Editor’s Note: Recently we posted an article by Erik DiVietro on small churches. The article was so well received, we asked Erik to tell us something of how the Intimate Church Project got started.

A lot of the thoughts that go into Intimate Church are from my own experience. I am a big reader, and I have read scores of books on church growth, and tried to implement many of the principles. But ultimately, I find that these things simply don’t apply to where I minister and how God has built and equipped our congregation.

In 2004, I became the pastor of a small church that had just gone through a split. In 2009, I led that now recovered and healed small church in a merger with another church that had gone through a series of difficult splits. The combined congregation is a little less than 100 people, but by majoring on the strengths of being ‘small’ and building relationships rather than programs and strategies, we have seen God bring healing and hope. People from our church tell other believers, “I’m a part of a church merger! It’s so awesome to see God bringing people together rather than dividing and splitting.”

As Intimate Church develops, I hope to include some of the biblical elements that I believe brought these two congregations together to form one and encourage other small church leaders that not only can God USE the small church but that he also LIKES them as they are and has EQUIPPED them for great things – that God’s work is not a matter of scale.

I refer to the blog as a ‘project’ because I believe there is a tremendous strength that exists in congregations under 200 – a strength that is largely ignored and marginalized in Christian publications. The emphasis is always on the large churches, and smaller church leaders are often intimidated by their inability to achieve the same levels that larger churches do.

I find it tremendously ironic that large churches attempt to reverse engineer community, accountability and authenticity into their large movements while small churches are perfectly positioned to offer those things from the beginning.

Why, I asked myself, don’t small churches build on the strengths they have? Their strengths are things that large churches spend millions of dollars trying to produce, and the potential exists quite organically in the church under 200.

As a lifelong member and minister in smaller churches, I find that many of the problems in smaller churches come out of an unhealthy view of themselves. Small churches either adopt a ‘wanna-be’ attitude or a ‘us-four-and-no-more’ attitude. Both are dangerous extremes. They always see themselves in contrast to the larger churches.

So, the Intimate Church project is something that I have attempted to start several times, but have finally taken the plunge with. It is a grassroots idea – an attempt to change the way we view small churches. To see them for the tremendously valuable elements of the Kingdom that they truly are.

Erik DiVietro, Senior Pastor, Grace Baptist Church, Merrimack, New Hampshire
Blog: http://intimatechurch.wordpress.com/