Though many feel that we are
living in a post-denomination age, I believe denominations still have a
valuable role to play in God’s plan for the church (see my post here about why I joined a denomination). Denominations provide a way for local churches to
work together on projects too big for any one church to handle on their own
(see my article about denominations serving churches). But what about churches
that have grown numerically to the point when they no longer need many of the services
the denomination provides? Should they remain invested in a group that provides
many services they may no longer need? With the rise of the mega-church this is
a question that even many non-mega-churches are asking.
I think there are a number of
reasons why larger churches need to remain involved in and actively support
their denomination. Large churches have often learned something about reaching
people that other churches need to learn. They often have developed specialized
ministries that other churches need to know about. One might argue that those churches
can host their own training conferences and seminars to promote these ideas
without any connection to the denomination. While that might be the case, why
recreate an information distribution system and spend money on mass advertising
when the denomination already has all the channels needed to get that
information out to hundreds, perhaps thousands of churches? It would be better
for larger churches to partner with their denomination to provide those
training experiences through the denominational system. Think about this from a
local church perspective, if the most gifted church members decided to keep all
their talents and abilities to themselves or to only use them for para-church
groups and never use them in the local congregation, it would adversely impact
the ministry of the local church. It would set the local church back and hinder
its effectiveness greatly. The same thing is true when the largest churches in
a denomination start doing their own thing outside the denominational system.
It robs the group of the very thing they need to move to the next level. Large churches
should work through the denominational system, instead of outside of it, to
help raise the level of training and effectiveness in the entire group.
Then there is the issue of
money. Larger churches almost always have more financial resources than smaller
churches, yet as they grow, they often redirect their resources away from the
denomination toward their own causes. That lowers the resources available to
the denomination to offer high caliber services to the smaller churches that remain,
which often need those services the most. When larger churches withdraw, or significantly
lower, their financial support for the denomination, it has a negative impact
on the smaller churches in the group. For example, I serve a denominational
missionary organization that serves 337 churches, most of which average less
than 85 in regular worship attendance. Twenty five of those 337 churches
provide 61% of the financial support for our ministry. If any one of those 25
key churches withdrew their support, it would severely limit the services we
could provide to the other 312 churches. Some might be tempted to disparage all
of those smaller churches as “ineffective” and therefore not worthy of support.
That is not always the case. In our situation, 40% of our churches are from 19
different ethnic groups we serve, some of which are economically disadvantaged.
Nearly 50% of the churches in our network are new churches plants less than ten
years old and are still in the process of becoming stable. Many churches in our
family of faith are located in small villages and mountain towns or other out
of the way places that will never be serviced by a larger church. For the sake
of the gospel, we must have a strong denominational budget so these small
churches can continue to be assisted. The only way we can have a strong budget
is for our larger churches to continue to support the denomination.
Larger churches may no longer
need someone from the denomination to come train their Sunday School teachers
or deacons, but that does not relieve them of the obligation of assisting the
denomination in training Sunday School teachers and deacons in other churches.
Larger churches may no longer need financial assistance from the denomination,
but many smaller churches do need it and larger churches should have a kingdom
mindset and continue to invest the funds needed for the whole family of
churches to be healthy. There may have been a day when denominations had
bloated staffs and wasteful budgets, but those days are long gone.
Denominations that are thriving today are lean and efficient and need their
larger churches to remain engaged for the sake of the Kingdom.
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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:
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