October 2003

Small Urban Churches: Poised for Ministry

The small city church has been the backbone of ministry and outreach in urban American, and most likely will continue to be despite predictions to the contrary. We lead off October’s CityVoices newsletter with an insightful interview with Dr. Carl Dudley; pastor, professor, author and acclaimed authority on the role of small churches within American society. You’ll enjoy and profit from what he has to say.

CityVoices continues to offer "The Promised Land," by Nicholas Lemann, and “Effective Small Churches in the 21st Century,” by Carl Dudley (our interviewee for this month). In addition, we have added David Hilfiger’s fine book, “Urban Injustice: How Ghettos Happen,” along with “Women Who Changed the Heart of the City” by Delores Burger. Each of these great books are available at discount prices from CityVoices. Contact us soon! (773) 477-8163 or roger@cityvoices.com

God’s grace and peace today,
Roger Johnson, Editor – CityVoices

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Allowing the Small Urban Church to Thrive – Interview With Carl Dudley

For many years, Dr. Carl Dudley has served as a professor and congregational analyst, most recently at Hartford Seminary and the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. In 1978, while teaching at McCormick Seminary in Chicago, he wrote “Making the Small Church Effective,” establishing his place as one of America’s experts on the dynamics of local church life. He has now published an update to that volume, “Effective Small Churches in the 21st Century.”

Many city churches (neighborhood, ethnic or storefront) are small churches. What should we understand about these small congregations?

The small churches, let’s be clear, are the oldest form of Christian faith. When you say “small,” it’s usually in comparison to something else which is bigger. And the bigger churches are what have grown. What is new in the 20th and 21st century are the large, and now the megachurches that dwarf anything else. But in fact, the small churches are becoming more numerous.

The press likes to concentrate on the churches large enough to maintain a professional clergy and a program, and that kind of thing. Probably, only one-third of congregations in the United States are large enough to comfortably maintain a staff. Somewhere around two-thirds of the churches are below 125 in regular participating adults, fifty percent are below 100 in regular participating adults. So, it shouldn’t be thought of as unusual to be small. They’re the oldest and the most universal form of Christian faith.

Where the statistic is interesting, is a ratio that I call “50 to 15.” It works in two ways. Fifty percent of the members of most denominations, are in the largest 15 percent of the churches. And 50 percent of the churches have about 15 percent of the members, that’s 50 percent of the smaller churches have about 15 percent of the total membership of denominations. And they are served by about the same number of clergy.

So you’ve got a disparity that organizational types want to “clean up.” The reason it can’t be cleaned up is that small churches are not a continuous flow of congregations from large to small. Small churches are a different breed. They’re a different experience. It’s not like people don’t know they could go to large churches. They just decide they want to maintain small churches. And they do it because of intimacy. Because of the kind of caring that is typical in a small congregation.

When I say intimacy, caring or extended family, it doesn’t mean people are necessarily nice to each other. It just means they’re genuine to each other. They’re vulnerable; they’re exposed to each other. They accept diversity. Not only that, they don’t let people change. They almost enforce diversity. Somebody wants to be different than they used to be, and they still call them by their old name and put them back in the old box. They accept characters and they accept “kinkiness.” It’s just part of who somebody is.

What about the expectations of a new pastor coming into a church like this, especially if they feel they can make that small church grow?

It’s a different kind of experience because in the large congregation you can join a group. In the small congregation, you have to join the whole thing. In fact, it’s a lot more difficult to join the whole culture than it is to join a particular activity. Furthermore, you can’t earn your way in. One of the things that small churches do is exploit energy of outsiders as organizers, but never let them into the group. Yes, they can grow but they grow in a different style. They grow by adoption – people join the past, not the future. The pastor has got to help the church open up the past and be proud of it, before any joining takes place.

Carl, years back I heard a figure concerning small groups saying that about 11 percent growth in one year was about the most they could handle.

