Everyone who pastors a church smaller than 500 people owes it to themselves to read Brandon O’Brien’s The Strategically Small Church. He believe in church growth — just that healthy churches plant other churches, rather than continuously growing larger.
In his chapter on “The Nimble Church,” he commends this mentality for small churches: “We won’t run a program unless we are particularly gifted and equipped to run it or unless no one else is doing it.” Most churches of about 100 people feel the pressure to break this rule in two ways: you have to run every program that “all churches are supposed to have,” even though they are not gifted to do so. So they struggle to have a youth group, VBS, and big worship team even though they don’t have people with the ability to lead those programs, and even though three churches down the road are doing the same programs, only much better.
O’Brien’s solution is simple: do what you do well, or what no one else is doing, and cooperate with other churches on everything else. I know of two churches in a nearby town that sit across the street from each other (but are from different denominations). One does well at VBS, the other does well at a Harvest Party outreach program. Rather than competing, they cooperate. This allows each church to do what it does well, and to contribute to God’s kingdom with other congregations.