If you have school-aged kids, you probably got them kitted out with new shoes to start the school year. New shoes for kids need to allow some room to grow – but not too much – perhaps a half-size or so. Shoes that are way too big will have the kids slipping and tripping everywhere, while shoes too small could inhibit growth and cause lasting damage.
A very similar principles applies to leadership style in churches.
In his very helpful 1983 booklet ‘Sizing Up Congregations’, Arlin Rothauge introduced us to the idea of church characteristics based on congregation size. You’ve probably heard conversations about family-sized, pastoral sized, program-sized and corporation-sized churches. Rothauge pointed out that each size category required a different leadership structure in order to be effective. By implication, the leadership contribution required of clergy is different at each size category.
For example, a minister in a family-sized church (up to 50 congregants) could probably visit each of the families in their congregation every year – and may well be expected to do so. The senior minister of a corporate-sized church could never visit all the families in their congregation and few would expect them to do so. If they tried, they would either burn out or neglect other responsibilities.
Problems arise for ministers when the leadership style with which they’re most familiar and conformable is a mismatch for the size of their congregation. It’s not unusual for a newly-minted minister who has grown up in a corporation sized church to be assigned a family-sized church as their first placement as a priest in charge. Big churches work by formalized systems and sophisticated, text-based electronic communications (scan this QR code!). Small churches work by tacit and verbal processes (talk to Audrey!). If the new minister expects or tries to introduce big church approaches in a small church, they’ll soon find themselves on the outer.
Likewise, ministers who’ve done well leading small churches sometimes struggle when they move to a larger church. Small church leadership approaches will stymie the processes and systems of a larger church. The minister becomes a cork in the bottle and the church will eventually shrink to ft their style.
Further problems arise when a church grows to reach the upper limit of its size category. In order to sustain growth from a pastoral-sized church into a program-sized church (from 150 congregants to more than 220), the minister must shift their leadership style and church will need to alter their structure and leadership expectations. They’ll need to take on more staff, delegate big slabs of responsibility and get used to not knowing every detail of every activity. When ministers and churches fail to recognize the need to change, the church becomes stuck, ‘bumping it’s head’ on the constraints of its style and structure. Often this becomes a source of relational friction.
What to do? A good place to begin is to sign up for the upcoming online workshop Church Size and Lifecycle on Tuesday June 16th. Click here for more info.
Another good option is to get yourself a coach to help you tailor your leadership style size dynamics of your church. Click here to begin.
And finally, you could read up some of the church dynamics literature that deals with church size and growth barriers. Carl George’s book, How to Break Growth Barriers: Capturing Overlooked Opportunities for Church Growth is a good place to begin, even though he doesn’t follow Rothauges categories.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article. It’s good to be back writing after a bit of a hiatus.