Carl Trueman Continues To Stir The Pot

I need to think about this some more but I do like what he says about splitting and planting:

OK, it's been some years since I've beaten this drum, but this really did highlight for me once again the manifold problems and shortcomings of the megaconference with the megapastors phenomenon.  Such are inspiring and encouraging shots in the arm for those working hard in struggling churches; but the pastor of a church with, say, 1000 or more people has almost nothing of any practical usefulness to say to the session at a church like mine vis a vi day-to-day shepherding.  It's a just a different scale of operation, when you cannot know all your people by name, and have a team and a budget to keep everything running.

This is not a criticism; there is no `biblical' norm for church size (though I do think, as a rule of thumb, if the pastor can't remember every member's name, it might be time to think of splitting and planting); but it is to say that pastors of very large churches are actually of inversely proportional use to the wider church simply because the world in which they live is not the world in which the vast majority of pastors, elders, deacons, members and adherents exist; and the specific questions big church pastors, and solutions they can offer, are often of an entirely different order.  So here's an appeal: let's organise some big conferences where all the speakers are pastoring churches of three hundred people or less.    It may well be that the lectures and Q and As prove less inspirational but far more useful to normal churches and pastors in ordinary circumstances.

Of course, nobody may attend; but that's a different problematic story...

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