifts to the larger churches in the area. “We can’t compete with what they do”.  ”We can’t offer all the ministries they do”.  ”They do their style of worship, our people won’t accept it”.  All of these thing are probably true for the smaller church, they probably can’t offer the full buffet menu of specialty ministries and programs of the mega church in their area. Indeed they probably can’t compete with the quality of ministries, facilities and leadership of the larger church.

But that is no excuse to excuse yourself from ministry or to sit in a pity party about what you can’t do and they can.

As a confession, this is where I get very frustrated with the smaller church sometimes. It seems when we talk about growth or reaching the community, we are quick with an excuse, a reason why we don’t penetrate the darkness of our communities, when in reality, the small church has access to every resource they need.  Sometimes what is required first is an attitude adjustment to be more like The Little Engine That Could.

Rather than looking at all that is not, all that you don’t have… turn 180° and see what it is that you do have.

1) God expects us to believe for great things…

At one time, your church was birthed with a vision, a purpose from the Lord to expand His Kingdom, penetrate the darkness of your community and make disciples of all nations. Now over the years, people change, facilities may change, numbers of people and sizes of budgets may get smaller, even locations may change, but the basic purpose of the church does not.

You are meant to see all these things accomplished- see the community blessed by God’s presence in you, watch lives change as people embrace Jesus as their Savior, minister to the ‘least of these’.  If your vision has been diminished to something less than this, maybe your vision is now to try to survive, to hold onto your past, to keep the doors open and the heat on… then you need to hear God’s call to you all over again because God never called the church to merely survive, but to thrive under His guidance and with His power.

In the Book of Numbers the people were about to experience a great blessing from God, their own land, their own inheritance of a land flowing with milk and honey. Think of it as your church incorporating new believers from your community and seeing God pour out blessings one upon another, seeing that God-given vision fulfilled.  But the people rejected the possibility that God could work, could overcome the people of the land, and refused to move forward. Listen to how the people reacted to encouragement to believe God could fulfill the vision of a new land…

Numbers 14  7 and they spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying: “The land we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. 8 If the Lord delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, ‘a land which flows with milk and honey.’  9 Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.” 10 And all the congregation said to stone them with stones.

Now God responds to the disbelief of the people…

Numbers 14   10 And all the congregation said to stone them with stones. Now the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of meeting before all the children of Israel. 11 Then the Lord said to Moses: “How long will these people reject Me? And how long will they not believe Me, with all the signs which I have performed among them? 12 I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.”

Because the people refused to believe that God could, that God would be on their side, God was insulted and grieved at their questioning of His character. Hear that and let that sink in. When we say, “we can’t”, “it can’t happen”, “we could never do that”, “we’re just a small church”…. we aren’t saying anything about us other than we lack faith, but we are making a large statement about the God we serve- we are saying God is not strong enough, powerful enough, loving enough, to make it happen.  God does not like that, not one bit.  God expects us to believe Him, believe that He is all that He says He is and is willing to work to accomplish the vision He places in us.

The Little Engine that Could only had one advantage- He believed. He wasn’t the biggest engine, the strongest engine, the latest model, but he believed. You may not be the biggest church, have the latest technology, the most workers, but you can believe. If we take God out of the equation, then we can only expect things as big as we are, and that leaves the smaller church believing very little. Take a fresh look at who God is and expand your vision to include the “God-factor”.

2) God is at work to accomplish His work…

Hear Jesus’ words…

John 5  17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.”

The smaller church often looks at their numbers and says that we are few. They look at the same people working three or four positions, and says we don’t have enough.  We feel like our position is to work for God, and because we don’t have all the people we feel like we need to accomplish the work, we have failed or fallen short in pleasing God.

No matter the size of the church, we don’t work for God, but with God. It takes on a whole different feel when we see ourselves as God’s fellow workers, rather than those trying to finish an assigned task for God. We don’t dig the ditch for God, God has a shovel right along side us digging away. We don’t teach a class for God, the Holy Spirit is right there teaching the hearts of people right along with you giving you words to say and open hearts to receive and wisdom for them to understand. We don’t witness for God, God is there revealing Himself to the lost.

John 15  26 ”But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me. 27 And you also will bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning.

I love this passage.  Look at it again, who is the first witness?  Who is the first to testify of Jesus’ life, death, burial and resurrection?  It is not us. It says that “you also” will bear witness– the Spirit is the primary worker, we are the “also”. To work with God means that no matter the church size, God is the primary worker and we need to believe that He is working, and we also have to get busy working alongside Him.

