Willow Creek sits on 200 acres amid the McMansion subdivisions of Chicago’s northwestern suburbia superbia. Those kinds of McMansions, with their expansive yards, high ceilings, and wow-sized rooms, are still going up all around the country as the Boomer boom of the nine-ohs rolls on into the oh-ohs (plenty of time for them to turn into the uh-ohs). But a backlash against these houses is setting in, as you know if you’ve read the surprise bestseller The Not-So-Big House. "So many houses, so big with so little soul." That’s the reaction of Twin Cities domestic architect Sarah Susanka, the book’s author, to all those unoriginal, oversized houses designed to impress rather than to be lived in comfortably. I wouldn’t say that megachurches have little soul, but clearly there are some parallels between megachurches and megahouses. When Bill Hybels is asked why Willow Creek has never planted any daughter churches, his standard response is that the elders of the church have never felt God’s call on them to do that but rather to keep building up their own church. And I’m sure he’s right. But many other church leaders across the land are feeling called by God to love a not-so-big church into existence. Just as the global economy is bifurcating the marketplace so that the most successful companies are either big with a broad reach or else small and nimble (Dr. Wells would hate this comparison-churches aren’t businesses, he’d thunder), so perhaps there is room on the church landscape for big churches and not-so-big churches. The current trend, though, is toward not-so-bigs.

A not-so-big church isn’t focused on growing bigger and bigger and offering more and more programs. A not-so-big church is concerned about the pagans in their community being subverted by God, onceborns into twiceborns. Beyond that, there’s not a whole lot that not-so-big churches have in common with each other. They’re tailor-made (Spirit-made?) for their place. They’re gloriously individual. …

Hmm. Before I go any further, I think I’d better make another distinction: a "not-so-big church" is not necessarily a "small church." We’ve all heard that the size of the average church in America is 80 or some pathetic number like that. But most of the small churches in America-and here I’m going to stomp on some toes, retract yours now-are boring, ineffective social clubs doing little more than perpetuating a dead religious tradition. That’s right: boring, ineffective social clubs and the rest of it. Now, I realize that some small churches are warm places of deep spirituality. And I realize that some small churches are like they are because of external constraints, such as being located in a tiny community. But still, I believe that many of them could close their doors today and the kingdom of God would be affected not at all, except perhaps for a noticeable drop in the level of religious hypocrisy. They’re small for a good reason. Ow, ow, I have a corn on that toe! A not-so-big church is different from that kind of small church in that it’s fully alive and it wants to have a very-big-indeed impact, both near and far. It’s "not big" in the sense that it doesn’t worry so much about counting heads and it spreads power around instead of always fueling the center. Think of a not-so-big church as a creative body of modest size that is really doing things for people on the inside and the outside (whatever "inside" and "outside" mean to them).

Let me introduce to you seven not-so-big churches. The following are fictionalized scenarios based on composites of actual churches.

N-S-B Church 1 began as a home group but rapidly grew and began worshiping in a hotel meeting room. The group thought long and hard about building a facility of their own, but serious philosophical issues began to arise during the discussions on this course of action. Since their finances were limited, it seemed obvious that they would have to build a very plain building. But shouldn’t God be honored with a beautiful building and not have his world spoiled by yet another ugly, barnlike structure? Anyway, was it the best use of God’s money to invest in two-by-fours and plasterboard instead of in people? And if the church kept growing at this rate, wouldn’t they have to build again long before they’d paid off the first mortgage? Perhaps most important, would housing the congregation in a physical structure imply that the group had in some sense become hardened, instead of being adaptable and ready to move at the slightest breath of Spirit breeze? "Forget it!" was the church’s consensus. They’re still renting and are happy with being able to focus on ministry.

N-S-B Church 2 started out exactly the same way as Church 1 and faced the same dilemma of what to do as they grew. Their solution, however, was different. This was a church that really believed in every-member ministry and shoulder-rubbing discipleship. So Church 6 decided to keep meeting in homes-they would be a church in the form of a network of home groups. They would rent some office space for their small staff but apart from that would have no real estate and very little portable property. The church would get together quarterly for an all-day celebration of vision-casting and group worship at an amphitheater in a park. Today this nearly invisible church is spreading like yeast all through their town.

