Throughout North America, there are uncounted thousands of small churches that are struggling to survive and recover their vitality. Some are Baptist, some are Methodist, some are Presbyterian, some are Lutheran, some are Christian Churches, some are independent, some are rural Catholic congregations, and others belong to less common denominations. It is behind the pulpits of these small, struggling churches that new preachers are most likely to find themselves standing. But there are few books that are designed to help the small church of less than 75 members - which is about the average size of a North American Protestant church. And leadership seminars are of little use - most consider any church with 200 active members to be a small church, yet we who lead them know that there is a tremendous difference in capability between a church of 150 members and a church of 25 members.Yet in these churches there are always a few committed people, people who are grieving because their church is dying, people who understand how important it was that their church stood in that particular location in times past, people who have memories of baptisms, of bible schools, of revivals, of great, wonderful, life-changing sermons - and people with memories of church fights, of poor pastors, of financial problems, of dull and boring days in those same pews. It is to these loyal, grieving laypeople like yourself that this book is intended, a novel which can be read by a small weekly fellowship group. It is for you, the small church pastors who may be leading two, three, or even more churches and need ideas on how to grow small churches without a budget. It is for the committed but exhausted part-time pastor who works another full-time job in order that this particular church will not close. And it is for the new student pastor who is in his or her first church, trying to make all those seminary and bible college ideas work in the real world. It is hoped that many of these ideas will be helpful and useful and life-giving to your churches.My wife and son and I have led small churches. Between us, we have led twenty-one churches, the largest of which has typical Sunday attendance of 115 people, and the smallest of which has had attendance of one to three people. I have attended churches in the Atlanta suburbs and on the West Virginia back roads. Church members ranged from doctors and lawyers, to schoolteachers and college professors, to goat farmers and truck drivers, to recovering drug addicts and people who had been retired for thirty years. The issues in the churches were always different - yet always the same.Many of these ideas have come together as I prepared district- and state-level courses training lay leaders of churches. Other ideas simply arose as the Holy Spirit advised me how to proceed with problems in the churches I have pastored.This book is the fictionalized story of a couple of churches and how their pastors, with special help, turned around the churches. This book uses the form and style of a novel to bring sound principles into the church, principles that work, principles that can lift a church from death's door to vitality and promise. This "teaching novel" style has a history of success in such books at In His Steps by Charles M Sheldon, The Noticer and The Noticer Returns by Andy Andrews, and, in a different realm, The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt.Questions are provided at the end of each chapter to encourage discussion. It should be noted that, while my theology is that of an evangelical Wesleyan, the vast majority of the concepts presented are applicable to almost any small church.How do we grow a church with no young people and no money? How do we recover a church where the pastor is the youth group? What are the common mistakes new pastors make? Let "Larry" give you the answers.
