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The “little church” the young mom attends was taken by surprise one Sunday when a family active in the church for several years resigned from their various duties. They said they planned to start looking for a new church.

Members of the congregation were stunned and hurt. They were losing a husband and wife who volunteered regularly, such as with the choir and Sunday school.
When pressed, the couple cited some disagreements over how one church rite is handled.

But then they also lamented that the church did not have more services and more programs for children. The church offers a single service on Sunday and the youth pastor was let go recently because of a lack of money.

“I think Walmart  has killed the small churches,” a church member, who doesn’t want to embarrass the congregation, wrote in an e-mail. “I mean some of what they said was valid, but it’s like we have this Walmart mentality now,  that the church should offer 20 different programs and five different services etc., etc.

“We have had different people visit our church and enjoy it, but leave because it didn’t offer enough of what they wanted — i.e. programs.”

At the same time, this church member says, those who want all the options at church, end up not having the time to commit to them and get upset when the church drops the ones with low attendance.

The explosive growth of mega-churches in this country is tied largely to a nontraditional approach to worship and to broad menus of programs for all ages and interests.
Sermons and programs deal with contemporary issues, including divorce, unemployment and substance abuse — which leads people to church-shop the way they shop for cars and houses.

“What has happened is that the old image of what the church provides has changed a lot,” said Gregory Jones, dean of the divinity school at Duke University. “So there are tensions and clearly the large congregation, the mega-church kind of model, has become an appealing kind of model.”

The analogy Jones draws is the relationship between Walmart and Dollar General. A colleague called a recent forum on rural ministry, “Maintaining Dollar General Presences in a Walmart World.”

“Walmart has caused problems for some kinds of stores but ... Dollar General has continued to be a very successful chain of small stores,” Jones said. “They know what they do and they know what they don’t do —  and that’s not to be a small Walmart.”

In that same way, some smaller congregations are also focused on a more intimate sense of community, a deeper kind of pastoral connection that’s less program-driven.

When they are not successful, Jones said, it may be a question of whether they are building on those strengths.

“If a small congregation can’t make people feel included, that’s a different problem,” Jones said. “It ought to be like the old 'Cheers’ (theme) song, that everybody wants to go somewhere where everybody knows your name.”

That’s a smaller church strength that megachurches are trying to replicate.

New members are often assigned to smaller “cell” groups when they join the church. The groups meet at least monthly, some weekly, maybe for a cookout or Bible discussions.

Also, other smaller congregations have done more outreach into the community with the programs they do offer  —  not limiting their ministry to Sunday mornings.

“I met someone who has a youth ministry that draws people from all over the town, and it’s become the town’s youth program,” Jones said.

“They have more youth come to their Sunday evening youth ministry than they have adults in the church Sunday morning.”

Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com