Large Congregations:
Ideas, Experiences, and Reflections

Gil Rendle, former senior consultant and seminar leader at the Alban Institute, is a United Methodist minister who has worked with many congregations of different sizes—particularly in the areas of strategic planning, team building, and change management. Here are some insights based on his experiences with large congregations.
 

1. Larger congregations favor simpler structure and smaller governing boards.
   
   
2. The Pareto Principle suggests that 20 percent of the people will do 80 percent of the work. In large congregations there is an inverse relationship in which the percentage of volunteers available decreases as the size of the congregation increases.
   
   
3. The larger the congregation, the more ministries are staff driven and staff dependent.
   
   
4. As a “rule of thumb” congregations need one full-time program staff person for every 100 persons in average attendance at worship. This is a maintenance level of staffing.
   
   
5. The senior clergy role and responsibilities must be focused and limited, giving priority to:
   
   • Preaching.
     
   • Visioning.
     
   • Working with the governing board.
     
   • Hiring, firing, and staff development.
     
   • Weddings, baptisms, and funerals of the smaller set of key leaders and members of the congregation.
   
   
6. Large congregations tend to look beyond denominational support, resources, and training, which tend to focus more on small to midsize congregations.
   
   
7. While there are far fewer large congregations, they increasingly hold a larger percentage of the American public connected to congregations. (Fifty percent of American congregations—small congregations—serve only 11 percent of the persons connected to congregations. Less than 5 percent of congregations—large congregations—serve more than 20 percent of the persons connected to congregations.)
   
   
8. There is greater expectation of—and therefore attention to—detail and quality in large congregations.
   
   
9. Congregational alignment and development is managed through staff alignment. Healthy staff relationships, communication, and accountability are critical.
   
   
10. Large congregations are the most culturally comfortable congregations for people to participate in at this time because:
    
    • They provide multiple worship settings and programs from which to choose.
      
    • They allow for small-group nurture and relationships, while also allowing for full-group anonymity.
      
    • The individual is in control of the depth of involvement and level of participation and commitment.
      
    • A greater amount of diversity and difference can be included in the congregation because people of differences can subgroup programmatically or socially without having constantly to bump up against others of difference.
    
    
11. Large congregations have greater responsibility and opportunity for a public voice in a culture that honors size. Leaders of large congregations need to learn new roles to be able to stand in a multifaith (Protestant/Catholic/Jewish/Muslim/ Buddhist/Hindu) arena and present the values of their faith without assuming dominance or operating from persuasive positions.
    
    
12. Large congregations are more, not less, vulnerable to conflict and organized discontent because they hold more differences and because dissatisfaction can exist undetected at some distance from leadership while people develop support and organize around their dissatisfaction.
    
    
13. Large congregations can experience an uncomfortable relationship with their middle judicatory because:
    
    • They often contribute a larger percentage of support to the judicatory and feel that they receive a lesser percentage of judicatory attention, support, and resources.
      
    • They often have equal or greater staff and financial resources, which can feel competitive to middle judicatories.
      
    • They can be perceived as “better than thou” by clergy and lay leadership of smaller congregations, making it difficult to develop and maintain peer relationships.
      
    • They sometimes are experienced as the “tail that wags the dog” since the large congregation may have access to as much or more public presence and the ear of influential persons and groups than the middle judicatory.
    
    
14. While formal planning in congregations is cyclical (two- to five-year cycle), the large congregation is served well by a standing planning committee or group that 1) continues to observe and describe changes in the congregation, 2) collects and reviews congregational statistics and measures, 3) studies trends and new developments in congregations, and 4) continually scans the environment for opportunities and threats to ministry.
    
    
15. Denominational polity may have procedures and requirements that do not serve the large congregation well during senior staff transitions.
    
    • Enforced interim periods may not support the need of the large congregation for the transfer of vision, the need for the personification of the vision to be in place, and the need to protect programming and established goals from interruption.
      
    • The search for senior clergy in appointment systems may exceed the ability of the middle judicatory to perceive the skills and attributes needed to lead the large congregation and the regional pool of candidates may not include persons with skills to match the needs of the congregation.
      
    • Denominational polity changes much more slowly (appropriately) than the needs of the large congregation, which often makes the large congregation feel unheard or uncared for as it seeks to meet its own needs.
    
    
16. Large congregations need to be prepared to have a search process going on almost continuously as ordained, program, or support staff transition in and out of the congregation.
    
    
17. One size does not fit all. While large congregations are culturally appropriate, often serving as platforms for experimentation and teaching, their strategies and programs are not easily or appropriately replicated in midsize and smaller congregations. To use the large congregation as the model for other size congregations may be to impose an identity that does not belong to the smaller congregation and to diminish the gifts and strengths of ministry that belongs to congregations of lesser size.
    
    
18. Large congregation leaders need to develop support, a network of colleagues, and resources that come from leaders of other large congregations. While there is an identifiable and growing body of literature and experience for congregations in the 500 to 800 average attendance size, the “book is still being written” about large congregations, which are fundamentally a phenomenon of the last generation.