A  church must have a Sunday morning service or so I thought. If someone is looking for a church, they’ll look on a Sunday morning. Having a Sunday service gives you the sense of being a ‘proper’ church and as (hopefully) more people come, that sense of progress grows too. There are also lots of good reasons to gather your people together to worship God and through the preaching to lay some good foundations of truth with the church.

There are, however, a number of things that can make running a Sunday service a real challenge for a church plant, especially if that church plant has say around 30 people who are, more or less, committed to the church plant. I say 30 because that’s both my personal experience and also anecdotally what many church plants seem to start with. We’ll come back to that ‘more or less’ later.

The list of things that need doing each and every Sunday morning is long. Many, if not all, church plants are in rented premises so there’s liaising with the school or wherever. The room needs setting up, people have to sit somewhere. Signs have to be put out, people have to find you and know where you are. Some attempt at giving information to the guest needs putting out. So there’s your first team. The set up team and of course it all needs clearing away again. So set up becomes set down.

Chances are some sound equipment might be needed, so there’s the sound team who help the music or worship team. Small churches need to work hard at making people feel welcome so some welcomers are good. Friendliness is important and nothing beats a chance to chat over tea and coffee. So someone needs to sort that out and make sure everything’s stocked up.

The biggest challenge of all for a small church is running children’s groups. You could have a small number of children over a wide age range or very few children at all. However everyone knows that something must be done and done as well as you can.

Then of course there is the preacher and by now at least half of your 30 are serving on any given Sunday, assuming that’s 30 adults of course, and that all of those 30 are there that morning. Often they are not. Not everyone has the same level of commitment and even those that are will often have good reasons to be elsewhere. So if you’re fortunate to have at least two of every gift then everyone is serving once every two weeks, but it’s never as even as that. The risk of tiring out the very people who most want the church to succeed can be high.

As John Stevens wrote,

Everyone is working very hard to keep everything running – we were there at 9.30 putting out chairs and kit. Size isn’t everything, and God was certainly with us and I had some important pastoral conversations after the service. But please do pray that we would grow so we reach the point of  weekly stability and that the people who are giving so much do not become exhausted.

All of that puts the focus squarely on one thing: numbers. We need more numbers. But look what has happened, our motivation for growth has shifted. It’s not really on seeing the lost found, but on relieving the pressure on Pete the worship leader/sound technician/relief preacher/small group leader because frankly he and his wife are knackered.

The most common request I’ve heard from leaders of smallish churches (myself included) is for a few more ‘mature Christians’ because we need the help. It’s only after that point of stability has been reached that we realise that seeing some people become Christians would be a good thing too. Been there, done that.

That’s a lot of time and effort given just to running the Sunday morning, add in team meetings, mid week meetings and youth meetings (if you have them) and everyone’s busy. Throw in an attempt at Alpha or Christianity Explored and your church is at capacity. Everyone is running as hard as they can just to keep the meetings going.

Now the reality is that you can get through this, it took us about 3 years to really push through that phase. For many they get through it much quicker but that hard push can take its toll on the energy of your team. More than that though the energies and investment of your church is massively focused on just a few hours of just one day.

This may seem I’m down on Sunday meetings but I’m not at all. This was my life for years, but the honest reflection is, that it’s a lot of hard work. Rewards do come, it can pay off but knowing the reality of the challenges helps us think clearly about what happens and when in the life of a church plant.

Photo by Jason Short 2008