Are Big Churches As Healthy As Small Ones?

Are Big Churches As Healthy As Small Ones?

From Religion Unplugged by The Media Project

May 12, 2026 · 36 min

About this episode

The episode explores the differences in health and community dynamics between large and small churches in the context of discipleship.

In C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity he says: “the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time” This idea—that the point of the church is to make disciples is, at its core, not a highly contested one. But ideas about the way disciples are made and the context in which discipleship happens are much more varied. And, in these conversations, the question of a church’s size looms large. On the one hand you have the small church. It could be anywhere from just a handful of members to a few hundred, but, in any case, there is a much greater likelihood for congregants to build personal relationships with those leading the church, a greater sense of a tight-knit community where everybody knows one another and oftentimes a wide variety of ages in attendance, with some congregants having attended for the bulk of their lives. On the other hand you have the large church. Maybe its attendance is in the upper hundreds, the thousands or even the ten-thousands. This substantial attendance often means the ability to acquire a large…

Topics covered

  • church size
  • discipleship
  • community
  • large churches
  • small churches

Keywords

  • big churches
  • small churches
  • disciples
  • community relationships
  • C.S. Lewis

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