A plea for “Simple Church”

Oct. 16, 2025

By Rev. Rick King

Many people my age who grew up going to church grew up with the institutional assumption that the more a church grew, the more programs and activities it would offer.

In fact, in 1992 the late church consultant Lyle Schaller wrote a bestselling book for church leaders called “The Seven-Day-a-Week Church,” equating the success of megachurches with the ever-growing number of programs they had for every kind of churchgoer.

Fourteen years later, a Baptist named Thom Rainer wrote a book called “Simple Church,” that advocated instead for churches designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth.

We’ve all seen the challenge of “the church busy” and maybe experienced it ourselves: Church can easily end up burning people out. In some cases, pursuing the goal of becoming a busy, active, growing church, people can end up with no life except church life. Some of the churches we most admire (from the outside, at least) offer so many programs for families that families don’t even have a chance to be families!

But what if, instead of maintaining or launching programs and activities that attract attention to the church, saying “Look at us! Come join us!”, we focused on what equips people to live their faith out in the world and the rest of their lives—not just their lives when they’re at church?

After all, if you and I want to live out our faith in the world, we need to be IN the world. Canadian pastor Carey Nieuwhof says, “Churches that focus their energies on the few things the church can uniquely do best will emerge as the most effective churches moving forward. Simplified churches will complement people’s witness, not compete with people’s witness.”

So here’s to Simple Church—the Church Faithful and Focused, rather than The Church Busy.

If you had to pick ONE thing our new church should focus on doing really well—what would that be?