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Make way for the microchurch!

Megachurch? That’s old news. These churches are intentionally small -- and like it that way. More and more new congregations are focusing on building relationships and a sense of community, not just amassing numbers and expanding programs.

By Nicki Reno

If the megachurch is the legacy of the Baby Boomers, the legacy of the next generations may be just the opposite -- smaller churches designed to feed the need for close-knit, authentic relationships.

The trend, if it is one, doesn’t show up yet in church statistics. But, according to consultants and researchers, there are early indications that many new churches are being designed to stay small.

“You don't see many church planters today who have their sights set on huge congregations or buildings," says Carol Childress, a researcher who carries the title of “knowledge broker” at Leadership Network, a Dallas-based think tank for innovative churches.

"Unlike many Baby Boomer pastors who were set on starting and growing big churches, today's church leaders are not concerned with becoming big but rather with growing authentic disciples of Christ,” says Childress, whose job it is to spot trends in church life.

Adjusting the dream

As a seminary student at Princeton University, Tim Moore didn’t plan on ministering in a congregation with only 100 members. “As an aggressive, grandiose know-it-all, I dreamed of a big church,” he admits. Now as pastor of Sardis Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C., he ministers mostly to young professionals “who want to be in a small community of faith, who are disillusioned with large churches.”

But that’s OK with Moore, 38, who has come to value the intimacy and flexibility of smaller, "entrepreneurial" congregations. In the computer world, he says, you can work either for software giant Microsoft or for a tiny start-up. And in the future church, he suggests, you will attend either "a megachurch or a microchurch."

Sardis Church was started by a small group of people whose former church moved to the suburbs. "They thought the [former] church was bigger than it needed to be anyway," Moore says. With six churches of 2,000 members or more less than a mile away, the founders had to ask, "Why should we even exist?" he says. They decided "there needed to be a place for a small community of faith," a place for those disillusioned with church for any number of reasons.

Sardis is intentionally small and plans to stay that way. If it ever gets too big, Moore says, the church likely would start another congregation.

Though he never intended to serve an intentionally small church, Moore says being small has advantages. A recent father of triplets, he is a part-time pastor and part-time stay-at-home dad, which enables his wife to pursue her career.

Building community

There’s nothing new about small churches; the average American congregation had a weekly attendance of 90 last year, according to Barna Research Group. And few people are suggesting the megachurch, with its full-service programming and regional influence, has outlived its usefulness.

But as pastors and new-church planters look for models on which to build future-fit churches, they are increasingly drawn to congregations that emphasize building relationships and a sense of community, not just amassing numbers and expanding programs.

"There's nothing wrong with big churches," says church consultant Bill Easum, who has worked with plenty of them. The trend toward smaller churches is not just a response to the megachurch phenomenon, he says. It means the next generation "cares more about authenticity and community than institutions."

Authenticity is the watchword among Generation X. Numb to the culture-wide marketing hype, they are turned off by the bigger-is-better mentality they say characterizes many churches. Often haunted by what author Jane Bernardi calls a feeling of “aloneness” -- surrounded by friends but detached and distrustful -- they are looking for a safe place to connect with God and friends.

Thinking small

"Smaller is working," says Easum. "That's because it is the way the church spread the fastest in the first century -- organically instead of institutionally."

Easum is one of the few ready to predict a major shift: "I believe the megachurch will be replaced by smaller congregations that meet in multiple settings."

Although it's too early for concrete statistics, those who most closely watch church trends are convinced the small church is making a comeback -- and in fact never left.

“It has always been the case that the vast majority of American congregations are small,” says Nancy Ammerman, a sociologist at Hartford Theological Seminary. “The flap over megachurches has tended to obscure that fact.” She adds, “I don't have trend data -- nobody does -- on church size….”

But Carol Childress says it's easy to see a shift emerging when she considers the country's changing demographics, her conversations with pastors and church planters, and the cultural direction toward smaller things.

"While large churches may have introduced large numbers of people to the gospel, what now?" she adds. "Discipleship is a lifelong process." By nature, smaller churches are in a better position to keep track of individual people and their spiritual journeys, which helps build community.

