Review of Inside the Large Congregation (#0730)

Meet the Author

Susan Beaumont is an ordained American Baptist minister who has spent the last 25 years educating and empowering congregational and corporate leaders.  After serving as an Area Minister in the American Baptist Churches and managing her own consulting practice, she joined the Alban Institute in 2005 as a senior consultant specializing in large congregations.  She is the co-author of When Moses Meets Aaron: Staffing and Supervision in Large Congregations (2007) and the author of Inside the Large Congregation (2011).

Book Basics

Inside the Large Congregation offers an unparalleled insight into American Protestant congregations featuring worshipping communities that average between 400 and 2,000 people per weekend.  Drawing on her consulting experience, recent research, and relevant literature, Beaumont effectively explores how size impacts leadership dynamics.  To do so, she divides the large congregations into three categories:

• Professional – annual operating budget of $1-2 million and/or 400-800 in average weekly worship attendance
• Strategic – annual operating budget of $2-4 million and/or 800-1200 in average weekly worship attendance
• Matrix – annual operating budget of $4+ million and/or 1200+ in average weekly worship attendance (p.52-58)

The first part of the book considers much of what it means to be a church most accurately characterized by one of the terms above.  She also notes the importance of transitions as growing and shrinking congregations enter a new size.  While providing solid rationale for these divisions Beaumont rightly suggests other facts may mean that a church that falls a bit above or below a given range for a church size may function more like that size than the size its numbers suggest, especially when congregations are quite affluent or include a number of affiliated nonprofit organizations.  This section provides an overview that is beneficial not only for large church leaders, but for all who seek to better understand how size influences what it means to be church.

The second part of the book contains chapter length considerations of each of the five systems Beaumont believes must be and stay in alignment for the large church to function well: clear leadership roles, staff team design and function, governance and board function, acculturation and the role of laity, and forming and executing strategy.  This section of the book is an incredibly rich resource for those involved in leadership — both governance and staff — in large congregations.

Recommendation

All congregations with 400-1200 in average weekly worship attendance must find a way to incorporate this resource.  If you are in a parish of this size make sure a member of your congregation’s lay leadership team and a member of the executive staff have read the book from cover to cover.

So What?

As someone who has served exclusively in large congregations since completing my theological education, I am well aware of how radically they differ from smaller congregations.  Interestingly the trend continues to be toward a larger and larger number of churches in this size category.  Even with this trend, the median congregation has only 75 participants and a budget of around $90,000.  Put differently, while most congregations are small, most people are in much larger congregations — the average person is in a congregation of 400 with a budget of $280,000 (p.6).  Beaumont suggests that there are five “major themes” that blend together to make the large church particularly attractive today:

1. Capacity for excellence
2. Effective use of technology
3. Space for anonymity and intimacy
4. Presence of diversity
5. Capacity to make a difference (p. 11-16).

Susan Beaumont.  Inside the Large Congregation (Alban Institute, 2011). ISBN: 978156994194.