Just a note: In 2025 we launched “The Revitalization Playbook.” The “Playbook” is similar to the ones used by football coaches on the sidelines. The coach’s playbook contains all the plays that the coach is confident that his team can run. Conditions on the field determine which play he chooses next.
In my “Playbook,” knowing that every church is unique, we began with five “scripted” plays (appropriate for any church in need of revitalization,) followed by fifteen “optional” plays. I mentioned in the “Playbook” that some of the plays (chapters) were going to get longer in subsequent editions and that completely new plays were going to be added as I worked with pastors in their in-need-of-revitalization churches. It has since been my joy to work with Revitalization Cohorts, as well as individual pastors who are also “deep in the weeds” of revitalization projects.
With that said, here’s the fourth of which will likely be a number of additional plays for the “Playbook.” I am praying that you are blessed and helped.
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Let’s begin with some notes on church sizes and church revitalization:
- I’m not assuming that every reader of this book is a pastor or lay leader in a small church.
- But I am assuming that most of you are. That’s because in 2026 most churches in America are small churches. The median church attendance today is about 65. If your church is considerably larger than this – but is definitely in need of revitalization – I would suggest that you bypass this chapter and go directly to Tony Morgan’s wonderful book, The Unstuck Church, which offers concrete revitalization suggestions for churches in other size categories.
While were giving credit where it’s due, I’m happy to enthusiastically commend:
- Ron Klassen’s MAXIMIZE: Leveraging the Strengths of Your Small Church,
- Karl Vater’s The Grasshopper Myth: Big Churches, Small Churches and the Small Thinking that Divides Us, and
- Karl Vater’s excellent Helping Small Churches Thrive blog and KarlVaters.com website
As a 70-something pastor, I don’t often use the words “great” and “new” in the same sentence but I get to do that today: among several other great, new movements in Christianity in America is what we might call the “small is beautiful” movement. Small church pastors have come out of the closet. Karl Vaters (above) is the best-known spokesperson for the movement but it’s much more than one man, a couple of books and a blog.
- Pastors who have been driving home from conferences with their heads hanging down after hearing the latest mega-church superstar share suggestions that are irrelevant for them are finally getting some attention.
- Denominational leaders are investing more effort into their smaller churches.
- Small church leaders are realizing how ineffective and unnecessary it is to try to keep imitating large churches.
- We’re all noticing that – beyond Acts chapter four – the New Testament ceases to mention church attendance figures.
- Many of us are realizing that every size church has its own set of strengths and weaknesses.
And that brings us to seven ways to play to the strengths of your small church.
(1) Believe that your small church can be a great church. Again, with all the New Testament material on the subject of church health and strength and beauty, there’s little or nothing said about church size.
Do we need to be focused on making disciples out of the “raw material” of lost people? Absolutely! But disciple-making zeal doesn’t always equate to having a large congregation. The New Testament value is love-motivated faith-sharing (Matthew 5:14-16, Philemon 6) and kingdom building (Matthew 6:10), not numerical success.
I began each of my eight interim pastorates with the same emphasis: “By the power of God (Ephesians 3:20,21) this church can be a great church.” It’s time to put away the idea that a church has to be big to be great. Even the high-powered Apostle Paul – a man I wouldn’t have liked to try to keep up with – didn’t deflate the joy of the folks in his church plants (Philippians 1 and I Thessalonians 1) by boasting about the large urban church which had sent him out. Rather, he consistently applied non-numerical standards for evaluating ministries (See I Corinthians 3:13 and his reference to “faith, hope love” in I Thessalonians 1:3).
(2) Get good at welcoming your guests. I’m very convinced that churches are mandated to express “the welcome of God” to their guests, treating everyone who walks in the door the way the father of the prodigal treated his long-awaited son (Luke 15: 20-24).
The very good news for smaller churches is that it is comparatively easy for them to get good, or even really good, at doing this, since newcomers are easily spotted. The small church needs great people with great hearts, but it does not need a great program to welcome guests warmly. On the other hand, the larger the congregation, the more systematized, organized and intentional it has to be to welcome guests well.
(3) Usher your welcomed guests all the way into the family. Here’s the “catch.” Many smaller churches which do their initial welcoming of guests well fail to fully assimilate their guests into the church family – and that’s the key word here –
As above, the good news and the bad news is that this is largely a matter of the hearts of your people. Illustrations follow:
- Donna and I once visited a large Christian family which had the whole tribe around the dinner table. Wonderful, right? Not quite. The two foster children, cousins, actually, to the kids at the big table, were placed at their own little table which was well-separated from the rest of the family. Is anybody else bothered by this?
- Friends of ours were invited to visit an ordination celebration dinner at a staff member’s “home” church. When the all-important mealtime arrived, the pastor announced that the honored pastor and family would dine first, the members of the church would dine second and the church’s guests would go through the line last. I’m not making this up.
