Don't sacrifice small churches on altar of economics

Shifting Paradigms

The time is long overdue for a dramatic paradigm shift in how our appointment system serves small-membership churches. To abandon them is cowardly. We deeply believe that Wesleyan “grace upon grace” theology is more therapeutic and holistically redemptive than religious “brands” that preach emotionalism, prosperity gospel or harsh legalism.

In the country where I grew up, we had two sayings regarding this. One referred to a “chicken house complex” where any chicken with a drop of blood was pecked to death by the other chickens. We must guard against this judgmentalism in churches that are small. (The challenge of large churches, on the other hand, is overcoming anonymity.)

The other saying was “the chickens are coming home to roost” if poor farming practices—such as the absence of soil conservation, contour farming, use of legumes or rundown farm equipment—gradually reduced the harvests. All these agrarian terms have parallels in the church and will likewise lead to reduced spiritual harvests.

Kennon Callahan of Emory University was right a score of years ago when he insisted that the “age of the local church is over; the age of the mission station has come.” The answer is not in the size of the congregation; the answer is in re-kindling the flame of relational evangelism, enhancing missional ministry at the local level and deploying our personnel through a covenantal relationship between conference and congregation rather than the obsolete method of appointment-making.

Dr. Haynes is a retired member of the Western North Carolina Conference and current interim pastor of Kallam Grove Christian Church.