Small Is Beautiful? When Is a Church Too Small To Be a Viable Church?
Challenging the “bigger is better” trope
You could be forgiven for buying into the stereotype that American Christians all belong to huge megachurches.
You know, those places built like multiplex cinemas with a dedicated junction off the freeway just to cope with the traffic on Sundays…
But you’d be wrong.
The 2020 Faith Communities Today (FACT) Study surveyed over 15,000 congregations across America and revealed that around 7 in 10 churches have fewer than 100 people attending their weekly worship service.
And only around 8% of American Christians belong to one of the so-called ‘megachurches’. That’s accepting the Hartford Institute for Religion Research's definition that a megachurch is a church with a weekly attendance of more than 2000 people.
That’s comforting to those of us here in the UK, where any church with over 100 people is doing very well indeed. Many congregations struggle with ageing and declining membership, with a congregation numbering well under 50.
When it comes to the state church — the Church of England — the average congregation numbers just 27 souls.