- Then there are the churches which frequently let their newer members know that their votes and opinions are of lessor value than those of the long-time members, with phrases like: “Well, you’re new here” or “I’ve been here for forty years and this is what I think!”
We need some discernment with this of course, but many great little churches find that it is after their guests have been welcomed into the family that some of these folks are drawn to the loving head of that family: Jesus Christ.
(4) Get good at family relationships. There’s a reason why I keep using the word family here. The smaller church has a family culture and a family feel. As in a biological family, small church family members get to know each other well – really well.
This can be good or bad. The opportunity to bless each other is great, as is the opportunity to irritate each other. In summary: in the small church, when it’s good it’s very good and when it’s bad it’s very bad.
Solution? Great family relationships don’t just happen. They must be both consistently modeled (I Thessalonians 2:5-12) and persistently taught by the leaders. Is it worth it? The fellowship experienced in a truly healthy, small-church family, is something very special and seldom experienced in any other context (Philippians 1:3-11).
(5) Do evangelism as a welcoming family.
As in point three above, truly welcoming unbelievers as far into the family as an unbeliever can come, can be a powerful means of evangelism. Many new churches have discovered this truth by accident but you can practice it on purpose.
In foster care or adoption, the biological members of the family need to be in agreement about welcoming in a new member. It’s a powerful dynamic if your church family is in agreement about welcoming new people, whether or not they would be our first choice for new family members.
The small church which wants to do evangelism well can get good at welcoming its guests (as I shared above), serving the community together and conspiring in love to pursue the salvation of lost individuals who have connections (natural or intentional) to more than one member of your church
(6) Disciple new believers one on one and as a family. Small church leaders need not be discouraged by not having the large groups of new converts that larger churches have. Get some discipling materials that are a good match for your congregation and use them in classes, twosomes, threesomes or one on one. Discipling new believers is always worth the effort.
(7) Shepherd your people the way only the small church can. As with giving guests a warm welcome, this is something that the small church can do exceptionally well without a complicated system. This is not to say that “the pastor” must be a highly-motivated, care-giving “super-pastor” (my wife’s term). Notice that even in a church plant situation (I Thessalonians 2: 5-12), the Apostle Paul and friends did shepherding care as a team (see Acts 20:28 and I Peter 5:2). Likewise, in your congregation, the pastor can model good pastoral care and train others to join him in treating the church’s hurting members the way a family cares for its own.
(8) Train workers in small groups or one at a time. Similarly, the small church pastor would love to have large groups of people to train for various ministries. But please don’t let your disappointment – or your envy of the big church down the road – keep you from training ushers, greeters, teachers, care-givers, board members, preachers, evangelists or nursery workers in very small groups or one at a time.
Suggestions For Getting Started:
(1) Preach on all of these. How about a sermon series on the great little churches of the New Testament?
(2) Watch your language, in and out of the pulpit. If, as a pastor or other church leader, you make comments, cracks, groans, complaints or disparaging remarks about the size of your congregation, your attitude will rub off. If you must talk about your church’s size (as in #1, just above), make it positive, not negative.
(3) Use secret seekers to help your congregation come to grips with its welcoming practices. A secret seeker is someone who won’t be recognized by your church people and will be able to report back to your church objectively.
(4) Interview a six-month newbie. Have a good sit-down talk with someone who has been attending the church for a few months. Have they been invited all the way into the family, or are they still on “the outside looking in”? If necessary, interview someone who attended for a few months, gave up on the idea of being invited into the actual church family, and bailed out. One couple told me, “If I ever go back to a church again, it won’t be that one!”
(5) Do a computer-driven church health survey. For a few hundred dollars you can gain a tremendous amount of information about the health of your congregation in an objective manner. Several such surveys are available. Some denominations make one of these available to their churches for free. Contact me for my recommendation.
(6) Use a ministry interest survey annually to recruit people for ministries and training opportunities. Be realistic about the time commitments involved and the duration of ministry terms. Allow people to switch ministries freely. I have repeatedly found this to be a very helpful tool for bringing out the best in a small congregation.
(7) Create evangelism systems, opportunities and expectations. It’s not very effective to simply preach or teach about evangelism and tell folks to “just do it.” Your church’s evangelism effectiveness will improve greatly however if you:
- Teach people one, simple – I’ll say it again, one, simple – way of presenting the gospel to unbelievers.
- Forget about special seminars and classes: only the people who don’t need to come will actually show up. Instead, teach evangelism very clearly and simply to everyone, from the pulpit.
- Make sure your people know that evangelism is a vital part of the Christian life and make sure they see you modeling this – without letting anyone think that you are the church’s hired evangelist.
- If you have folks who can organize church-wide outreach events, however simple, this will have some impact on your community and a bigger impact on your member’s hearts.
- Make sure your people know that your paradigm of a mature Christian is someone who shares his faith. In other words, make faith-sharing a qualification for leadership in your church.
