There are painful flaws in our conversations
about small church worship. Dressed up, they
sound like this:
• Small congregations don’t really have what
is needed for quality worship. At best, they
fumble through it.
• Their music doesn’t measure up.
• The preaching is weak. It’s not entirely
their fault (bless their hearts).
• They struggle without adequate expertise,
or vision, or resources to consistently pull off
powerful worship.
• Oh, yes, and we are exhausted at the endless
task of trying to fill in the holes for them.
But what if author Teresa Stewart told
you that small congregations have powerful
advantages in offering worship-deeply forming
strengths that are not generally available in big
settings? She will.
And what if our current approach to small
congregations largely strips these powerful
strengths and replaces them with putty and
paint to better imitate worship in large congregations? Stewart will remind you that it does.
The author writes that it is worth the messy
exploration to find another way...a conversation.
In The Small Church Advantage, author Teresa
Stewart offers lessons that remind small congregations they are not “less than” anything. She
reminds readers of the strengths of the small
church and leads them through a process of
using those strengths as an advantage.
