Pensees: Who Measures Influence?

Who Measures Influence?

Just this month The Church Report issued its list of the “fifty most influential churches in America.” All of the churches are huge. Being huge, more people hear about them. The list is unfortunate because it suggests that size is critically important for influence. And, sadly, too many people mistake influence for impact. It is God who determines impact, and sometimes size has very little to do with it. I would suggest that the very fact many of the “fifty most influential churches in America” are so large is because they are, in fact, not as influential on individual lives as many might think. In most cases, if the crowd loves something it is because there is little risk of individual change. If the crowd loves something it is because there is no depth.

Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water. Friedrich Nietzsche

“A crowd always thinks with its sympathy, never with its reason” ~ William R. Alger

Small churches, by the thousands, are the ones with real influence in this nation. Because small churches, unlike the larger ones, have greater potential for impact per square inch than the monster ministries that cater to the crowds. I realize that there are some outstanding churches in this list, but I speak to the general notion that influence is the same as impact. It is not. A new culture is developing that is starting to embrace the small over the huge. The mega-churches will soon have as much actual impact as a Super Bowl game. Small churches, on the other hand, have a great future! I think a word of encouragement is in order for the thousands of good churches who won’t make the top fifty list. Here’s why (and forgive my partiality toward Baptists. I want to encourage the brothers!):

1. Small churches make up the majority. Average church attendance in 2000 was 90 and it was on a downward trend. Churches under 200 make up the vast majority of evangelicalism/fundamentalism.
2. Unprecedented powers of networking. Today’s small church pastor is empowered to network with more facility than ever before. The potential of a small church’s extended influence is many times greater than was ever possible before.
3. Baptists are traditionally grassroots people. Thus, the Presbyterians came to town in coach, the Methodists in wagons, and the Baptists on foot.
4. The combination of the Gen Y culture and the enculturation of the complaints of the Emerging Church into the psyche of Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism.

The emerging church complaints are grounded in a profound dissatisfaction with the status quo and the consequent persuasion that the existing paradigm of ministry is dead, powerless, and uninspired. This “mood” is quickly blending into the culture of the Gen Y who aspires to oneness and small community. In other words, as the Gen Y culture begins to displace the Boomers and Gen Xers, there will be a distinct revival of interest in small community. The mega-church suited the culture of the Boomers who measured progress almost exclusively in terms of growth, power, numbers, and expansion. The Boomers admired a man who could build an empire.

Interestingly, the mega-church suits the Xers for almost the opposite reason. We are more cynical. We will not follow any one man; we are disillusioned by leadership, but we have been pampered and coddled. Therefore, we expect leadership to give everything we need. We shop for a church that gives us a buffet of opportunities that we can choose from according to the dictates of our personal tastes. We embrace the anonymity of the mega-church, while simultaneously demanding individualized gratification. The Army’s advertisement to our generation made sense: “Be all you can be.” We would join an army to be all we could be individually.

But the Army knows something. The Xers are too old for military service. Now they appeal to another breed of people with the ad: “An army of one.” In contrast to the Xers, Gen Y wants community without anonymity. They want to be a part of a team. The Xers were happy with large, non-descript machinery so long as their individuality was preserved. All mega-churches could be the same as long as they were large enough to absorb individual individuality. By contrast, the Gen Y’s want churches with individuality. They do not want their church to be the carbon copy of another church. They want their individual individuality to mesh with, and be part of, the composition of the individuality of their church. Smaller churches will once again be king of the mountain in evangelical and non-evangelical culture. Therefore, the mega-church ambition that is still exalted as a noble – or at least understandable – goal is already being threatened by the Emerging mood in evangelicalism. Ultimately, that goal will fade away, lingering only as a distant dream of individually ambitious megalomaniacs. Soon the small church will be at the top of the list of the culture’s conception of the ideal church.

But not just any small church. Christian World News (Evanglicals Now) believes that small churches are better.

“Decades of church growth research have brought eight areas or elements of every local church to light, by which the quality of churches can be readily compared. The so-called eight basic principles, which interact strongly with each other and should not be viewed singly, are:
1. Goal-oriented leadership
2. Gift-oriented teams
3. Passionate spirituality
4. Functional structures
5. Inspiring services
6. Holistic house groups
7. Needs-orientated evangelism
8. Love-filled relationships ”

“We might reverse some of our proclivity to continue as normal if we introduced our preachers more accurately in our evangelism meetings and convention settings. Try using this introduction: “Here is Brother ______, pastor of a church of 10,000 members, 6400 of whom do not bother to come on a given Sunday morning, and 8600 of whom do not come on Sunday evening. He is here to tell us about how to have a healthy, evangelistic church.

