Choice Points:
A Fresh Way to Look at Church Size

Most Protestant churches have fewer than 100 in worship on an average Sunday. Furthermore, most churches do not change size significantly. The graph below shows that from 1998 through 2002 more than 70% of the fully organized Nazarene churches in the United States and Canada did not change from one size group to another. There were noteworthy exceptions to this tendency toward stability, of course, and those exceptions tend to have been widely publicized.

This prompts discussions of causes. Why do so many churches remain smaller than 50? Why are there so few churches larger than two hundred?

One popular approach has been to think about and discuss churches in terms of “Growth Barriers.” The “200 barrier” has been used more, but there also appears to be a “50 barrier.” The “barrier” framework has proven to be useful in helping churches understand the challenges they face.

“Choice-Points” provides another way to think and talk about these realities. This framework is not new, although it has not generally been applied to congregational size. (References and a summary of earlier uses may be found in the report “A Network of Congregations” "http://www.nazarene.org/itr/papers/index.html") The concept generally describes the choices congregations make around central issues that shape the nature of the group.

It appears that somewhere around 50 participants there is a significant choice-point for congregations. Particular kinds of fellowship, accountability, and responsibility are possible in churches smaller than about 50. Above that size other kinds of organizational possibilities and patterns are possible. The choice to grow larger than 50 is not just a matter of overcoming a barrier; it is also a matter of choosing to change from one type of group to a different type. Similarly, at around 150 the members and pastors of congregations reach a choice-point where they may decide to retain valued relationship patterns and organizational approaches or to change them in order to become a different type of organization.

The conceptual framework of “choice-points” should not be understood to imply that congregations usually make overt, formal decisions at these points. In fact, most are probably informal decisions that are nevertheless widely accepted and firmly held. Once the choices are made, congregations appear to cycle up and down within the range allowed by the organizational issues of the choice-point. In fact, they tend to effectively prevent or replace losses that would move them below the chosen range and resist additions that would move them significantly above that range.

There is little question that in the interdependent, mutually supportive network of Nazarene congregations many should decide to become and remain larger than 150. Indeed, some should be very large. However, there are also valid reasons for a church approaching a size choice-point to decide that in order to accomplish God’s will in their setting it would be better to create more churches rather than one larger church.