I’ve been getting tired of the way liberal religion is becoming increasingly marginalized in the United States, which means I’ve been thinking a lot about church growth. Did you know that most Unitarian Universalist congregations average less than 100 men, women, and children at worship and Sunday school each week? Same is true of other liberal churches. If we could only get those small churches to grow… but many people who belong to small churches say they like the feeling of knowing everyone at their church.<\/p>\n
OK, maybe, but here’s ten reasons why mid-size churches are better:<\/p>\n
(1) Mid-size churches are better than small churches because you don’t have to be on a committee every year, so there’s less volunteer burnout.<\/p>\n
(2) Mid-size churches are better than small churches because you can serve on the committee you really like, whereas in a small church everyone has to serve on every committee.<\/p>\n
(3) Mid-size churches are better than small churches because in a mid-size church with two ministers, even if you don’t like one of the ministers, there’s another minister that you might get along with.<\/p>\n
(4) Mid-size churches are better than small churches because you can have lots more programs such as more adult religious education, more support groups, more small group ministries, etc.<\/p>\n
(5) Mid-size churches are better than small churches because you can have bigger choirs (in small church choirs, you better be an excellent singer because you might be the only person in your section some Sunday!).<\/p>\n
(6) Mid-size churches are better than small churches because you can have more programs for children and youth (like children’s choirs, dramatic productions, etc.).<\/p>\n
(7) Mid-size churches are better than small churches because they are far more financially stable — if one big donor leaves a small church you’re in trouble — mid-size churches spread the financial load over more people.<\/p>\n
(8) Mid-size churches are better than small churches because when a couple gets divorced, the mid-size church is big enough that both of them can still belong to the church (especially if there are two worship services).<\/p>\n
(9) Mid-size churches are better than small churches because there are more small groups where you can really get to know people well.<\/p>\n
(10) But the top reason why mid-size churches are better than small churches is because if all our small churches were mid-size churches, Unitarian Universalism would really be a force to be reckoned with in the world — if all our small churches were mid-size churches, there would be twice as many of us out there making a difference! <\/p>\n
Now you add your own reasons why a mid-size church is better than a small church….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been getting tired of the way liberal religion is becoming increasingly marginalized in the United States, which means I’ve been thinking a lot about church growth. Did you know that most Unitarian Universalist congregations average less than 100 men, women, and children at worship and Sunday school each week? Same is true of other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}