At N-S-B Church 3, a congregation of 250 occupying excellent facilities, a "dream time retreat" conversation settled on how the church could have a bigger impact on their community of 300,000. Various strategies for planting a daughter congregation were discussed, but for some reason no one could get excited about the usual techniques of renting space in a strip mall or meeting in a high school auditorium. Then someone (it happened to be the volunteer janitor) said, "Hey, I know a great place to plant a new church. It’s big enough. There’s space for classes and for worship. And it wouldn’t cost us a thing. It’s our church." Every person in the room sat up at that. And in fact they did go on to start a completely separate congregation, with a completely separate staff, meeting in their own building at times when it would have been empty anyway.

N-S-B Church 4 is n-s-b for a good reason: its target audience-the arts community of their city-is n-s-b itself. This church was begun by Christians with a love for theater, dance, the visual arts, and so on, and a love as well for others with the same esthetic bent. Perhaps no part of American society is so averse to Christianity as the cultural elite, but through Christians cultivating relationships with friends and with friends of friends within the arts community, this church is slowly growing. And you should see their worship services! Talk about creativity. Members of this church, meeting in some hip remodeled space in an old building, are rediscovering the rich tradition of Christian art, and as artists and performers are changed from the inside out, their own art expresses Christian themes in powerful and original ways.

In another part of the country, the leaders of N-S-B Church 5 were thrilled that God was sending lots of new people to their church, but they weren’t comfortable with the idea of concentrating all their growth in one place. After a while, a staff member pieced together ideas he’d heard elsewhere and came up with a plan. His plan was to gradually plant churches all the way around the interstate that ringed their city. Once a church got to a certain size, some of the members would go off and start another congregation a few miles down the road. The interstate locations were easy for drivers to get to, and eventually the city would be surrounded by a fellowship of churches in reach of everyone in the city.

N-S-B Church 6 is built around a core of well-educated, compassionate Christian men and women who decided to move to the worst part of town and try to make it better. Their communal living arrangement broke up within a year, but they all still worship together and work together for change. They are deeply into influencing social conditions by such activities as running afterschool programs for kids, teaching ESL classes, arranging financing for people who want to start small businesses, and much more. Some of the people helped in these programs have joined the worshiping community, though most have not. The interesting thing, lately, is that Church 6 is working on a plan to "adopt" a poor village in a Third World country and perform the same kinds of service activities in that place, thereby turning everyone in their church into short-term (or not-so-short-term) missionaries.

A lovely but sparsely populated rural area is the site of N-S-B Church 7. This church used to be five churches, four of them from the same denomination. The central church of the bunch, located in the largest town in the county, had had about one hundred members, while the others had averaged about half that many. They all had been struggling to keep going and maintain old buildings that were too big for them. Then an elder of one church spent a year talking up the five-way merger. If people would drive from those smaller towns to go to the Walmart in the county seat, he argued, then they should be willing to drive the same distance to be part of a church that’s large enough to meet their needs and have an effective outreach. With a topnotch new pastor in the pulpit, a revival has occurred among the membership and this church is on its way to making the first real advances for the gospel that the area has known for years.

So those are my seven not-so-big churches, presented here to demonstrate the range of possibilities for churches to be effective without being mega. If you’ve heard of not-so-big church strategies different from those described here, I’d like to hear about them. Perhaps someday I’ll write "The Not-So-Big Church II" for Next Wave.

Eric Stanford, age 36, is a contributing editor for Next-Wave Web magazine. He runs an "e-lancing" business from his home in Colorado Springs, mostly doing editing for book publishers and writing for magazines. His great desire is to help the Christian publishing industry learn to serve postmoderns more effectively. Eric studied English at Judson College and theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Write to eric@stanfordcreative.com.