Does size really matter?

Of course.

I wonder, though, if it matters for the reasons we sometimes think. If you ask a dozen people from a dozen different churches what size church they think it "optimum", you'd likely get 6-12 different answers.

When I ask that question, this is what I hear. People like smaller because of the family feel, it's easier to meet people, it's more intimate. People like bigger because it's one big family, there are more people to meet, and the small groups are very intimate.

Hm.

So would you think it really has more to do with where we feel we fit than the actual numbers? You can find a church of 200 and a church of 8000 that are very similar in most ways other than attendance numbers. Similar worship, similar style of teaching, similar message, similar demographics etc. Yet the people who attend one or the other will be adamant that their church is better because of it's size.

Maybe we're all just different.

For me, it has more to do with the spirit behind the church.

• Are they REALLY serving the community to the best of their ability, or are they self-serving (building larger buildings or always improving the ones they have)?
• Are they really encouraging people to ask questions about their personal faith, their personal belief system or is it considered heresy to have questions about the standards of evangelical faith?
• Can members voice their own opinion and have vibrant discussions about theological or political issues or does the church mandate theological or political positions?
• Does the church have ALL the answers, or does it sometimes say "I don't know"?
• Does the pastor (or pastor-type person who does most of the teaching) always have his own agenda for the subject matter of his teaching, or does he listen when people ask him to teach on a certain subject?
• Does the worship always consist of selections from the same 25-song repertoire, rarely adding a new song?
• Are the songs all Hymns or all contemporary?
• Is there a "worship team" that one must audition and be accepted for, or is anyone who feels called or moved allowed to contribute to worship?
• Is worship always music, for that matter, or is it sometimes art, sometimes drama...?
• Is the service always in the same order (worship, greeting, announcements, message, offering, another song or two, dismissal?) or does the service frequently get "shaken up"?
• Are the "main" services always on Sunday (or the trendier Saturday), or are there attempts made to have a "main" service (with the same message as the weekend service) during various times of the week, to make it available to those who may work weekends? What about early mornings? Middle of the day? That's one thing I agree with the Catholics on. They have Mass and Communion service available at frequent and varied times during the week, don't they?

I could go on and on, but I think we could find any of the above in a mega, medium, mini, or micro-mini church. Although in my experience megachurches tend to get these points "off" more often than smaller churches, maybe it's not the size that's the problem, but the lack of flexibility and freedom.

With all the focus on "personal" growth, what about the willingness for the church, as an entity, to grow?

And I don't mean in size.