Smaller, sent and still here

I’ve spent enough time working with church statistics to know that numbers rarely tell the whole story. But they do tell a story, and sometimes that story is worth paying attention to.

I’ve been sitting with preliminary 2025 data on how our congregations in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) Conference break down by size, comparing it against the same data from 2016. The picture that emerges isn’t surprising, exactly, but it is clarifying. And clarifying is useful, especially if we are trying to figure out what faithful mission looks like right now.¹

What the numbers show

In 2016, the PNW Conference had 236 congregations with a combined average worship attendance of 17,198. One of those was what researchers call a resource or corporate-sized church, averaging more than 350 in worship, the kind of congregation that tends to function as a hub for larger denominational ministry. Twenty-five were program-sized (151 to 350 in average attendance), 102 were pastoral-sized (51 to 150), and 108 were family-sized (50 or fewer). 1.²

Today, we have 187 congregations reporting an in-person average worship attendance of 9,355. The corporate-sized congregation is gone; its attendance having declined below that threshold. Eleven program-sized churches remain, down from 25. We have 57 pastoral-sized congregations, compared to 102 before. And 119 family-sized churches continue their ministry, actually more than a decade ago, though largely because churches that were once pastoral-sized have moved down a tier.

Of those 119 family-sized congregations, 98 average fewer than 35 in worship, the smallest grouping as tracked by the General Council on Finance and Administration. For some, that represents a community in decline. For others, it may simply be the faithful, unhurried work of being the church in a particular place. Discerning the difference matters.

Most of our smallest congregations are navigating a genuine sustainability question as well as a growth one. That’s reason to take their situation seriously and to ask honestly what support, structure, and pastoral care serve them well. Only 24 congregations average over 100 in worship, a threshold identified in past statistical reports as a baseline to support a full-time pastoral appointment.

An additional 5,128 people are counted as online worship participants, which aren’t factored into the numbers above. We should take that number seriously without overstating it. Online attendance counting is notoriously inconsistent across congregations, and the figure almost certainly includes some meaningful overcount. Still, real people are showing up to worship online, and that matters. Whether we’re building meaningful connections with them is a question worth taking seriously.

Now, I realize what you might be thinking. Those are hard numbers. And they are. Forty-nine fewer congregations. In-person attendance down 46 percent. We don’t do ourselves any favors by spinning that into something it isn’t.

The mission field hasn’t shrunk

But here’s what I keep coming back to: the mission field hasn’t shrunk.

The Pacific Northwest remains one of the least churched regions in the country. The people our churches exist to reach are still here. The question isn’t whether there’s work to do. The question is whether the Church we actually are is equipped to do it, and whether we’re willing to resource ourselves for that reality rather than the one we used to inhabit.

What the numbers make clear is that 176 of our 187 congregations, or 94 percent of the conference, are now family or pastoral-sized. That is not a footnote. It’s a description of who we are.

Historically, program and resource-sized congregations carried a disproportionate share of denominational weight: funding, leadership development, programming and community visibility. When you lose that tier, and we largely have, you can’t simply do the same things with less. We must think differently about what connectional ministry looks like in a conference made up almost entirely of smaller churches.

That’s a genuine challenge. But smaller congregations aren’t simply scaled-down versions of larger ones. When healthy, they tend to have deep roots in specific places. They can move quickly when needed. They’re often more relationally connected to their immediate communities than a larger institution can be.

A PNW Conference composed overwhelmingly of family- and pastoral-sized churches is smaller by every measure. Still, it could be well-suited for ministry in a region that has always been skeptical of large institutions and hungry for genuine community.

I’m not saying the path forward is easy or that reframing our situation is a substitute for hard work. Smaller congregations face real constraints, and the conference has a responsibility to support them in ways that match where they are. We have questions to continue to work through together. How do smaller congregations collaborate without losing what makes them effective? What does faithful pastoral care look like for congregations that can’t support a pastoral appointment? And when ending well is the most faithful choice, how do we help churches do that gracefully, while directing their remaining resources toward optimal revitalization efforts?

These are worth asking. And they’re worth asking as a conference choosing its own next chapter, rather than one simply waiting to see what happens.

The PNW Conference looks different from what it did ten years ago. That’s true. What’s also true is that we’re still here, still sent, and still capable of writing whatever comes next.

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1. Data reflects GCFA-reported statistics for the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference. Church size categories are based on average worship attendance: family-sized (1 to 50), pastoral-sized (51 to 150), program-sized (151 to 350), and resource/corporate-sized (351 and above). ↩︎
2. For this review, I adopted the Church Size Typology that past conference statisticians have used, originally formulated by Arlin Rothauge in 1986. Since that time there have been a number of additional formulations to help describe how churches function at different sizes in a variety of ways. A helpful summary of these typologies and their purpose can be found on the Life and Leadership website. ↩︎