I grew up in a small church. It's now a dead & gone church. They reached their capacity for growth about 30 yrs from beginning in someone's living room. About 30 yrs after that, the church died off with it's aged members and inability to attract young married & youth.

My husband's small hometown church also has little room for growth, but they have maintained a small middle-aged group and have existed for over 150yrs (if I'm not mistaken).

In my adulthood I have attended churches ranging from 300 to 10,000 members. I have been able to connect & fellowship in larger churches within smaller groups. I found it much easier to connect in a large group having many people to connect with than to try to squeeze into a small church clique.

Would I do church, that is worship & fellowship regularly, with a few close friends (families)? Sure. But our transient world makes it hard to maintain something small, even when we want a certain measure of growth.

For me, it's not the size of the church that I focus on. It's the quality of teaching & the authenticity of the pastor. I was fed generously in God's Word in that 10,000 member church (thank you, Dr. LeRoy Lawson!), yet I have suffered through weak theology and misguided sermons (yes, like one's that talk about how it's wrong to be a Baptist) in small churches.

Brandon, thanks for this. I happened to blog on this a bit this week as well. I am reading "What Americans Really Believe" by the Baylor folks, and what impressed me with their chp on this issue is that how one measures "authentic" or "intimate" really matters in this discussion.

In their measures, megachurches actually did better in these than small churches.

So, here's the issue for me: How do you define "authentic" and "intimate" and what measures are you using to show that small churches provide either or both better than megachurches? It seems counterintuitive, but that's exactly what the Baylor study showed.

I'm with the previous commenter (Anne-Marie): these items can be found in churches that are big and small.

Scot,

Thanks for the comment. First I should say that I agree with you both: authenticity and intimacy are the sole property of the smaller church. I've been a member of both large and small congregations, and I found genuineness and deep fellowship in both contexts.

Second, I should say too that those qualities--authenticity and intimacy--were simply illustrating a larger point; I hope my main point came through--that intentionally small church can be, at the level of principle, exactly the same as intentionally large church and both can be consumer driven

I think one challenge in this discussion is that authenticity is in the eye of the beholder. I think one reason some people gravitate to house churches, while others are flocking to Rome, some are drifting toward Emergent, and still others are planting instant megachurches is because there is no fundamental agreement on what "authentic" Christian worship looks like. That said, I guess here I'm using the word here as an antonym for professional and high production value. Again, some people will appreciate the stripped-down experience, flaws and all, and others won't.

As for intimate, I talk to many people who won't go to a large church simply because they're afraid of being lost in the crowd. But these people often have deep friendships in their small churches. It's as easy to get lost in a crowd of 25 as in a crowd of 2,000 (which is why I don't like parties!). I think some people will perceive small churches as inherently more intimate because it is easier to develop relationships there with people across generational lines, etc.

Hope this makes sense.

CORRECTION: I meant to say that authenticity and intimacy are NOT the sole property of small churches. I said the opposite of what I meant. Doh!

This gives me hope. I stay in touch with the members of the small church I attended when I was growing up. I long for that kind of church to return. One that is more concerned about your spiritual well being than how trendy they are or how many attend. There is also a great deal to be said for small intimate congregations where you are exposed to all generations and the pastor knows your name.

I have thought a lot about this topic (I read Zogby's book last year). I am currently in a house church myself and have found most people I talk to about very suspicious of it (one neighbor said, "I don't go to cults in homes"). So I am skeptical that others will like attending house church.

A few years ago I attended a house church conference and remember hearing that as many as 60% of house church attenders also attend a "brick church" (my term for a church with a building). My anecdotal experience would indicate that this is true. Many house churchers like to live in both worlds.

Big box churches make this even more likely. The relative anonymity of the big box church seems to encourage this. Since you don't HAVE to choose, go to both!

So... I think this is the real future. It will most likely be a mixed model with people experiencing both at different stages of their life.

This has lots of theological ramifications as well, of course.

Excellent thoughts. I was directed here by another blogger because I wrote this post on mine: http://billgrandi.ovcf.org/wordpress/?p=4063 I really don't mind being in a small town and a small church but I am not interested in jumping on any bandwagon to be "current."

This reflects the "church" application of a prediction I saw years ago--the book "Megatrends" back in the '90s suggested that as our culture became more "high-tech" people would want and demand more "high-touch" as a balance. For instance, not only has acoustic music come back into favor, there has been a trend away from the big instrument manufacturers to small custom shops staffed by a handful of people (as a woodworker I'm tempted to try it myself). We buy much of our meat from a slaughterhouse in a small town where they process the animals of the local farmers and 4-H kids rather than Swift, Hormel and Tyson. If you start digging around, there is a lot of this going on.

Lord, deliver us from our trendiness. Amen

"The church of the future will be a bungalow on Main Street, not a megastructure in a sea of parking spaces. It's intimacy of experience that people long for, not production values." - John Zogby

"...I agree with Zogby: I think that the future will belong to small churches...People who value intimacy and authenticity...will be drawn to smaller, local congregations." - Brandon O'Brien

The Apostolic Exhortation "Familiaris Consortio" by Pope John Paul II promulgated in 1981 appears to be prophetic in light of this matter. It calls the family "the domestic church." While the encyclical does not give a full development of the idea of "the domestic church," "the church of the home," it does begin to explain the insight as follows:

"The Holy Spirit, who is poured forth in the celebration of the sacraments, is the living source and inexhaustible sustenance of the supernatural communion that gathers believers and links them with Christ and with each other in the unity of the Church of God.

"The Christian family constitutes a specific revelation and realization of ecclesial communion, and for this reason too it can and should be called 'the domestic Church.'

"The spiritual communion between Christian families, rooted in a common faith and hope and given life by love, constitutes an inner energy that generates, spreads and develops justice, reconciliation, fraternity and peace among human beings.

"Insofar as it is a 'small-scale Church,' the Christian family is called upon, like the 'large-scale Church,' to be a sign of unity for the world and in this way to exercise its prophetic role by bearing witness to the Kingdom and peace of Christ, towards which the whole world is journeying."

Excellent article Brandon, thanks for your thoughts. This is along the lines of what I was trying to get at in this post (http://j.mp/aRO9M0) re: the subtle seduction of making "missional" marketable.

As Americans we have a very great tendency toward equating, "becoming all things to all people," to leveraging the consumerism so ingrained within our culture.

This is precisely the point at which I think missional theology and ecclesiology bears such great significance and why many of us exert great effort in defending a proper understanding of those topics.

Thanks again.

If our goal as a body of believers is that churches grow and reach out to more people, how can small churches be the church of the future? I think satellite campuses are good ideas as branches off very large churches but I don't think that small church congregations should be the next thing....

I believe that small churches and big churches can both be effective if they have the right vision and goals. I have seen churches that hold no more then 25 people have a good and caring relationship with there community. I have also seen big churches do the same thing. It really all comes down to the people who are attending the church, there is that saying, it's not the building that makes the church but it is the people. next time you visit a big or small church observe the people, see if they are willing to leave their comfort zone or if they are content where they are.