Do Christians Become Wimpy as Their Church Grows Larger?

There are lots of church stereotypes out there. A new book, What Americans Really Believe, uncovered a bunch of surprises which will debunk a number of myths. I was most interested in chapter 5, whose subtitle is "supersizing the faith."

Author Rodney Stark is an academic with very impressive credentials. As part of a national research project done through Gallup, his university surveyed a bunch of Christians and then sorted the findings according to the size of church they attended. He then compared the two extremes: churches with attendances under 100 and churches with attendances over 1,000. He also notes that no interpretation would be changed if congregations of all sizes in between were included in his analysis.

It turns out that as church size increase, people's beliefs are more certain. For example, on the question of whether heaven absolutely exists, 92% of people in larger churches said yes, while 79% in smaller churches said yes. Does hell absolutely exists? The replies were 90% and 69%.

What about people's practices? Those in the larger churches attend services weekly or more often (46% and 39%), more of them tithe (46% and. 36%), and more of them attend a Bible-study group (52% and 43%). So personal commitment is higher with church size.

Is there a lack of intimacy as churches grow larger? When asked if half or more of their friends attend their congregations, survey respondents said yes 41% for larger churches and 25% for smaller churches. The same point is made when when the opposite angle is taken: do they have no friends in their congregations? Agreement was 12% and 22%.

What about sharing your faith with others? Again the numbers are noticeably different:

What about volunteer work inside and outside the church? That too increases with size:

The point is not to bang smaller churches but to shatter some myths. What it tells me is that churches can have confidence that as they grow, they don't have to wimp out on their convictions, their spiritual disciplines, their volunteer service, or their sense of closeness and intimacy. 

My doctoral dissertation, based on another nationwide study, confirmed many of the same things. So does the book, Beyond Megachurch Myths. Now if only newspaper reporters and certain religious leaders would stop concluding that growing churches all become spectator arenas.

Warren Bird, Ph.D., is Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 19 books on various aspects of church health and innovation.

Comments

[toddh]

I have a lot of respect for Stark, but we would need to hear a lot more about other factors regarding the churches in the study (i.e. geographic location, demography, denominational affiliation (or lack thereof), how long the church has been in existence, whether they are urban, suburban, or rural, etc.) before we could make any hard and fast assertions about large vs. small churches. Also sample size, etc., etc.

[Nathan Creitz]

This is really interesting stuff. I'm always concerned when a church that is small remains small. When God is at work and people's lives are being transformed churches grow numerically and in depth. The only problem with this study is I'm not sure what it says about the house church movement in America. Would these churches 100 and smaller include those churches? What if a house church network has more than 100 but they are in many houses throughout an area? Would that be considered a large church? I agree, much more study of this needs to take place. Large churches tend to have more resources and visibility in the community but small churches tend to be more relationally focused. Strengths and weaknesses in each.