A stunning finding from church growth research

Christian Schwarz was asked what surprised him most in his research on church health/growth. He said this:

"That, on average, the smaller churches are the better churches. To say it in a simplified way" 'The larger, the worse.' This pattern is so significant that it is difficult to see why no one else has come across this pattern. Instead some authors even proceed from the opposite thesis, namely "The bigger, the better."

This comes from the Schwarz/Schalk volume The Implementation Guide to Natural Church Development. Now this is only a pattern, but he goes further to suggest what churches of 100 to 200 can do to make the most effective contribution possible to world evangelization. We'll get to that later this week...