As a seasoned church consultant and coach I have heard on many occasions pastors, church staff and deacons say things like:
“We are declining in attendance and membership and we don’t know why?”
“We are stuck. We’re working hard but getting little results.”
“We have people visit us but they don’t join us”
“Our deacon ministry plan doesn’t seem to be working very well.”
While there are likely multiple reasons these situations occur, more often than not, I discover that they are not aware of how their size should inform the way they are structured for ministry. Or they may be aware but the refuse to make needed adjustments. I believe that church size should inform how deacon ministry, Sunday School, pastoral care and staffing are structured. If these shifts are not understood and embraced by the leaders and the congregations they will ‘remain stuck’, ‘ineffective’, and ‘plateaued’. Let me explain further some of the implications of size on a deacon structure and model of ministry.
Implications of Size on Deacon Ministry
The biblical foundation of deacon ministry is servanthood, ministry and sometimes administration. (See Deacons: Servant Models in the Church by Henry Webb for review of these functions). In Baptist life congregations make the final decision, based on their need, as to the primary function of their deacons, staff and lay leadership. Far too often our churches and deacon body makes structural decisions more on familiarity, tradition, or ‘what we have been doing’ rather then principles of growth and effectiveness. This poor decision making and organization contributes significantly to churches being ‘stuck’, ‘plateaued’ and/or ‘ineffective in reaching and keeping members’.
Church with 75 to 110 in attendance represents about 70% of our congregations in this country. This size church enjoys knowing it’s membership by name and family affiliation. More often than not most pastoral care duties are done by the pastor and deacons tend to monitor the pastor’s faithfulness to these expectations. Most of the time these churches are family oriented and homogeneous in membership. That is they attract and minister to persons like themselves. If the church is to increase in membership and effective some shifts have to happen and must be understood and embraced by the membership at large. Otherwise they stay stuck. Changes will likely include – shifting the expectation of pastoral care duties from just the pastor to deacon’s, Sunday School or small group leadership. The primary pastoral care is shared by all and not the primary responsibility of the pastor. If this size church is to grow forward the pastor has to be freed up from all the pastoral care to deal with visioning for the future of the church and training additional leadership.
Church with 125-225 average attendance has a pastor with leadership gifts and is a team leader as a primary part of their pastoral function/expectations. This pastor can no longer be consistently and directly involved in pastoral care to this size flock. It is impossible to do a great job in a church of this size unless the pastoral care – visitation, care-giving, nurture, assimilation, crisis ministry, grief etc – is shared by several groups of trained and willing lay leaders including the deacons. Deacons often become the catalyst and role model for this shift. They lead the way in training and ministry. Sometimes they share the administration with the pastor of this size church, but a more effective way, more often than not, is for a leadership team to deal with administration rather than distract the deacons. Deacons might be consulted but they will not ‘clog the decision-making system’ by necessitating their vote. The proposals and guidance of administrative issues are dealt with in the leadership team that is usually elected by the church. To grow this size church facilities have to have a face lift and be maintained in keeping with the houses in the community in which the church is located. The church’s facilities should lead the way! This church does pastoral care through their lay leaders and the primary entry point for newcomers into the church begins to shift to large group gatherings more than small groups like classes – therefore more leadership is needed in creating the larger group outreach experiences. (more ideas can be found in my
Spiritual Leadership in a Secular Age book
www.transformingsolutions.org) I’ll deal with churches of other sizes in the next newsletters. For help in introducing and managing change see my article “
6 Keys for Making Shifts Without Making Waves” at
http://legacy.pastors.com/RWMT/article.asp?ID=360&ArtID=11398
Travel Free Learning Opportunities
Webinars on this topic, deacon ministry, learning to talk with postmoderns, guiding a church through conflict are being offered in 2009 by Eddie Hammett, Randy Pierce, and others. Go online to register for these hour long webinars . All you need is an internet connection and a telephone line. The only cost to NC Baptists is the price your local phone service provider charges you for long distance calls. Visit
http://churchhealth.ncbaptist.org for online learning opportunities or
http://deaconministry.ncbaptist.org 
