The Power of Small
Uniqueness of rural and small-town ministry
Pictured: St. Luke EFC, Wellington, Mo
Photo: Don Fuhr
We've all heard the saying that healthy things reproduce.
Healthy plants, healthy people, healthy churches. Reproduction is natural.
But for any church—especially a small congregation in a small town (or isolated in a large rural county)—health can’t be measured by size alone. Spiritual children and grandchildren might not all attend your own services, because “my family has always been Methodist.” Spiritual offspring might even need to move away to find employment.
Still, across the Evangelical Free Church movement, sometimes hidden from the view of those who don’t think to look, small churches are seeing God do big things in and through them.
No two of these churches are alike, at the very least because their communities are so different. One rural church, while no longer “small” (Trinity Church in Watseka, Ill.), is even launching a multi-site model.
Above all, the churches we focus on in this issue are not merely smaller replicas of their larger cousins in the EFCA movement. They face unique challenges and experience unique blessings.
The Power of Small
We’ve all heard the saying that healthy things reproduce.
Healthy plants, healthy people, healthy churches. Reproduction is natural.
But for any church—especially a small congregation in a small town (or isolated in a large rural county)—health can’t be measured by size alone. Spiritual children and grandchildren might not all attend your own services, because “my family has always been Methodist.” Spiritual offspring might even need to move away to find employment.
Still, across the Evangelical Free Church movement, sometimes hidden from the view of those who don’t think to look, small churches are seeing God do big things in and through them.
No two of these churches are alike, at the very least because their communities are so different. One rural church, while no longer “small” (Trinity Church in Watseka, Ill.), is even launching a multi-site model.
Above all, the churches we focus on in this issue are not merely smaller replicas of their larger cousins in the EFCA movement. They face unique challenges and experience unique blessings.