Effective Small Churches in the Twenty-First Century

I used Dudley's first work, Making the Small Church Effective, extensively when I first entered pastoral ministry at a rural church in Indiana This is even better as it builds on nearly 30 more years experience in this field and extensive use of the PEW data, a major study of the church in the United States, completed in the early part of this decade. I especially value his profile of the small church and the understanding it brings. One suggestion: Dudley correctly makes the point that half the churches in America have less than 100 in attendance, so half the churches in America qualify as small churches. What I find even more fascinating is that 40 percent of the churches are under 50, which really demonstrates that most churches are primary groups. My suggestion is that defining the small church as those under 100 obscures the fact that most of the churches larger than 100 are still primary groups. It's only the 10 percent above 300 that have shown that they've been able to sustain a multi-group organization. So most churches will benefit from the insights of Dudley's latest work. Note: while 86 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot, the data in the above paragraph is extrapolated from an article, Understanding Church Size Based on Empirical Data, by Bill M. Sullivan