By Bruce Stoker
The news isn’t new: church attendance is in decline and has been for quite some time. A 2020 report from Lifeway Research showed that the average attendance for a worship service dropped 50 percent from 137 in 2000 to about 65 in 2020. Lifeway also reported a net decline in the number of churches, with about 3,000 Protestant churches being planted while about 4,500 churches closed.
Along with the decline in attendance came a decline in influence. A 2024 study from the Pew Research Center found that nearly 80 percent of American adults say that religion has a declining influence in everyday life and that nearly 50 percent of U.S. adults believe the decline is a bad thing. While the decline of religious influence does not necessarily mean Christian influence, the trend is worrisome, to say the least.
Rather than despairing, it seems better to take a closer look at the influence of smaller churches. Without pushing the limits of finding a “silver lining” in the data, as average church attendance declines, the number of smaller churches is increasing. This may reveal a blessing of dispersion versus sheer numeric attendance, just as Jesus’ parable of the sower described casting seed broadly across diverse areas with varied degrees of return (Matthew 13:3-9). The good news is that smaller churches are everywhere, from densely populated urban areas to the suburbs, to tiny communities at rural crossroads. With smaller churches distributed so widely across the country, they are positioned for greater influence than their size might suggest.
Take, for example, some of these smaller churches who are influencing their communities and the kingdom in big ways.
“We can do that!”
Soldier (Kansas) Christian Church, a congregation of about 80 people that began in 1883, certainly has a big influence in its small community. Luke Schreiber grew up in Soldier, a city of 136 people about 50 miles north of Topeka and 100 miles northwest of Kansas City. He began serving the church as its youth minister in 2006 but expanded his ministry and leadership when their preacher passed away. Schreiber is the community pastor and has a passion for rural ministry.
The rural church in the Midwest thrives in their culture of hard work, so Schreiber and the folks at Soldier Christian Church influence their small community in a big way through service. In the past, the church had traveled for mission trips to Mexico, but Schreiber said they also did several “mission trips” where they just stayed at home. He said, “The youth group and people of the church would just stick around for a couple days and serve our town. We basically went door to door asking, ‘Hey, what can we do?’” They call it The Soldier Project. They have helped neighbors with household chores and maintenance and have served by building a fence around their community center and laying a new sidewalk on city property.
During the COVID pandemic, the church partnered with the local restaurant—the only business in town—to develop its own meals program for elderly shut-ins. They continue to deliver a dozen meals each week. Schreiber said, “For a church of 80, we’re amazingly generous. We tithe 10 to 12 percent of our budget every year. So I remind the people in our church, ‘You guys have given back over $100,000 to the community over the last 10 years.’” He likened their service to “the outworking of the Great Commission across time.”
Having started at Soldier Christian Church as the youth minister, Schreiber takes pride in the church’s passion for ministering to and with their youth. Their work has been intentional, even partnering with another Christian church from up the road. “We bring our youth groups together on Wednesday nights, maybe 40 to 45 kids at the moment,” Schreiber said, “but for our small towns, we’re pretty amazed by that.” He is also amazed that they usually have 20 adults working with the youth those nights. Schreiber believes that kids from small rural churches ought to have amazing youth ministry like bigger churches. “The truth is, we do because we have a lot of great intergenerational relationships. I feel like our ability to remain vibrant in that circle feeds back and forth. Our church is blessed by it, and our students are blessed by adults who care.”
Soldier Christian Church’s integration of service and intergenerational ministry began years ago but was expedited by the death of their senior minister and Schreiber’s transition into the community pastor role. He said, “I think some of it has been maturity on our part. A lot of these things are good, but how do we do better as a congregation in a wholistic way? It’s the realization that, ‘Hey, we have the capacity to do that right here!’”
“We’d miss you!”
