I had a discussion with my dad about how my parents’ church has begun to take some encouraging steps towards addressing the shifts in culture that all churches will eventually be forced to address. The senior pastor has rightly recognized that with a church as large as theirs (close to 1000 on Sunday mornings), emphasis must be placed on community.

The trend since the 1970s has been all about church growth. The “bigger is better” mentality has dominated the way pastors have been trained and evaluated for a generation. Among the many down sides of this mentality is the consequence that it’s very difficult to build real community with a congregation of a thousand people. It takes a lot of effort to make it happen, and most churches don’t care to spend that time. As long as the Sunday morning attendance is up, community is an after thought. It takes time and it challenges the models of church leadership that have become so entrenched in the thinking of many pastors today.

Relationships within a community require accountability and shared authority. This way of looking at church doesn’t co-exist well with the CEO models of leadership that are practiced in big churches.

At the church my wife and I attend, for the first several years it existed, the only paid staff member was the church secretary. While that has subsequently changed somewhat, the philosophy remains. Ministry wasn’t meant to be done by professionals. In fact, in many cases churches that employ large staffs typically stifle lay involvement in ministry. Building community isn’t something that can be achieved by a program or a committee. It comes through the body of Christ laboring together to serve Christ. It comes through dismantling power structures in our churches, enabling lay people to minister, and evaluating our success by standards other than attendance.