Mini Mega Church?

‘The trouble with the UK is that it tries to be a mini United States’. This was a comment (or words to that effect) spoken by Michael Portillo, former Secretary of State for Defence, on ‘This Week’ a few years back. He was talking about defence cuts and the relentless squeeze on military spending – his point being that the UK had the mentality that it should do everything the US did (a throwback to the time it was a super-power). So despite being much smaller numerically and economically, the UK feels it ought to have everything from Aircraft Carriers to Tank Divisions to a Nuclear capability, with everything in between. According to Portillo this meant that at the outer edges all these things tended to run on a ‘shoe string’. In other words because the ‘jam’ had to be so ‘thinly spread’ no bit of Britain’s defence network was particularly well looked after or resourced.

It was an observation that stuck in my mind as relevant to many churches. The problem can start with the deluge of church blueprint books, conferences and on-line resources – very often emanating from a few very large churches. By dint of their size these churches (the ones we all tend to know about and rightly admire) can run a vast array of ministries – publishing, conferences, training programmes, international ministries, media ministries etc etc. It’s all brilliant stuff, it can provide some great resources, ideas and examples for the wider church – but it can create an unreality especially for smaller churches.

The danger is that Pastors feel the pressure that their 50/100/150 member church should be a ‘mini mega-church’ –i.e. 'we should be doing all these things!' A pressure often stoked by well-meaning members who too have read the books or been to the conferences. The result can be small or medium sized churches swamped with ministries – church programmes stuffed with every imaginable type of activity. All worthy, but the smaller resources overall mean they have to run on a ‘shoe-string’, either involving the same, increasingly worn out, faithful few or just running at the bare minimum of resources and people. 

Is your small/medium church constantly starting new ministries (or feeling it should be) only to be constantly bemoaning the lack of support? If that’s the case maybe the need is to accept that you're not the ‘United States of Church’ – and while trying to do everything is a noble ambition, it probably means doing a lot of things poorly. Better to accept that we can’t fight every battle or meet every need – but in the areas we can, we will do it really well.  

The modern State of Israel, knew its enemies and they weren’t out at sea. It single-mindedly focussed its resources and developed one of the most effective small armies in the world. The UK will soon have two prestige aircraft carriers but its infantry (despite their heroism and sacrifice) couldn’t hold Basra or Helmand. 

What must we do and what can we do best? These are the strategic questions churches need to ask themselves – and resist the pressure (or indeed pride) to do more than the Lord has equipped them for.