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BY MELISSA LAUBER
UMCONNECTION STAFF

Making disciples is not a one-size-fits-all enterprise, some churches within the Baltimore-Washington Conference are discovering as they work to bear fruit by increasing their worship attendance and membership.

Within the conference, 453 churches, or 62 percent, have 100 or fewer members in worship each week.

These small churches have a unique identity that needs to be understood and nurtured, said the Rev. Lew Parks, a Wesley Theological Seminary professor, who is conducting Hope for the Small Church, a project funded by the Lilly Foundation.

Parks is currently working with three districts in the conference: Baltimore North, with 51 small churches; Baltimore-Harford, with 45; and the Annapolis District, with 43 small churches.

The project holds districtwide conferences for small-membership churches to connect lay and clergy leaders around common experiences and equip them with tools to nurture and develop their congregations.

'Small churches are not necessarily failed larger churches,' Parks said. 'Small churches are also not exempt from a call to excellence.'

But small churches do sometimes suffer from a lack of confidence, said the Rev. Laura Easto, superintendent of the Baltimore North District. 'They can internalize what they believe others think about them.'

The Rev. Chris Holmes, superintendent of the Annapolis District, agreed, saying that many small churches seem to be suffering from depression, feeling that they may not be measuring up to other?s standards. 'We don?t always do a good job of honoring small churches,' he said.

The Hope for the Small Church Project is addressing that situation. In fact, when leaders of Baltimore North District small-membership churches met Oct. 21, some of the pastors and lay people who attended felt as if their ministry was in some way being validated and honored. 'We are beginning to empower small-membership churches to be who they are,' Easto said.

Leaders of Annapolis District small-membership churches met Feb. 10. The Baltimore-Harford District will meet in the spring.

At these sessions, said Parks, it?s interesting to watch small churches realize that they innately possess many of the traits that larger churches have to create small groups to provide.

In small churches, Parks said, everyone tends to know everyone else, communication is rapid and effective, laughter and tears are more likely, worship is the primary activity, the congregations celebrate various stages of life, and they are tough and tenacious.

These churches will probably not grow from 35 to 300 members, but they can grow to 38 or 40, Parks said. And among those 40 people, the church is often the center of their lives, Easto said.

Too often in the denomination, small churches feel unappreciated, said Parks. 'After a while, they become more passive than they need to be.'

The Small Church Project attempts to remedy this problem by drawing the small churches of a district together for worship, transformation exercises, words of hope, new perspectives, teaching by seminary professors and district superintendents, and conversation.

Superintendents from throughout the Northeastern Jurisdiction are teaching and providing tools for transformation on a vast array of topics from leadership, to worship, imagination, sacred space, small businesses, technology and spiritual gifts.

Parks is hoping more districts will join the project so that small churches throughout the connection can begin to move from resigned passivity to confident action, from 'historical amnesia and a dread of the future to a robust sense of a God story.'

'Small churches are the heart of Methodism,' Holmes said. 'They have been, and they will continue to be. The goal is not to grow small churches into mega-churches. This is about creating spiritual places where a deeper discipleship can grow.'

'Many smaller churches work with fewer resources and people, and thus, tend to focus on ways of creatively utilizing and deploying these resources to engage congregants in the work of discipleship through worship, study, fellowship, mission and evangelism,' said the Rev. C. Anthony Hunt, superintendent of the Baltimore-Harford District.

This creativity is essential, as small churches continue to open their doors to places where people can experience growth in their faith, Hunt added.

The Rev. Lovett Weems Jr., of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Seminary, also believes that 'understanding the unique leadership context of smaller congregations is vital to the future of the church.'

In the newsletter, Leading Ideas, Weems counsels leaders to recognize the importance of history to small churches and link that historical memory to a future vision. He also cautions that change is often viewed negatively in the small-church setting. They 'tend to be interested in maintenance, not transformation,' he said. Leaders must recognize this.

Small churches, Lewis continues, are not always rational because they haven?t always found rationality a very helpful tool.

He advises spiritual leaders in these congregations to lead 'in the middle' when faced with the tension between the past, present and future. He advises them to live into new ways of thinking and living incrementally, and to stress the importance of hope.

Small-membership churches, Lewis said, 'have a key assignment: to be bearers of hope.'

'Can you think of a more important word than hope,' Holmes asked. 'Hope and small churches go hand-in-hand, don?t they?'

Small churches on the Adventure

As part of the Discipleship Adventure, each of the conference?s 692 churches is striving to increase its worship attendance by 2 percent each year and receive at least one new member into the church for every 25 worshipers.

The goal is intentionally proportional, conference leaders say. Small churches have unique opportunities to be disciple-making churches.