Smaller Churches

Les Puryear is really doing good work in raising the profile of small churches and pastors, and especially among the churches of the SBC. Todays post is only one of many Les has authored that will encourage you if you are one of the majority of pastors whose churches are smaller than 200 in worship.

A snippet:

In my own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), I asked the good folks at Lifeway to run a report for me to count the churches based on Primary Worship Service(s) Attendance in 2006. They very graciously attended to my request and sent me the following report:

1-99 attendees = 25,217 churches (62.7%)
100-199 attendees = 8,305 churches (20.7%)
200-299 attendees = 2,850 churches (7.1%)
300-499 attendees = 2,126 churches (5.3%)
500-749 attendees = 788 churches (2.0%)
750-999 attendees = 336 churches (0.8%)
1,000-1,999 attendees = 425 churches (1.1%)
2,000+ attendees = 139 churches (0.3%)

Total Churches = 40,186

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw these numbers. This data, which I believe to be more representative of actual people in the pews, reveals that the SBC is overwhelmingly a denomination of small churches with 83.4% (33,522) of our churches having an average worship attendance of less than 200 people. At the other end of the spectrum, only 1.4% (564) of our churches have 1,000 or more in attendance each Sunday. More than ever, it appears that we are a convention of an overwhelming majority of small churches.

Go read the whole thing