![]() They often don’t have a dominant biological family to which everyone defers, but they do have hopes for big impact in the world around them. I find this to be true when working with newer, more outward-focused congregations. Some churches that are technically family size attempt to operate at pastoral size. Much of these extra duties involved technology, and many congregations are still re-organizing what tasks belong to whom. Pastors absorbed even more of the work first because they hoped Covid would be a short-lived crisis, then because they wanted to protect their lay leaders from as much stress as possible and believed it was their job as paid ministry leaders to keep the church going during physical distancing. Most congregations, no matter their size, became more staff-focused during the pandemic. Those who attend online might or might not ever show up to the physical church campus but if they do, they might already have established connections with others in the congregation without the help of the pastor. For example, churches that use Zoom or Facebook to broadcast services often appoint a layperson to welcome people to the online worship experience and to facilitate interaction throughout the time spent together. They might have found an authentic community, hosted formally or informally by someone else. This doesn’t necessarily mean that online participants are casual attendees or consumers. (I don’t think raw numbers are helpful for knowing how much impact a congregation has, but numbers are useful for thinking about who is here, what gifts and needs they bring, and what that means for how we structure the staff and our life together.)Įven in smaller churches, those who engage mainly online might have little to no personal contact with the pastor. In addition, no one has figured out how to count online participants when it’s possible to gauge numbers of screens tuned in but much harder to know how many people are watching those screens and for how long. Those trends have accelerated because of people’s re-evaluation of their priorities after lockdown. ![]() Onsite attendance patterns were already shifting pre-pandemic so that “regular attendance” meant coming to church one to two times as opposed to three or times per month. Here’s why:įew congregations know what size they actually are. One of the casualties of COVID, though, might be the applicability of these tenets, because churches are starting to realize the limitations of this thinking. The senior minister manages the staff and tends to the institution’s development, functioning much like a CEO. ![]() New people primarily come into church through ministries and/or activities (e.g., sports ministries, recovery ministries, quilting groups). The resource size church has 350+ people and a large staff of ordained and lay people. Without a foothold in a small group, visitors get lost in the congregation and usually stop attending. New people primarily come into church through small groups. The senior pastor casts a vision and equips other staff to oversee the implementation of the vision in their respective ministry areas. The program size church has 150-350 people with multiple ministers on staff. The minister is involved in (and likely drives) all facets of ministry, including providing most or all of the pastoral care and attending most or all committee meetings. New people primarily come into the congregation through the minister, either because the minister has cultivated relationships with them or because visitors are drawn to the minister’s sermons or worship leadership. Often there is a solo minister, though sometimes there is an associate minister or part-time specialized minister (e.g., youth minister) as well. The pastoral size church has 50-150 people.
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