Are Churches Supposed To Be Large or Small?
There is a patently unbiblical idea today that a church is supposed to be large and consist of many members, and even worse than this is the assumption that the larger the church the better. Actually, the exact opposite is generally the reality. The smaller the church the better, within reason that is. I am not advocating that every church must be tiny. But tiny is not necessarily bad. If your church has 2 to 8 members and is effective for God, that is far better than a church consisting of a hundred or a thousand members who are serving a man made institution. Even if your church has only two Christian members, such as a husband and wife, it is still a church.
Jesus said, "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Matt 18:20
This verse shows that even as few as two or three can be gathered in Jesus' name and He is still there in the midst of them! But nevertheless churches should not be closed off from healthy growth as God may add to their numbers. Of course large church advocates and scoffers generally laugh at this kind of proper application of the above verse. There is a lot of propaganda in circulation that gives the direct impression that churches are supposed to be large and that they somehow cannot be healthy otherwise. This is utter nonsense. Who is the direct beneficiary of this view? Who are the ones who gain money and power from this idea? The churchmen who teach it! The reality is the larger the church the worse and more problematic it usually is.
Jesus also said, “...narrow is the way, which leads unto life, and FEW there be that find it.” Matt 7:14b [Emphasis added]
So from this verse alone we know that comparatively few people will become Christians. And since we also know that true churches of Jesus Christ consist of Christians, then it makes no sense to think that from a pool of few Christians, that genuine churches will be large and consist of many members. There is no way to get many from few unless something is wrong. And not only is something wrong today, many things are wrong.
There are quite a few giant "mega churches" today that are filled with thousands of often kindhearted people, many who have never placed their trust in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. And so they are not Christians even though they may think they are. This is one of the major ways we are seeing a false impression of “many” from the few. Large churches today typically have many members that are both outright unbelievers and those who think they are Christians but who have never truly placed their faith (trust) in Jesus Christ. Of course a few genuine but misguided Christians are often members of these larger congregations as well.
We see nothing at all in the Bible that remotely suggests that individual local churches were large or consisted of many members, to the tune of thousands, hundreds or even dozens of people for that matter. Yet the convenient grand assumption the we constantly hear trumpeted from pulpits all over the world today is that churches were large in Bible times, and so are allegedly supposed to be large and growing ever larger today. This is simply not the case.
What we do see in the Bible is a tremendous amount of evidence that churches were small yet numerous, even spread out all over a given region, often with just a family-based core and with just a handful of members in each church working together in harmony with other churches, none of them being large or under any earthly administration or organization. There is also not a single example in all of Scriptures of any oversight organization controlling a group of churches. All churches were established to be led by the Holy Spirit directly according to the written Word, not according to the ambitions and agendas of men. We see small assemblies meeting in homes in the Bible, with these being the only churches that the Scriptures even mention:
3Greet Priscilla and Aquila my helpers in Christ Jesus: 4Who have for my life laid down their own necks: unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. 5Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Salute my well-beloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ. Rom 16:3-5 [Emphasis added]
The churches of Asia salute you. Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house. 1 Cor 16:9 [Emphasis added]
Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the church which is in his house. Col 4:15 [Emphasis added]
And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in your house: Philemon 1:2 [Emphasis added]
These four passages are greetings to house churches; twice to one church in particular, and yet we do not see one single greeting anywhere in the Bible that was sent to churches that met in specially built church buildings. Why? There were no such buildings! In fact, we do not see even one single example of a purpose-built church building ever constructed in the Bible, let alone for the comfort and convenience of Christians. Never. It just wasn't done. Yet the practice of building church buildings is arguably the #1 tradition of men promoted from pulpits today. Churchmen love to rule and they want their own little kingdoms to rule. This is very difficult to accomplish without having a building. So men who would be kings build buildings, lots of them. They accomplish this by convincing many unwary people to given them money.
Now why am I making such a big deal out of church buildings? Aren't they really harmless after all? No actually they are not. They are a huge money and time wasting distraction that typically sucks the life right out of a congregation and undermines the biblical church model that consists of small home churches and nothing more. Due to all the incorrect teachings on the subject and endless bad examples to the contrary (as well as huge church buildings everywhere), Christians today generally cannot even fathom the authentic horizontal expansion model of the biblical church where a small home-based congregation can give birth to another congregation and so on. No! God forbid! Most Pastors hate this idea and would call it a "church split". What most Christians accept (and are comfortable with) is a greedy administration that wants to collect and hang on to as many members as possible and grow the largest facility possibly in the same general geographic location.
The Bible obviously recognizes the power in numbers of small individual independent churches working autonomously, in HARMONY with each other under God's guidance as led by the Holy Spirit, by Christians following the Scriptures. This is nothing like the many denominations we see today that are controlled by an overall ruling body and this certainly has nothing to do with the slew of today's competitive church businesses each trying to hang on to their members (or steal each other's “sheep”) so they can pay the bills and expand their businesses further. The early church as we see in the Bible was in no way money-based or marketing driven. The early church, the real church, was not a competitive business disguised as a church unlike so many so-called “churches” today.
