The Parish Paper - August 2014: Does your Mission and Method Fit your Size?

Lyle Schaller pioneered research on congregational development and asserted that three factors predict-ed the development of any congregation:

• Who is the pastor and what does he or she know?
• What size is the congregation and how long has it been that way?
• What are the size limitations of the current facilities?

Building on these questions, Arlin Rothauge used church size to categorize the ways of “being the church.” He named the church types as Family (49 or fewer active members), Pastoral (50 to 150 active members), Program (151 to 350 active members), and Corporate (more than 350 active members).