June 6, 2024

By Rev. Rick King

The United Church of Christ is a denomination of small- and medium-sized churches. Only a handful of UCCs nationwide are what you would term megachurches, having a weekly attendance of more than 2,000 people.

The rest of us, 92 percent, are churches with under 250 in weekly worship attendance. That still seems like a lot to me, so it helps to break it down the way Lifeway Research, run by the Southern Baptists, does:

• 50 attendees or fewer – 31 percent
• 51-99 attendees – 37 percent (that’s us)
• 100-249 attendees – 24 percent
• 250+ attendees – 8 percent

And while the news media devotes much more space and time to large and megachurches when covering American religion, they still comprise only 1 percent of all the churches in the United States.

What’s a small church to do in light of this preoccupation with very large congregations? In the midst of people disaffiliating from Christianity, what’s a small church to do?

In this series of brief Seeking and Serving columns in the next three weeks, I’ll lift up three important advantages small churches like New Life and we have over larger churches, advantages that can make us more effective at certain things—IF we embrace and capitalize on them.

The first of these advantages is Community over Content. We often think we have to compete with the large churches and their better marketing and preaching, so much so that we sometimes think, why even try?

But in small churches, it can be easier to cultivate a healthy culture and a strong sense of community, where belonging is the main draw. Talk to any of the first-time guests who’ve come to our church in the past six months, and you’ll probably hear that’s what they’re looking for: community.

When I began in ministry in 1989, it was in the back yard of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, one of the early and most famous megachurches. Access to content (sermons, music, etc.) was not nearly what it is now, largely because of the Internet. The state of the art then was multiple cassette duplicators, in use at evangelical and megachurches to spread the sermons of their founders and star preachers.

At the same time, there was LOTS of community available in smaller, garden-variety churches like ours.

Nowadays, the situation is reversed: with so much digital connectivity with phones, computers and the like, people can have all the kinds of content they want via the Internet, and it’s COMMUNITY that’s in short supply. During the pandemic, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy drew our attention to our nation’s “epidemic of loneliness.”

People CAN get more content elsewhere than we can possibly compete with. So, while we will continue to do our very best to produce thoughtful, engaging sermons, newsletter pieces, and social media posts, it’s hospitality and welcome, shared meals, and group service opportunities that will be our strong suit.

Where have YOU experienced especially vital, caring, engaging community at our church? Where else?