Oct
23
Posted under
Interesting Stuff Some interesting discussion was generated a few Sundays ago when I cited recent research regarding Christian beliefs and how they play out in various church sizes. I had mentioned in my message from 1 Thessalonians 2:13-20 (where Paul states that “Satan stopped us”) that people in small churches (<200 attenders) seem to be far more likely to reject a literal view of Satan than those in large churches (1000+). I find that fascinating because I have found that many small church attenders have negative views of large churches and often times believe large church attenders have less conviction about their faith. However, according to some recent Barna research, the opposite is actually true. Smaller churches seem to have a higher proportion of attenders who have weak “doctrine.” Now don’t hear me wrong, I’m not saying small churches are doctrinally weak, they just seem to have more attenders comparitively that have some unbiblical views. I think this is interesting, because again, it goes against the views of many small church members. Many small church attenders think people who go to big churches are just “playing church,” or going to “get lost in the crowd,” or going so that they won’t have to “volunteer.”
Anyway, I think this is a “wake-up” call to small churches in particular (those with less than 200 attenders…which most churches are)…to make sure that they are thoroughly grounding people in the basics of Christian doctrine, and not assuming that because it is a small church that eveyone’s “got it.” It was also very interesting to observe that the 200 person mark seemed to be a key tipping point for faith/beliefs. I thought I’d post a graph summerizing a recent Barna study.
