By Pastor Doug Beutler

In my 32 years of ministry I have heard it all…

- “2 years to get to 200 people or never get to 200 people”

- “Your job is to get all those people who left our denomination back into our denomination”

- “You are growing so fast we want to know how you are doing it”

- “What are you doing wrong…you are not growing”

- “You are spending too much time caring for individuals”

I could go on and on about what denominational leaders, coaches, and friends have told me over the years. I have spent 27 years of my life pastoring in churches under 100 people. I have experienced the loneliness, criticism, and frustration of trying to make my church grow. I have felt the pity and questions of how a pastor with so much potential could not get his church to grow over 100 people consistently. I know what it is like to feel like an ugly step child that people try to hide out of embarrassment.

As I have talked to pastors across this country I realize that I am not the only one that has ever felt this way. When I was coaching and consulting for church planting in a small denomination I saw this in their pastors. I heard one pastor say, “How could I ever think about church planting when my church is failing so badly because we are so small?” I could empathize with his discouragement and despair but the lack of focus and direction was contributing to his shrinking attendance. Yesteryear was all this church could talk about. It is easy to be afraid to try something new because of the fear of having to deal with one more failure. Pastors are desperate for a “win” and gaining some momentum.

I think there is something more than just trying to survive for the little church. We know from Lifeway Research that 67% of churches are under 100 (Lifeway Research 2024 Association of Religion Data Archives) and in 2019 4,500 churches closed(https://research.lifeway.com/2021/05/25/). I have heard rumors that close to 10,000 churches will close in 2024. I would assume that 100% of those churches are under 100 people. All this news sounds pretty depressing as the American people turn away from attending church. Scandal in the American church is not helping either as confidence in pastors dramatically declines. According to a Gallop poll this year only 32% of Americans trust pastors, down from 34% last year, and the 4th consecutive year of declines. This is the lowest rating for pastors in the history of Gallup’s surveys. (https://news.gallup.com/poll/608903/ethics-ratings-nearly-professions-down.aspx)

Out of the ashes of the church there is a small light of revival that is beginning to emerge. This particular revival is not in packed out auditoriums or even missional communities. This small light is coming from the little church. The little church is making a comeback. Americans are searching. They are looking for something they can trust in. They are searching for something they can believe in. They are hoping for something real. More and more people are open to spiritual conversations, visiting a church, and considering belief in Jesus as an option. We have definitely seen this at LifeWater where I am the pastor.

Little churches already have a pastor and many of them are praying for and deeply desire revival. There are leaders in these churches, who don’t know it yet, but are exactly where God wants them to be. People who are attending these churches are well meaning people who just need to be trained and commissioned. Disciple making movements could be in every community across America. Because of this the little church is in an excellent position to begin these disciple making movements but it is asleep.

I believe the little church in America is about wake up!!! People are beginning to get on their knees and pray, they’re willing to build relationships, they are seeking to transition conversations into spiritual conversations, they are ready for an opportunity to share the good news of Jesus Christ and bring people to church. The growth in these churches is going to be different. No large revival meetings, no door to door evangelism, no passing out tracks, no Jesus movement. It is going to happen one conversation at a time, one person at a time, one group at a time, one community at a time. Once it begins it will spread like a wild fire. There will be stories that will be told about transformation. There will be people whose lives will be changed forever. Churches will be planted, salvations will be experienced, and America’s heart will be transformed.

Does this sound too much like a dream? Is it too big? Can God do this? Let me tell you briefly about my church, LifeWater. Everything that I am about to say no one gets the credit but God Himself. There was no master plan, no great strategy, not even a leadership pipeline. God did it all. We accidently fell into this amazing movement of the Holy Spirit as we tried to keep up with what God was doing.

My wife, Kim, and I started a church in 2004 because of a good friend who told me that I needed to consider planting another church. My first church didn’t go like I had planned and there were some scars still there that were not completely healed. He challenged me to “pray about it”. I told him I would and sure enough God definitely said, “Yes, start a church”. So we planted a church in the fall of 2004 and broke every rule I knew about church planting. No grand opening, no marketing plan, no launch team, no public place. We had our first service on Labor Day weekend on a boat at a local reservoir. For eight months no one attend the church except for my friend’s family and my family. We then moved to a public place because no one wanted to come to a house on a Sunday morning but God continued His work. For the next 4 years we grew one family at a time and saw some neat life transformation.

In 2009, we went through a merger where a church that was dying wanted to merge with us and they gave us their building which had no mortgage. In 2013 I came on as a full time pastor, I had been bi-vocation up to this point. At our first annual leadership retreat we needed to hear from God as to what direction we should take. God spoke very clearly to us that He wanted us to become a disciple making church not an attractional model church. That led to some changes. We started LifeGroups, we started discussing the sermons in our LifeGroups, we celebrated victories of people who were being discipled or were discipling others, and we developed terminology that everyone could remember about what we were trying to do. From 2013-2019 we struggled with what I call “the allure of bigger church momentum”. There were several times we would go well over 100 people attending our services and then we would get distracted spending significant time discussing 2 services and strategies for how to do this.

Then Covid hit and that changed everything. Everything we did changed, attendance dropped, and all seemed lost. We were not alone in this, across the world there were thousands of pastors of small churches feeling just like me. We could give up or we could rise up. That is when we began to realize that success in church may look different post Covid. Then God did something amazing. In the years from 2013 to 2024 we have helped plant 2 churches, started Kids Krossing to minister to families in our community, started a satellite campus in a nursing home, and then in 2024 we started Seeds of Change that ministers to pastors of churches under 100. Our weekly disciple making impact is now close to 700 people weekly even though our average attendance this year is 68 people. Can you imagine if 700 churches were reaching 700 people with an average of attendance of 68 people? That is what I call “Little Church Big Impact”. That is why we started Seeds of Change to encourage pastors, let them know they are not alone, and help them begin disciple making movements in their churches like we did. I can’t wait to tell you how the Lord did it.