Small congregations can only absorb as many people as they can get to know. That means you introduce them fairly slowly. I’ve heard pastors tell me that they could take in half a dozens families a year, but that’s about all they could get in. The point is that they don’t grow fast, but they grow intimately. They want to know everything about the person. The nature of the small church is that they know, or they think they know, everything there is about everybody else. Or they’ll want to know it, or they’ll invent it.

You can make or help a small church to grow if they are willing to give up the essential character of being small. If you can break the church up into groups, if they will permit groups to exist in which they don’t know everybody, they can grow. And you can break them up by fracturing them, but that destroys the thing that many people like about being part of a small church. So they’ll fight it something awful, and they’ll fight it on a very emotional basis. The small church is hard to kill. One executive said to me, “They won’t grow and they won’t go away. They just stay there.” Sometimes they even come back in a different form. What sustains small churches is not organizational structure or even finances. Emotional ties sustain them, and that’s pretty powerful stuff. They can be rational about wanting to change, and still not able to do it.

Summarize the simple "graces" of the small congregation. What do small congregations in the city in particular, have to teach experts who seek steady, even exponential growth?

In some sense, they can’t teach them much of anything. The graces of the small church generally get in the way of growth. Now large churches can have intimate groups so long as they’re separate little cells to themselves. Large churches can have the strength of caring if they’ll put it into “caring cells.” But the small church is all one cell. Small churches can emphasize the uniqueness of individuals, and not make people conform either organizationally or structurally. Small churches have an affinity for “kinky” people.

Small churches are generally larger than their membership, and large churches are generally smaller than their membership. That suggests that small churches can grow by something like “kindred spirits.” Which is to say, having an extended membership – an extended group that’s already part of the membership, but doesn’t belong. In many cases, there are “vicarious members” – people that belong to the church by somebody else. Small churches can engender that consciousness.

Small churches have a kind of authenticity that’s very appealing to many people. They have a kind of earthiness and a natural sense of ecology of the rhythm of the soil and the soul. I think they have a kind of biblical basis and foundation. They’re not into great flights of spiritual worthiness. Rather it’s a kind of down-home, basic stuff.

America's cities have always been complex places. Do present urban dynamics (city zoning, big money, increasing technology) allow for continued small church ministry? Or, will more people simply either go downtown, or out to the suburbs for their spiritual needs?

Small churches have a sense of turf, which is related to that earthiness I was just talking about. They dig in, they tend to be very neighborhood, very local and specific in their focus. Now, that can be, and often becomes a kind of ethnic, racial, cultural enclave – our kind of people. But often the church sees itself as a journeying congregation, a pilgrim people, where they’ve been on a journey and they want to accept anybody else that’s been on their journey. They can often share that with another culture. But it’s not the liberal notion of pluralism. It’s a pluralism where people are named by their idiosyncrasies. People can also be called and named by their ethnic backgrounds; and it’s not an insult. It’s an affirmation to be somebody different in a group that accepts differences. I think small churches are really good at that in some urban neighborhoods where there’s a collection of humanity looking like the United Nations. They’ve got one big umbrella, but they keep their own cultural diversity as a gift. It’s not so self-conscious as liberals saying, “Gee, we’re all one.” It’s the recognition of their diversity that makes it possible for small churches to keep going.

Are you seeing any denominations or traditions doing a better job enhancing and supporting small church ministry than others?

I can’t point to any. Some denominations have produced very good literature that’s been sensitive to small congregations. But a lot of denominational literature urges small congregations to become something else, which I think is counterproductive. Some small churches can grow, but a lot of them are just not gonna grow. To say, “You’re small, but you really ought to be bigger,” doesn’t help much. But some denominations have put out some literature that’s really very affirming of the caring qualities of small congregations.

My reservations are that printed materials aren’t all that persuasive within the oral culture of small congregations. Some of the most effective things are done by denominational staff people, local and regional, who really know these characters. In fact, the most effective denominational people are those who know the church so well that when they come they can tell stories about the leading characters in the local church. And when they really know the church well, the stories often have just a tinge of something shady in them. Everybody can laugh about it! It’s fun and it affirms the earthiness of the small church. Now I don’t know where we’re training those kind of denominational people, because the dominant theme (and income) comes from the large, more efficient and more organizational style of churches.

