Small Church Sadness

Practicing honesty about how this all actually feels

I’ve only really ever known small churches. And I mean actually small churches, like 20 or less people. I love these churches. To me, 100 people in worship feels huge. I’m typically not bothered by worship attendance numbers because I know the value in a little church.

Key word: typically.

I am the champion of small churches. I am also someone who wonders if it’s me when the sanctuary is so empty. It would be silly to not name that. Maybe my sermons really aren’t that great. I’m a human. I have an ego. I know bigger isn’t always better, but I get that message the same as you.

I recently attended a baseball game with my dad (Go Guardians!) and was able to take part in my favorite cultural pastime—singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame. I love singing and I love singing with tens of thousands of other people. It’s glorious.

No one would look at that experience and say, you know what would be an equivalent? Singing with just a couple people in a small room. We know there’s something powerful about the enormous crowd and shared culture and joy of being together. It might not be better all the time but it is distinctive.

Being in a small church can feel…small. When it’s summer and post-pandemic and people are on vacation or have drifted away or are just overall not into church it can feel even smaller.

All to say, I feel that.

Depending on who I’m talking to I don’t always find it easy to share this complexity. As a defender of my congregation it’s difficult to be honest about the challenges we face when I talk to those in churches with more money and members. There’s already enough pity and dismissiveness of work in churches like mine. I can talk it up and share what’s wonderful and it doesn’t always mean that internally I feel great.

I feel pressure to hide that feeling of sadness. I’ve heard the scripture about wherever two or three are gathered. Intellectually maybe I get that, but emotionally I can long for stadiums filled with song and the power of a numerically overflowing community.

I want to learn how to be able to name both my love for the size and shape my church is while acknowledging the melancholy of a mostly empty sanctuary.¹

Because it’s not just me. The mainline church as a whole is continuing to shrink. Our small sized churches are here to stay. How can we work on what it means to emotionally engage in that reality? How can I start to own up to my sadness? How can I still name my hope?

Money for your ministry

If you’re like me, you’re often too busy to find the resources that can support your work. Let me pass along two opportunities that don’t quite fit my context right now, but might fit yours!

Worshiping Communities Grant via the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship

This grants program for worshiping communities is especially focused on projects that connect public worship to intergenerational faith formation and Christian discipleship, a theme that can unfold in many facets of worship from Bible reading to preaching, public prayer, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, congregational song, visual arts, storytelling, and more. 

Pastoral Study Project via the Louisville Institute

The Louisville Institute Pastoral Study Project Grant (PSP) awards grants of up to US$15,000 to support independent or collaborative study projects on Christian life, religious practices and institutions, and possibilities and ideas for the church, our communities, and the wider world.

What I’m reading

I was linked to this article about cooking, marriage, and divorce this week and just wow. It’s an excellent addition to the conversation about the unseen labor women do in the world, especially in straight partnerships. Here’s just a little exerpt:

It's hard for me to understand when cooking became more repression than liberation, more act of obligation than act of creation. But I knew it then. This thing that had sustained me now felt like a prison. And whose fault was it? It certainly wasn't all my husband's. After all, hadn't I wanted to cook? Hadn't I enjoyed it? Hadn't I found purpose in the texture of the cinnamon rolls, the ache of my arm as I whisked a French silk pie over a double boiler? But who had that ever been for? I couldn't remember.

You can read more from the author Lyz Lenz at her Substack,

Men Yell at Me

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What life looks like

Take me out to the ballgame

1. Karl Vaters has an article about the dangers of romanticizing the small church that runs parallel to many of these thoughts.