What’s the Difference Between the Small Church Pastor and the Large Church Pastor? (The Answer May Surprise You)

Is the pastor of a large church more gifted and godly? Is the pastor of a small church more relational and theologically sound? What’s the difference between the two?

Is it competence and gifting? Is it opportunity and luck? Is it godliness? Capacity?

The answer may surprise you. 

According to author and leadership consultant Sam Chand, the key difference is pain tolerance. 

Chand says in an interview (beginning at the 8-minute mark) that the difference is “not administration, not even leadership, vision, not your team, not your location, not your money. [It] really comes down to a personal thing about the leader, how much pain you can handle.” 

And Chand is of the belief that those who lead larger churches have a higher pain threshold than those who lead smaller churches.

But is this really true?

Isn’t pain present in every church context? Can’t small church contexts sometimes be more painful because the relational dynamics are more pronounced?

Yes, there is pain no matter the church size but I agree with Chand for two reasons: 

1. Increased size increases complexity, which increases leadership pain. 

Some pastors believe their lives will simplify and become more relaxed once their church or ministry gets to a certain size. This is simply not true.

Chand writes in “Leadership Pain: The Classroom for Growth” that “[v]irtually all leaders in every field of business or ministry assume that growth will relieve stress, but growth actually increases stress.” 

Why? Because growth always increases complexity and complexity always increases stress.

Isn’t this true for every other context of life?

If you have more friends, your life will become more complex as you juggle more relationships that come with their memories and drama. If you have a large extended family, holiday scheduling will become more complicated, therefore more stressful. As a father of four, I can testify to the fact that raising four children is much more painful than when my wife and I had one child. Sure, one was still challenging, but the complexity (and therefore pain) is much greater today. 

2. The very attempt to grow is an invitation for pain 

Many pastors think numeric growth is purely accidental (like hitting the lottery) and stress-free (all momentum and only exciting energy). But pastors who have experienced growth can testify of increased intentionality in strategy and increased intensity of stress. 

Chand describes it this way: “Some pastors have a vision for growth but few specifics about how to get there. They assume better sermons, better children’s ministry, or better donuts - coupled with fervent prayer - will cause people to flock to their churches…but pastors really need anticipatory vision….As they dream, pray, and plan to get all their resources in order, they’ll be creating a ripple effect of change throughout the organization…Growth always involves pain. In organizational growth, leaders actually cause pain, but for a good reason. It’s the only way to grow.” 

To try to grow means to make necessary changes knowing that every time something changes, there is loss and therefore pain.

To give one quick example, think about a pastor who adds a new staff member to his team. His “ripple effect of change” brings a host of responsibilities from onboarding and assimilation, culture infusion, training, and balancing the emotional equilibrium of the team. I haven’t even mentioned the effects of the hire on a congregation! 

Conclusion

Pain in church growth is nothing new to the movement of Christianity.

Pain was a necessary door to growth for the early church as well.

According to NT Wright in his work “How God Became King” he writes, “Early Christians understood their vocation as Jesus’ followers to include…their own suffering, misunderstanding, and likely death…The suffering of Jesus’ followers is…not just the inevitable accompaniment to the accomplishing of the divine purpose, but actually itself part of the means by which that purpose is filled.”

My aim in this post was not to give a statement about whether you should try to grow your ministry or church. I am not even making a value judgment on the concept of church growth.

Numerical growth in a church is amoral. It’s not a sin if a church is growing. It’s not a sin if a church isn’t growing. A pastor who finds growth suspicious is not necessarily godly because he could be a pessimist or be lazy. A pastor who is all about growth isn’t necessarily gospel ambitious because he could be arrogant and driven by the flesh. It all depends on the myriad of layers inside a pastor’s heart. 

This post was simply differentiating and making the observation that the pastor of a larger church will likely have a higher pain threshold than the pastor of a smaller church. 

Yes, the small church pastor still experiences pain. But he will not experience the complexity of a large church pastor. We can affirm both of these statements without shaming or over validating the other.

So whether you experience leadership pain in a small church or a large church, let’s endure it well for we know a worthy crown awaits those who bear the leadership burden well.

And if you want your church or ministry to grow, just know it comes at a cost so count it carefully.

In the end, Jesus will say the exact same phrase both to the pastor of the large church and to the pastor of the small church: “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

And hearing those words should be the ultimate goal for all pastors, no matter the church size.