Tim Keller has an article on “Process Managing Church Growth” in the newest issue of Vineyard’s Cutting Edge. In it he offers some very practical advice on how to manage stages of church growth and adjust church culture accordingly. I will summarize some of his points:
- Every church has a size culture that goes with its size that has to be accepted. For instance, to impose the small church expectation of lead pastoral accessibility upon the lead pastor of a large church will “wreak havoc on the church and eventually force it back into the size with which the practices are compatible.”
- Everyone knows that at some point a church becomes too large for one pastor to handle. The threshold for hiring another pastor varies from context to context, with “white collar communities demanding far more specialized programs” thus requiring an earlier hire.
- With growth comes increasing complexity which requires increasing intentionality in communication. Here Keller emphasizes a lot of “increasings.”
- Increased growth requires increased communication–informal, grassroots is no longer effective. This requires more deliberate and systematic assimilation; visitors are less visible. More well-organized volunteer recruitment becomes necessary.
- More planning and organization must go into events. Higher quality is expected in larger churches and spontaneous, last-minute events do not work.
- More high quality aesthetics must be present. People enter a service without a knowledge of the ungifted singers who are appreciated “because we all know them.” Visitors are looking for a vertical, not horizontal encounter, with a sense of transcendence.
The whole article is well worth working through and can be found online here. I sense a tension between wisdom and convention in this article. For instance, there is no doubt that I need to think much more about intentionality in all the areas Keller mentions as our church grows. Organic, frayed at the edges kind of stuff can only work so long. However, Keller’s advice seems, in places, to assume a largely staff driven church. For instance, if people are sufficiently trained can they not perform a considerable amount of the “pastoring” without lowering the expectation of pastoral accessibility. Can we not change the expectation to expect pastoral care from one another in the context of a gospel-centered missional community? I’ll be reflecting on this article for a while. You can subscribe to a free copy of Cutting Edge here.