Surrogate Ministry

My town has two AG churches, the big one and the no-so-big one. When we moved here, we checked out the big one, because my wife had family there. We went on a Wed night and split ourselves between the boys' and girls' programs. I walked into a big room filled with boys, with one leader talking to them in the front. A dozen other men were leaning against the back wall, talking amongst themselves, and it went that way the whole evening. My wife observed the same thing in the other room. Well, we figured that they didn't need our help, so we went to the other church, where we've been for almost 20 years now

As my new church grew, it hired more staff, peaking at 3 full-time pastors and a couple of paid interns. And a funny thing happened. As the staff bulked up, the volunteer pool shrunk. Unrelated to that (I think), my church imploded due to bad theology, but through the grace of God, we survived. We've been a small church for nearly a decade, but a healthy one with a single pastor and many volunteers. If you click on the following link, you'll get a short video that points out certain things about big and small churches...

www.facebook.com/reel/2325676041155

So, for all of us who are in the 70% small church group, there's a blessing in that. Resist the urge to hire more staff and do less ministry. Jesus didn't send a surrogate in His place Neither should we. And my church found a blessing in that.

TRUE!
When we used to have Commanders Conference for Royal Rangers here in MI, I used to talk to guys from big church outposts. They always used to tell me how they had a terrible time getting anyone to help.

These guys came from 250-500 person churches & had 2 Commanders for 30-40 boys  

I would have 2 or 3 Commanders for 12-15 boys.

It always made me appreciate what I had.

Early on I used to get down about how small we were. But one day a Commander from a much larger outpost told me:
"Hey, at least you know all your boys names". And that was true. I knew all thier names & almost all of thier parents names.

Sometimes being small is a good thing.