It might be better to ask a man to speak who shepherds 100 members, all of whom attend with regularity and all of whom show signs of regeneration—a man who, in the last year, has baptized 5 people who stick—rather than a pastor of 10,000 members, 7000 of whom do not come—a man who has baptized 1000 in the past year, 700 of whom cannot be found. The smaller, but more consistent numbers of the first pastor reveal a far more effective ministry and thus a far better example for other churches.” ”

The new ideal calls for small churches with big goals, creative ministries, and aggressive community-based, team-oriented outreach.

I really believe that we are at the cusp of a societal mood change within religious America, and that we should make every effort to be at the front end of it. To his credit, Rick Warren understood the power of recognizing social climate. He likened it to a surfer being able to recognize a big wave and joining up with it to ride it in. He rode a wave that he identified before anyone else and unfortunately became a compromising authority on church life. His compromise and misguided ecclesiology aside, he was light years ahead of most in realizing the value of taking the pulse of the culture around us. He saw the wave first, and took the lead.

But I think that Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and their wanna-be millions are missing the next wave. They are like the 50-year-old bikers who seem to have never realized that the times have changed since they were on the cutting edge of radical living. These crusty looking bikers were once looked upon in awe, inspiring strong, visceral reaction from the society they lived in. Now they cruise around in isolated, increasingly irrelevant droves, blissfully unaware of the fact that the second glances they attract now are nothing more than cloyed disinterest and mild pity. So it is with many large churches today. Little do most large ministries realize that neither pastors nor smaller assemblies aspire to be like them any more.

And yet, this societal religious mood change could be wasted by fundamentalistic evangelicals. Leaders, good and bad, are the ones who recognize what is happening socially before it is history. Everyone else only comments today on what leaders acted on yesterday. Never was there an opportunity for conservative evangelical or fundamental churches to seize the trend and advance the cause of Christ by being among the first to flesh out Biblically-mandated, Spirit-dependant ministry while “riding the wave.” The culture is primed and ready for an outbreak of small churches. Our passion is that they would be good churches. Our goal should be to provide godly men the examples, the language, the networking, and the inspiration to harness these societal trends with Gospel reins.

How can this be achieved?

First, the idea that small church equals lifeless, ambition-less, self-absorption must be ruthlessly discarded by dynamic, small-church pastors and seminary professors. It is not enough to piously concede that “God can use anybody.” The notion that small is not successful must be scorned as out of touch with reality.

Secondly, there must be an effective networking of small churches that starts by

1. Pinpointing the ministerial goals that are truly endogenous to small churches. What do small churches want to do? Certainly, not all merely want to exist. Many small congregations under good leadership are infused with big vision. Compatibilities exist. A means by which churches with vision identify each other is essential for developing small churches with ministries large enough for their congregants who don’t want large churches.

2. What Putnam says to the OECD about national economies, I think ought to be applied to local churches: “We need to think carefully about how to encourage decentralisation and empower grassroots organizations. . ., while at the same time retaining some of the advantages of economies of scale.” In other words, we ought to seriously reflect on the question of local church networking that is loose enough to respect that complete autonomy of the church (i.e. no dues, no denominational superstructure, etc.) yet cohesive enough to upscale a ministry project beyond the limitations of a one hundred member congregation to that of the strength of, say, a three hundred member congregation when one, two, or three churches find a common cause. Instead of the denomination, the largest church, or the association steering the ministry direction, a local church may initiate, promote, and recruit aid for its own commitments. The success of its mission is then defined by the local church’s own determination. The extension of the church’s ministry determined by the local church (Do we want help? Do we want to partner? With who? For how long?). The ability of that local church to promote its vision, its pastor to network, and the providential work of God that endorses the church’s mission by impressing other men and churches with a similar burden are key factors in the effectiveness of a larger scale ministry. The potential is unlimited.

3. We need to infuse zeal and courage in the hearts of pastors of small churches and bleed them of the small-man mentality.

4. We need to highlight successful models of small church ministries to prove that the small church can do big things.

5. We need to discard the big-brother para-church ministries that monopolize aspects of Gospel ministry that could be creatively and effectively developed by individual churches. This would include, for sake of illustration, a complete overhaul of the traditional mission board system and a re-examination of the role of Bible schools in ministerial training

My passion, brethren, is to see small churches set on fire for bold, evangelistic outreach. When will small churches become once again emboldened to see themselves as the difference makers?

The day is fast coming when this kind of church is the one that people will be culturally inclined to look for.