Even as some churches are starting and staying small, many megachurches are learning to behave smaller -- steering members into small groups for discipleship and relationship building.

Breaking the rules

Microchurches break many of the rules for church growth. While most church strategists preach the importance of location, many a microchurch doesn’t care where it meets, or even that it have a permanent meeting place. They can be found almost anywhere -- storefronts, movie theaters, coffee houses, church basements.

Many have a premeditated we-don't-want-to-grow-beyond-this-number mentality. When they reach that number, "that alerts them to start spin-offs at other locations in the community," says Jason Mitchell of Leadership Network, who helps young ministers and church planters learn from each other and share resources.

"Smaller churches don't need to go out and buy huge plots of land or sprawling buildings," says Carol Childress. "Smaller churches won't need to raise millions of dollars before they can gather in comfortable settings."

And the skills required to lead a smaller, more relational church are different than the skills required to preach to the masses, Childress adds. "These churches will require lots of relationship building, lots of leadership skills, perhaps less emphasis on proclamation and more emphasis on teaching Scripture, but in a more conversational, participatory, storytelling sort of way."

The microchurch movement also reflects the changing spiritual needs of American culture.

Under the modernist worldview, which dominated Western thought for several centuries, skepticism toward anything spiritual forced Christians to defend the legitimacy of Christ with logical argumentation and rational sermons. But in the emerging postmodern world, with Gen-Xers at the vanguard, there is less debate about spiritual reality, but there is a compelling need for authentic spiritual experiences.

Postmoderns "don't need to be convinced to believe in spirituality, but they need relationships to incarnate the truth,” says Mitchell. “They cannot separate a relationship with Christ and relationships with other people."

As Bill Haley, publisher of Re:Generation Quarterly, says simply: "Don't tell me Jesus loves me if you don't love me."

Serving first

Dieter Zander has been a pioneer in reaching postmoderns, first by starting one of the earliest Gen-X churches, in Southern California, then by trying to integrate Gen-Xers into a traditional megachurch -- pacesetter Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago.

Now he’s looking for a new model -- one built on planting churches by building relationships first. Defying the notion that a church must have a worship service or a building to be "real," Zander said he started thinking about how to serve a community.

"We want to serve first -- not as a means to an end, just to serve -- and hopefully increase spiritual conversation within the community,” says Zander of his new church-planting work in inner-city San Francisco. “The 'gathering' or 'church' part will, if anything, follow and give us the relational basis to repaint, reevaluate and relate the real person of Christ to people."

Relationships are always important in planting a new church, but seldom are they the strategy and the goal. Zander doesn't claim to have the answer for starting churches in this new way, but he knew he had to do try something different. "San Franciscans won't allow you to do church in the 'modern' way because many are unresponsive to church -- not unresponsive to the gospel but to church."

Zander's approach of helping a generation experience Christ's love in the context of an authentic, caring community may never build a large congregation. Rather, if it works and a small Christian community emerges, he likely will start over in a new neighborhood and replicate his efforts.

Acting small

Not everyone agrees churches need to get small -- or stay there.

"All megachurches started out small," says Jim Tomberlin, former senior pastor of the 5,000-member Woodmen Valley Church in Colorado Springs, Colo.

"Every generation will have some sort of church-growth or downsizing movement," says Tomberlin, who recently took a position at Willow Creek as a teaching pastor.

Bigger isn't necessarily better, Tomberlin admits. "Better is better. Healthy is better. "

But Tomberlin believes megachurches can meet the need for community by acting smaller -- by creating small groups within the larger fellowship to nurture relationships. And it's these small groups that Tomberlin believes will meet the needs of an interactive, faith-seeking culture. "We cannot be churches with small groups; we need to be churches of small groups."

Tomberlin and Zander agree that today's culture is also becoming increasingly consumer-minded, and that large churches appeal to some people because they offer more choices.

But Zander says people who are "seriously engaging in the postmodern culture will ultimately be attracted to 'leaner' churches." Tomberlin says megachurches can successfully cater to both cultures -- particularly when "small groups are utilized."

- Nicki Reno is an editor for Young Life in Colorado Springs, Colo. Editor Greg Warner contributed to this story.