ChristiansFree.com
There is a patently unbiblical idea today that a church is supposed to be large and consist of many members, and even worse than this is the assumption that the larger the church the better. Actually, the exact opposite is generally the reality. The smaller the church the better, within reason that is. I am not advocating that every church must be tiny. But tiny is not necessarily bad. If your church has 2 to 8 members and is effective for God, that is far better than a church consisting of a hundred or a thousand members who are serving a man made institution. Even if your church has only two Christian members, such as a husband and wife, it is still a church.
Jesus said, "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Matt 18:20
This verse shows that even as few as two or three can be gathered in Jesus' name and He is still there in the midst of them! But nevertheless churches should not be closed off from healthy growth as God may add to their numbers. Of course large church advocates and scoffers generally laugh at this kind of proper application of the above verse. There is a lot of propaganda in circulation that gives the direct impression that churches are supposed to be large and that they somehow cannot be healthy otherwise. This is utter nonsense. Who is the direct beneficiary of this view? Who are the ones who gain money and power from this idea? The churchmen who teach it! The reality is the larger the church the worse and more problematic it usually is.
Jesus also said, “...narrow is the way, which leads unto life, and FEW there be that find it.” Matt 7:14b [Emphasis added]
So from this verse alone we know that comparatively few people will become Christians. And since we also know that true churches of Jesus Christ consist of Christians, then it makes no sense to think that from a pool of few Christians, that genuine churches will be large and consist of many members. There is no way to get many from few unless something is wrong. And not only is something wrong today, many things are wrong.
There are quite a few giant "mega churches" today that are filled with thousands of often kindhearted people, many who have never placed their trust in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. And so they are not Christians even though they may think they are. This is one of the major ways we are seeing a false impression of “many” from the few. Large churches today typically have many members that are both outright unbelievers and those who think they are Christians but who have never truly placed their faith (trust) in Jesus Christ. Of course a few genuine but misguided Christians are often members of these larger congregations as well.
We see nothing at all in the Bible that remotely suggests that individual local churches were large or consisted of many members, to the tune of thousands, hundreds or even dozens of people for that matter. Yet the convenient grand assumption the we constantly hear trumpeted from pulpits all over the world today is that churches were large in Bible times, and so are allegedly supposed to be large and growing ever larger today. This is simply not the case.
What we do see in the Bible is a tremendous amount of evidence that churches were small yet numerous, even spread out all over a given region, often with just a family-based core and with just a handful of members in each church working together in harmony with other churches, none of them being large or under any earthly administration or organization. There is also not a single example in all of Scriptures of any oversight organization controlling a group of churches. All churches were established to be led by the Holy Spirit directly according to the written Word, not according to the ambitions and agendas of men. We see small assemblies meeting in homes in the Bible, with these being the only churches that the Scriptures even mention:
3Greet Priscilla and Aquila my helpers in Christ Jesus: 4Who have for my life laid down their own necks: unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. 5Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Salute my well-beloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ. Rom 16:3-5 [Emphasis added]
The churches of Asia salute you. Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house. 1 Cor 16:9 [Emphasis added]
Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the church which is in his house. Col 4:15 [Emphasis added]
And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in your house: Philemon 1:2 [Emphasis added]
These four passages are greetings to house churches; twice to one church in particular, and yet we do not see one single greeting anywhere in the Bible that was sent to churches that met in specially built church buildings. Why? There were no such buildings! In fact, we do not see even one single example of a purpose-built church building ever constructed in the Bible, let alone for the comfort and convenience of Christians. Never. It just wasn't done. Yet the practice of building church buildings is arguably the #1 tradition of men promoted from pulpits today. Churchmen love to rule and they want their own little kingdoms to rule. This is very difficult to accomplish without having a building. So men who would be kings build buildings, lots of them. They accomplish this by convincing many unwary people to given them money.
Now why am I making such a big deal out of church buildings? Aren't they really harmless after all? No actually they are not. They are a huge money and time wasting distraction that typically sucks the life right out of a congregation and undermines the biblical church model that consists of small home churches and nothing more. Due to all the incorrect teachings on the subject and endless bad examples to the contrary (as well as huge church buildings everywhere), Christians today generally cannot even fathom the authentic horizontal expansion model of the biblical church where a small home-based congregation can give birth to another congregation and so on. No! God forbid! Most Pastors hate this idea and would call it a "church split". What most Christians accept (and are comfortable with) is a greedy administration that wants to collect and hang on to as many members as possible and grow the largest facility possibly in the same general geographic location.
The Bible obviously recognizes the power in numbers of small individual independent churches working autonomously, in HARMONY with each other under God's guidance as led by the Holy Spirit, by Christians following the Scriptures. This is nothing like the many denominations we see today that are controlled by an overall ruling body and this certainly has nothing to do with the slew of today's competitive church businesses each trying to hang on to their members (or steal each other's “sheep”) so they can pay the bills and expand their businesses further. The early church as we see in the Bible was in no way money-based or marketing driven. The early church, the real church, was not a competitive business disguised as a church unlike so many so-called “churches” today.
ChristiansFree.com