Carl, you've studied, and written about, small congregations for a long time. Will you continue to do that in formal (or informal) ways?

Well, this last spring, I took what was a 30-year-old book and rewrote it (“Effective Small Churches for the 21st Century”). I rewrote it with a lot of new material that I’ve found accessible. One of the things that’s very interesting is how many of these small church pastors, disproportionately have access on the web to all sorts of new resources. When you compare it, you’d think that the large church with its highly technical staff would be quicker on the web, but in fact, by proportion of pastors, the number of small church pastors that use the computer and its tools is proportionately higher.

Any studies or classes we should know about?

I’m into semi-retirement (from Hartford Seminary). But I’ll do somethings with SCUPE in Chicago and perhaps other organizations.

Any standard (or unsolicited) question or word of encouragement that you like to offer pastors in small urban churches around America?

I don’t have a standard word, but I do have an observation. The small church pastor learns about the whole world by going deeper into the lives of the people in their immediate community. And the deeper that you go with any one person, the more universal the experience is apt to be. Small church pastors have access to that in ways that many organizational and program-driven pastors don’t. There’s an openness and fullness of knowing the lives of your people that just never happens in larger churches. And it’s a grace, a great gift.

Contact: Dr. Carl Dudley, Hartford Seminary, Hartford Institute for Religion Research, 77 Sherman Street, Hartford, CT 06105, (860) 509-9543, cdudley@hartsem.edu

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Barna Research -- Hope for Small Churches

(Excerpted from George Barna Research Report, September 2, 2003, www.barna.org)

The United States is dominated by small churches, with the average church attracting less than 90 adults on a typical weekend. The greatest attention flows to large churches, especially the 2 percent of churches that attract more than 1,000 adults in a typical weekend. A new study by the Barna Research Group, of Ventura, California, shows that there are both demographic and theolographic reasons why small churches stay small and large churches grow larger.

While some church growth can be attributed to geographic location and population growth, the Barna study indicates that there are fundamental dynamics at work that keep small congregations from growing numerically as well as several basic factors that contribute to the numerical expansion of mid-sized and large churches.

In spite of the obstacles revealed in the research, small churches have tremendous potential. “These insights simply identify some of the critical challenges that the average small church has to address,” the California-based researcher stated. “Small churches play an important and valuable role in the religious landscape of America. They reach millions of young adults who have no interest in a larger church setting. They have tremendous potential for building strong community, as well as spiritual foundations. And small churches often grow into larger churches once they develop significant internal leadership and creatively overcome their resource limitations.”

Barna also questioned the value of growth for its own sake. “Jesus did not die on the cross to fill up church auditoriums,” he cautioned. “He died so that people might know God personally and be transformed in all dimensions of their life through their ongoing relationship with Him. Such a personal reformation can happen in a church of any size. After all, the goal of every church should not be numerical growth but spiritual health and vitality.”

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Resources for Small Churches:

“How to Thrive as a Small-Church Pastor -- A guide to spiritual and emotional well-being,” by Steve R. Bierly, Zondervan Publishing House, 1998.

While not exactly an “urban book,” Bierly, out of his own experiences focuses very practically on the well being of the pastor in any small church. He understands the issues and expectations of serving a small congregation, and offers fellow pastors much in the way of practical advice on scheduling, relationships, and pastoring oneself. Similar books have been written, but this book has worked for many and continues to be a good starting point.

“If It Could Happen Here … -- Turning the Small-Membership Church Around,” by Jeff Paton, Abingdon Press, 2002.

