City (Mega) churches

Community churches

Micro churches

Advantages

Disadvantages

Advantages

Disadvantages

Advantages

Disadvantages

Mission

Focus on mega mission programmes and the world

Individual & community needs not easily addressed

Focus on local community needs

Individual needs not easily addressed.  Too small to make regional or world impact.

Focus on micro mission projects and individual needs.

Potential to become insular and introspective

Cost

Plant, staff, resources known and available

$$$$ - higher cost per person! 

Reasonably cost-effective.  Low overheads.

Goal is often to pay minister full-time à this can be hard to achieve, & be a drain on resources.

Very cost effective.  No maintenance costs, wages, etc. Can release $ for missions.

Limited resources for significant events.

Leadership

High quality Leadership

Few people have the ability to grow mega churches (ie many try but fail)

Medium level leadership.  Everyone in the church is needed & has opportunity

Leadership bottleneck - few ministers can break thru the 200 barrier (ie can effectively empower other leaders)

Usually team leadership à hence very low leadership requirements

Could be inefficient.  Potential for strong individuals to hijack

Meetings

Excellent productions by professionals

Little ‘audience’ participation

Amateur productions with high participation by members

Low quality

High involvement level from all members

Messy family-like meetings

Worship

Great Corporate worship

Spectating

Little participation

Worship is busy & focuses on song & dance

Reasonable worship with good participation

Can easily include reflection

Low quality

High participation.

Necessity breeds creativity in worship

(Can also have combined monthly gatherings of micro-churches)

Difficult to worship in a small group with no mucical talent

Involvement

Members can specialize in ministry areas

Some people are very involved, others merely spectators

High participation levels as everyone is needed (the ‘slackers’ are visible)

Labour intensive – there is always more work than volunteers

Every member ministry

People can cruise

Evangelism

(NCD research indicates that smaller churches are much more effective at evangelism)

Can be very effective with large events

Difficult to follow-up people

People saved usually have relationships with church members

Can be difficult to motivate & train members for evangelism

Effective if focused on evangelism & missions

Can become introspective

Discipleship

Large dynamics (momentum) in discipleship classes

Have resources to design high quality courses

Low proportion discipled.

Can be difficult to establish good relationships

People saved are very visible, and easily followed-up for discipling

Low number saved, so members are not familiar with good processes

Effective discipling through relationships

A few new people can make big changes to the group dynamics

Reproduction

Elephants - Big babies

Long gestation, Slow reproduction

Sheep - Medium speed reproduction

High proportion of babies die

Rabbits - Rapid reproduction.  Low cost, low risk

Can be lots of miscarriages

Cost & Risk

Potentially high gains (growth)

High cost, high risk

Safe & steady

Medium cost, medium risk

Slow growth

Low cost, low risk

Planting

Can plant congregations

Difficult to intentionally plant a mega church

Can be planted (if it is done well)

High cost & low-ish success rate for planting

Cheap & fast to plant

Many attempts might not come to fruition

Dependent on

Super Leader

Dilemma of finding a successor.

Minister & core families

Difficulties bringing new minister in from outside the community (time to form relationships, finding part-time work etc)

Core family(s)

If family(s) change or move, church can easily collapse

Visibility

Visible impact on the public community

Need to maintain a show case image

Visible in community – can become a core part of the local community

Communities have long memories - previous mistakes can hinder a church for many years

No pressure of public expectation

Invisible

Can disappear as quickly as they begin.

Empowerment of Other Leaders

Able to develop leaders of 100’s & 1000’s within a mentored environment

Potential leaders under utilized (NCD à large churches are 50% less effective than smaller churches at using people in their areas of giftedness)

Develops lower levels of leadership

External Structural Links

Tend to lead the Movement.

Official accreditation and accountability of ministers.

Movement has ‘leverage’ through buildings

Big enough to want to ‘stand on own feet’ à can lean towards independence.

Fewer recognised ministers per person

Official accreditation and accountability of minister

Relationship to the Movement is very dependent on personal relationships, & feelings

Ministry recognition according to gifting

No official ministers are needed

No official recognition of ministers.

The Movement has little ‘leverage’ with the leaders

Permanence & Flexibility

Permanent/secure

Hard to adapt &move with society.  Easily institutionalized.

Able to be permanent in the community.

Can see the changing needs in the community.

Might not have the resources to adapt to the changing needs.

Flexible/adaptable

Can be independent

Metaphors

Efficient Army –

Cloned soldiers -

Small platoons

Easy target – visible, but not very strong

Guerilla units – cheap, mobile, flexible

Independent loose cannons

Large School – wide variety of programs & opportunities.  Great opportunities for students that get fully involved

Impersonal, unfriendly.  Some students get ‘lost’ in the bigness, & don’t achieve their potential

Small School – friendly, people all known by name

Insufficient resources to do everything that is desirable.

Home school – effectively caters for individual needs.  Efficient use of resources.

Limited resources.  Variable quality depending on the ‘educator’.  Cane be insular & introspective.

Large Farm (with Combine Harvester)

bits of the machinery

Life-style block (with ride-on mower)

Inefficient

Family Garden (with hand-tools)

Self-centred