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In His grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well.
(Rom. 12:6 NLT)
One of the things I love about church is the diversity I see in the body of Christ around the world. There are many different kinds of churches and each church has a specific purpose. You could say it like this - God has given us different churches for doing certain things well.

There are small churches, mega churches, country churches, inner-city churches, ethnic churches and multi-racial churches. The list could go on forever.

I once had a fellow believer ask me, “How come there are so many different kinds of churches?” (He was angry because we were planting a new church in his town.) My response was, “There are different kinds of churches because there are different kinds of people.”

Arby’s used to have an advertising slogan, “Different is good.” I think that God is like Arby’s. Churches are different from each other and different is good.

Have you ever attended a church service and thought, “This is not for me?” There is a good chance someone else attended the same church for the first time and said, “I found my home.” This is why we need different kinds of churches.

It is important that I know where I fit in the body of Christ, but it is also important that I honor and respect what God is doing in other churches. I have been on staff at small churches and mega churches, country churches and city churches. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. “Don’t think you are better than you really are...” (Rom. 12:3 NLT)

Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe in church growth, but I have been to some church growth seminars where I felt they disrespected small churches. Sometimes it comes across like “my church is the right one because we are really big.”

We have all heard the statistics that 95% of all churches are less than 250 people. Is this necessarily a bad thing? I am of the opinion that there will always be small churches because some people will never attend a mega church and they need Christ, too.

In Exodus 18, Moses chose leaders from Israel and put them in charge of groups of one thousand, one hundred, fifty and ten. Some pastors are great leaders of one hundred, but they don’t want to lead one thousand people. This is a good thing because some people don’t want to be part of a group of one thousand.

Just because your church does not have thousands of people in attendance, it does not mean you are unsuccessful. Noah preached for many years but only reached seven people. I can just imagine his son, Ham, saying, “Dad, if we get rid of some of these animals we could fit more people in the ark.” The bottom line is that God measures success by obedience. Noah was successful because he obeyed God.
Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body and we all belong to each other.
(Rom. 12:3-4 NLT)
On the other side of the coin, I get tired of people bashing mega churches. It seems like some Christians are just waiting for the mega churches to fail.

I was on staff at a mega church for seventeen years. During this time, I saw my church grow from 1,000 members to 9,000 members. My church was not a perfect church, but it was a really good church with some of the strongest leaders I know. Every weekend thousands of volunteers served God by serving one another.
The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don’t need you.'
(1 Cor. 12:21 NIV)
Mega churches are full of dedicated people who love the Lord and do church really well. If you don’t want to attend a mega church, then don’t, but that does not give you the right to say we don’t need mega churches.

Copyright ©  Mark Harper Ministries
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Author Biography

Mark Harper
Web site: Mark Harper Ministries
 
Pastor and Leadership Coach, Mark Harper has 35 years of experience in the local church. He is the creator of the Super Church 2.0 Curriculum, which is used in over 5,000 churches worldwide. The focus of Mark's ministry is helping leaders build strong churches and helping parents build strong families. Not only has Mark served in the local church as pastor, associate pastor, and family ministry pastor but he is also a certified coach with the John Maxwell Team. He also recently released the Amazon Best Selling book The Red Book: The Lifeblood of Children's Ministry.
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