Again, a basically rural, small church book that has enormously implications for city churches stuck with similar “small church” mentalities. Paton came to pastor the East Canton United Methodist Church in rural northwestern Pennsylvania with what looked like little hope for survival. Amidst all odds, he discovered a loving core group, willing to change to make a difference in their rural community. Paton outlines six “levers” (as he terms them): prayer, clear mission, indigenous worship, growth groups, meaningful membership, and lay pastoring that combine to make a difference in a small church. Read on, and you’ll find some very practical tools for your own ministry.

“Wonderful Worship in Smaller Churches,” by David R. Ray, Pilgrim Press, 2000.

David Ray, who has written several small-church books (“The Big Small Church Book”), takes the first half of his book to outline twelve principles for understanding worship in churches of fewer than one hundred people – an interesting approach. Then, he incorporates those principles into practice with the second half of the book. A lot of specifics come home, which you may or may not agree with. But do take a good look and see what relates to your small church.

** Tremendous numbers of good resources on small churches have been published within the past quarter century. Look for authors like Douglas Walrath, Lyle Schaller, Nancy Ammerman, Alice Mann, Herb Miller, C. Wayne Zunkel and numerous others.

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Coming Events:

15th Annual CCDA Conference – "New Wineskins for our Changing Communities"

November 12-16, sponsored by the Christian Community Development Association, Location: New Orleans Marriott Hotel, New Orleans, LA. The 15th Annual CCDA Conference is shaping up to be one of the best ever. There will be over 100 workshops, networking opportunities where you will be able to meet some of the best community developers in the country, meet and speak with people from your region and network with programs that focus on issues that are close to your heart. Dr. John Perkins will lead each day in Bible study. Other challenging and informative speakers include: Dr. Leah Gaskin Fitchue, Dr. Tom Sine, Rev. Fred Luter, Rev. Luis Cortes, Jr, Dr. Glen Kehrein, Rev. A. Lincoln Washington, Dr. Wayne Gordon and Dr. A. Charles Ware. Register online at: http://www.ccda.org/ or call CCDA at (773) 762-0994.

10th Annual Great Cities Forum – University of Illinois, Chicago Circle Campus

December 5, 2003, Chicago, Illinois. In what’s come to be known as “Chicago’s town hall meeting,” hundreds of policy experts, academics and community leaders come together every year to assess the state of the city, at the local and national level. The meeting has always been organized around cross-cutting urban policy themes. If you’re in Chicago, or any where near the metro area, join Great Cities experts and urban leaders from around Chicago in an engaging national conversation on state of urban America, under the title: “Where We Stand: Cities, Challenge and Change.” Register online at http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/gci/events/wf2003/index.html or call (312) 996-8700.

Crowns of Beauty III -- Planting Urban Churches

February 12-13, 2004, Van Nuys, California. The third annual urban church planting conference hosted by World Impact at The Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California promises to provide more great resources for city pastors and city missionaries everywhere. Once again, World Impact’s key resource people (Keith Phillips, Don David, Terry Cornett, Al Ewert) will bring their wisdom and experience together with speakers such as John Perkins, Jack Hayford, Jesse Miranda, Scott Bauer and Phil Alessi to focus on the subject of planting churches cross-culturally among poor and disenfranchised urban peoples. Register online at: http://www.worldimpactla.org/cob/ or call World Impact at (323) 735-1137.

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Thanks for Reading CityVoices!

Next month CityVoices closes out its publishing year with our “State of the American City Church” edition. While the title sounds large and presumptuous, you’ll find the contents meeting you and every city minister right at street level.

Remember to contact CityVoices for the best in resources for city ministry. “Urban Injustice: How Ghettos Happen” by David Hilfiger, ($10), “The Promised Land,” by Nicholas Lemann, ($12), “Effective Small Churches in the 21st Century,” by Carl Dudley, ($14) and “Women Who Changed the Heart of the City” ($12) by Delores Burger can all be purchased by calling CityVoices at (773) 477-8163. Also, look through the Bookstore section of the CityVoices website (www.cityvoices.com) for a complete listing of all available resources.

Thank You!
Roger Johnson – Editor, CityVoices (Chicago)