For the purpose of making my points, I would say that a church with 20-50 people is small (less than 20 is very small), 50 to 150 is medium and then there are probably several levels of large. Please note that my classifications are not scientific :) !!!

There can be a lot of great things about small churches. Whether you meet in a home of a building. There are also negatives. Of course, there are positives and negatives in medium and large groups also.

Kevin makes some great points on what a church of any size should be about. To me, regardless of the size, God asks his people to worship Him in an organized, congregational setting so we can work together to serve him better. We need to work with what we have to make that happen whether it is 20 people or 200 people.

With that said, I believe that there are some realities to church size that people should consider. There are real challenges for small and very small groups. Burn out comes much easier for those that take part (this is a very big deal with small groups and I believe that it can be very dangerous), people are generally more apt to expect that things (non-scriptural details) will go "their way," often times it is harder to encourage new people to want to attend on a regular basis because they can't 'get lost' or becasue something might be expected of them, members of small groups can more eaisly fall into the temptation to justify their small size as being the best way "We're just the right size" or "we can do this or that so much better than a big group." And I can tell you from experience that regular attendees of a small group can get discouraged pretty eaisly about their limitations. There are probably even some more negatives, also. I'm not bringing the negatives out to say that small groups are bad or that groups of other sizes aren't plagued with other problems, but I am saying that I think that too often small groups may not be as effective as they could be because the negatives are hard to deal with and sometime you are so busy dealing with the details that you limit the things that work the best.

I do believe that there is an optimal size for a group that probably ranges based on various group characteristics. I'm not sure I know what the number range is, however. But, consider how the chain restaurant industry develops its restaurant size philosophy. Or why does Chili's decide to build two restaurants that seat 150 people in a ten square mile area versus one restaurant that seats 300? The 300 seat restaurant would be much cheaper to build. You would need fewer employees with one restaurant. There are a few reasons. First, you can only serve so many people at one time regardless of the size of your kitchen because of space efficiency (this is why you end up waiting to sit down at some restaurants. Second, the chances of the public seeing the restaurant is higher when there are two. But then, why doesn't Chili's build six 50 seat restaurants? Well, that is a cost benefit decision that the company makes. Starbucks has a different philosophy…build as many as possible! I think that those companies make business choices based on the way that people think and there is an optimal size in each case because of general human tendencies.

Well with church congregations, it is not easy to ‘engineer’ the size to the optimal number. We need to approach the issue from a different perspective and understand that we as humans react to different sizes in different ways. If we have a small group we need to make sure that the closeness that we feel is real. Sometimes, with a few people we are tempted to ‘fake’ out closeness because we feel more forced to be close in a small group. We need to work on taking advantage of the blessing of the ability to be close because we are small and to use that blessing to serve God better. Small groups should do all they can to steer away from talking about why large groups are bad. And they should appreciate their size, but should not allow themselves to lock others out because “everything is just perfect the way it is.” In our group (about 30-35 on Sunday) I have encouraged the group to glory in the closeness that we have and that we should want to encourage others to meet with us because of that closeness. Why can’t we be just as close with 50 or 60 people? If we grow, that is great. If we don’t, then we should use what we have to glorify God.