Impact Christian Church is located in Merrillville, Indiana, a town of 35,000 people within the Chicago metropolitan area, only 40 miles from downtown. The church was planted by Steve Szoke who was diagnosed with cancer and died before the church’s first anniversary in 2007. At that time, Robert Szoke, Steve’s father, became the pastor. Having worked for 17 years with Ignite Church Planting and having served with several churches in Illinois, Szoke is no stranger to urban ministry. “I’ve ministered in urban areas a lot!” said Szoke. With that experience and his son’s vision, Szoke has worked to make Impact Christian Church a vital part of their community.
This urban congregation of about 90 people is aptly named, influencing its diverse community for the kingdom through its diverse families—white, black, and Hispanic, nearly a third of whom are kids. Their influence begins with community-based conversation starters, like collecting and distributing 700 school backpacks full of $40 worth of supplies; participating in the local “Coats for Kids,” giving away 530 donated winter coats to families; distributing as many as 285 turkeys at Thanksgiving; and even working with Big Lots to secure nearly 300 mattresses for transitional housing. Szoke said, “We just touch the community and continue to build bridges to people. I know we have attracted people simply because the ‘Señor’ (Lord) is doing something.”
Through those outreach efforts, Szoke and his congregation are influencing the community for the kingdom. Because of these interactions, Szoke has been invited to pray at town council meetings. Council members have told him that if Impact and Szoke were not there with them and praying for them, “We’d miss you.” Impact’s ministry in the area, working with other organizations and churches, has led to conversations with leaders about how they might reach their neighborhoods. Szoke knows that these efforts are important for fulfilling the Great Commission through long-term investment in people and relationships: “Everything takes so much time!”
Still, the investment pays off in God’s timing. This past Christmas Eve, Szoke was able to baptize three members of one family. He has known the family for five years through outreach connections, working together, and struggling through their circumstances together. This is the nature of their life and ministry. “Our name says what we do,” he said.
“Keep first things first!”
Markle (Indiana) Church of Christ, located in a town of about 1,100 people about 25 miles south of Ft. Wayne, has a generations-old reputation for kingdom influence in their community and around the world. Having been the lead minister since April 2022, Tim Peace appreciates the church’s nearly 150-year legacy and embraces the challenge of leading what he described as “a small-town church with a wide influence.” Even though Markle Church of Christ is not exactly a small church—about 340 people worship and serve there each week—Peace is proud of its family-rooted atmosphere, “While that could create a very insular congregation, and therefore a small one, it is a church that is very welcoming and passionate about reaching out beyond its walls.”
It is that passion that has kept Markle’s kingdom influence wide and strong. Peace serves on the church’s missions team along with several other leaders and volunteers as they support and participate with 37 different local and global missions and parachurch organizations. That work among so many people and groups requires a lot of financial support, so in September 2024, the church hosted its sixtieth annual Faith Promise campaign, garnering $237,600 in pledges to support what they had projected to be a $230,000 need. Markle’s faith promise success is less about the dollars pledged than the willingness of many within the church family to do their part. In fact, this past year the missions team emphasized their call for more people to make pledges, regardless of how much they pledged to give. So where in previous years 40 to 50 families made pledges, in 2024 80 families made pledges.
Peace bragged on the church, “The willingness is always there,” he said. “You take that all day, every day because then you know that the people you’re shoulder to shoulder with are willing to go into the struggle, to keep first things first.” That “first thing” is making disciples. Having come from a previous ministry where they developed an environment for making disciples, Peace said that Markle Church of Christ drew him in with leaders and people who want to make disciples of Jesus. He said, “It’s really cool to see a church that’s open to wanting to grow and wanting to continue to thrive in the future but doesn’t lose its rootedness in what makes it uniquely a solid congregation.”
It’s nothing new.
Smaller churches take more than their fair share of hits, both from within and from outside their walls, as if bigger churches don’t have problems. Maybe small churches are small for a reason; not because of their problems but for their specific influence. As the church-at-large experiences ongoing changes, perhaps we all might learn from smaller churches who experience transitions quicker. Like Luke Schreiber found looking back through Soldier Christian Church’s transition, “It’s not even fancy and new. It’s what we should have been doing all along.”
Bruce Stoker is a small church preacher working to make a kingdom sized influence in Athens, Ohio.
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