No matter what the task is at hand for the smaller church, we are not working alone and we are not working as a smaller church, but as co-workers with a big God.

The Little Engine that Could did what other trains did not do. Unless we have a vision for God working alongside us, we will give up and give over to discouragement that says we few in this little church cannot. Yet if we see God at work in our community, if we can catch the vision that God is seeking out the lost, comforting the grieving, healing the hurting… and this is already happening around you, it opens us up to believe that no matter how many we are, we are laboring with the one who can do all things. God is working, He is doing His part. Do we believe it?  Can we see it?  What will we do about it?

3) Faith without works, kills the smaller church…

I have rarely run into a church that does not claim it wants to grow. Most churches know the rhetoric, we want to reach people for Christ.  Yet, and painfully so, few are doing the hard work to reach people.

Believing that God can work, is one part of the equation. God wants us to believe and will work in us. Jesus said on several occasions that He worked in accordance with the faith of the people…

Matthew 9  28 And when He had come into the house, the blind men came to Him. And Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord.” 29 Then He touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith let it be to you.”

Matthew 15  28 Then Jesus answered and said to her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

Faith pleases God (Heb 11:6), but it is faith that leads to action that truly changes things. Unfortunately we have often confused rhetoric with faith. Rhetoric, knowing the right phrases to say and the right words to use, is not faith. Saying that you want to reach people is rhetoric, actually sharing Christ with the lost is faith. Saying that you believe your church can make a difference is rhetoric, taking your Saturday morning to feed the hungry is faith. We could go on and on, because we all have heard the rhetoric, it sounds good around the church, it makes us feel better because we are saying the right things and we feel like we believe the right things. This is particularly true in churches where very little is happening.

Filling the smaller church with rhetoric and the right words has also made them complacent and ineffective.  It seems that we have emphasized that right beliefs are more important than right actions. As long as we believe the right things, and can say the right things in church, than we are alright with God… right?. James tells us a different story…

James 2  15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. 18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by myworks. 19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe–and tremble! 20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?

What kills most smaller churches is a lack of doing. “We are old”. “We’ve tried things in the past”.  And so we excuse ourselves from doing and fall back on the fact that we believe the right things. Yet if we don’t do, our faith is dead. It is why many smaller churches are referred to as dying churches. There is a lack of doing, a lack of actual ministry. Read the Great Commission again, “Go and make disciples…”, notice it has no asterisk attached. There is no disclaimer about the size of your church or budget or location. The Christian faith is a doing faith, a working faith, a faith that requires ministry and giving and sharing and praying and touching… and it dies when it is left on the bookshelves and in the pews and in the words of people.

The Little Engine that Could didn’t make it up the mountain because it said the right things. It encouraged itself with the right words “I think I can, I think I can”, but it accompanied its’ words with work, hard work. Work that caused sweat and used up energy and caused strain. The smaller church cannot die for a lack of trying, for a lack of doing ministry. Maybe you can’t do everything the mega church can, but so what. At this point God has not called you to do all those things, but it should not stop you from doing work, the hard work that you can do. Size does not stop you from witnessing to the lost. Size does not stop you from working in your community. Size does not stop you from working with God to comfort the hurting or feeding the hungry.

I like what Steve Sjogren says in his book Conspiracy of Kindness, that too many churches are stuck on Ready, Aim… but never Fire. We talk a good talk, talk about what we should do, but never do it. In the words of Nike, “Just Do It”. Get to the work at hand.

The smaller church often says it cannot get enough workers… lets close this article with this thought.

How many of you in the smaller church does it take to make a difference?  One, two, three?  Taking into consideration that God is already working, that we can believe that God wants to do great things…. start with you. If no one will go with you, don’t worry, God is with you. If no one else will help, God will help. If you are waiting for consensus, if you are waiting for everyone to believe like you do, if you are waiting until everyone gets up to work beside you… you will watch the smaller church die a slow, agonizing death. There are thousands of smaller churches that God is wanting to work through… to be the engine to the Little Church that Could, to climb that mountain of reaching into the darkness and growing the Kingdom of God, to climb the mountain out of the valley of ineffectiveness to the peak of joy in serving with God, to climb the mountain out of discouragement and disillusionment, and to the heights of seeing God do great things in your midst.

God bless the smaller church….