Posted on 04/04/2015 6:10:22 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Well, I’d like to see those numbers at a Catholic Church in small town America.
We should definitely raise our comfort level to 120!
But notice that it was only the eleven named in Acts 1:13 who were “abiding” in the upper room. I suppose that they could squeeze 120 people into one room for a meeting, but it is also possible that the 120 met somewhere close by that had a little more space.
But more interesting to me is the juxtaposition of two facts: the 3000+ people mentioned in Acts 2:41 and 2:47, together with the record in Acts 2:46, 1Co 16:19, and Col 4:15 which suggest that while the believers may have been gathering in one huge meeting “day by day” in the temple (before they were banned), they were also meeting “day by day” in houses to share meals together. Would anyone suggest that over 3000 people were meeting together and taking a meal together in one single house? Rather than a single house, Acts 2:46 says, “from house to house”.
The scriptures above suggest a model of small-group meetings in houses together with whole-group meetings in the temple, at the beginning. Once persecution started, the whole-group meetings would have become risky. We also have the record in Acts 8:3, which suggests that in order to “make havock of the church” Saul had to enter “every house.” This in turn suggests that those houses were the places believers were meeting, and furthermore that there were many houses.
While scripture is not definitive on this point, it is suggestive of all believers in a city meeting in small groups in houses, but considering themselves all part of one church.
Catholic churches tend to be fewer but larger. There were Catholics in my little hometown but they all went to one of the big churches in the city.
Our congregation has over 8,000. Once you’ve been there a few years, it can have the feel of a small church.
We are a small town.
Most people prefer a happy therapeutic message over the whole unvarnished truth. In other words, they don’t want anything to do with the whole counsel of God. Churches that emphasize God’s love, Divine sovereignty, and Divine wrath are not likely to grow too large. Of course there are exceptions, but that seems to be the general rule.
And yet, if you want a small Catholic experience, you can still get it. I have friends who attend services at the local Catholic hospital instead of their local parish, because it is small and simple. Also, I met a family who attends church at a Catholic retirement home, where the services are small and simple, and their children have learned about being around old people and making friends with them.
Ravi says when the man believes it the Holy Spirit moves, when he don’t the Spirit moves on...
Ping to read later
There was a church that I went a very long time ago where they did what I call “micro-subdividing” of Sunday school groups. In my particular case there was “College and Career Singles”, “Singles” (my guess was a single-parent), “Younger Singles”, and “Senior Singles”.
All of us singles who weren’t elderly were lumped into one big group in the beginning, and it began to cause problems; despite the Singles Sunday school teacher’s best efforts to teach the Gospel and pass out worksheets, most of the activity that was going on was grooming, zooming and date propositioning.
The most irritating part of it (albeit the funniest upon looking back), was constantly being zoomed by 18-20 year olds; I was 26, working a career job with the fringe benefit of oodles of overtime, and would rather spend my off-time riding my 4-wheeler in the mountain foothills and trails than dealing with yet ANOTHER doomed-from-the-beginning romance that went down in flames.
Once the pastor of the church cured the problem and made subdivisions of the singles schools, things got a whole lot better.
Another church I visited had numerous divisions in their Singles programs, this church having a usual Sunday complement of likely 400+ people. It is a thriving church and a great blessing.
Another church I visited a few times had numerous Single Sunday school divisions
A variety of studies show that the human tribe is around 150 people.
For a normal church family to be around that number is not unreasonable.
“Dunbar’s number ... was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can only comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships.”
Sounds like nonsense to me. The limitation is more likely to be available time for socializing.
Christmas, Easter and Mothers Day services we'll easily double that as we double the number of services. For Easter, we started "early" services starting on Thursday evenings for those leaving town.
Yes, it's a "Mega Church" and I'm often uncomfortable with the size of our church. I've been a member of this church since it was approximately 325-350 people 17 years ago. Our growth has been exponential.
Our Church leadership, the Elders, etc.. have done a great job managing our growth. We're not hugely in debt for the building we're in, and our church is chock full of young families. Many are Catholics who come through our doors because the local Catholic Churches are too small to accommodate the area's population growth. Others who come include Baptists, AG's, Lutherans, Protestants, etc.. It's a big mix.
Yes, in a large church it's easy to get overwhelmed and "lost in the crowd." If someone really wants to get involved in the church or a small group, it's easy enough to do and it's our church's small groups where more personal relationships develop.
There are times when I really don't like belonging to such a large church. Those times are heavily outweighed by all the community outreach our church does.
On any given weekend when we have a "pack the pantry" thing going on, we'll collect more than enough food to fill 7-10 local food pantries. Around holidays (before Thanksgiving and Christmas) when the call goes out to help pack the local food pantries we'll fill several semi-trailers full.
Our men's groups have everything from mechanics, plumbers, carpenters and computer guys (like me) who help those who cannot afford repairs for their cars, homes, computers, etc.. all capable of stepping in and filling the gap to help those in need, single moms, military families, etc..
So whatever my reservations about being in a large church are, I remind myself of two things. First, that often we can do things that a smaller church cannot, simply because of our size. Second, I'm keen about keeping a Christ Centered church and pay close attention to what our Elders decide, how our church's finances are maintained (they're published quarterly so every church member see's where the money goes) and most importantly THE MESSAGE of Christ's gift to each and every one of us.
Last week we had an open baptism -- just over 170 people were baptized.
I don't see a church that's "off message" or not "Christ Centered" having those kinds of impacts on the community and people.
The downside of being in such a large church: We've had two Military Funerals at our church, the most recent for PFC Aaron Toppen who was killed in Afghanistan last year.
I cannot tell you how moving it was to see THOUSANDS of people come through our doors to comfort his mother during his wake. More than 20,000 people came through for his wake. Many of those 20,000 people weren't members of our church, they were there to support Aaron's mother who lost her only Son, after losing her husband six months prior.
Absolutely heartbreaking.
But if you want to see a church that lift's someone up in their time of grief and is there to help whenever she needed it --- that was our church.
So some things make me proud of being a member of a church like the one I attend, and others make me uncomfortable. I don't think there's a "perfect" church anywhere. There are always trade-offs to be had. I can say I really like the impact our church has on our members, our community, and outside our community. Our size lets us do things other smaller churches can't. That's not a knock on smaller churches by any stretch of the imagination. It's just a matter of scale.
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