Increase Our Vision

Any small church in today’s economy faces the same challenge: surviving day-to-day yet growing its vision.

“Sometimes there are great, immediate needs that need to be taken care of, and you become what I call a fireman, putting out little fires when the source of the fire needs to be dealt with,” says Bob Spilger, pastor of Fern Cliff EFC, a church of about 50 people, in rural, southeastern Iowa.

“Immediate needs must be part of the big picture of what you’re doing. In other words, your mission statement should drive you to do the things you do, instead of the other way around. Otherwise, you go from crisis to crisis, and that’s your ministry.

“In older congregations, vision statements are difficult, because members basically say, ‘Our vision is to keep the doors of our church open.’

“Which I suppose is OK, you definitely want to do that, but why do you want to keep them open? Whom are you targeting?”

For both Bob and Paula Spilger and Christopher and Linda Barnes, the reality of small-church-with-big-vision is what drew them to the churches they pastor now.

When the Spilgers first heard about Fern Cliff EFC, they saw a congregation determined not to die out. “The church had two choices,” remembers Larry Austin, director of church health for the EFCA’s Central District. “They could stay anchored to their past and go into survival mode, or they could take a risk and ‘go down swinging.’ They chose the latter, starting a free medical clinic that reaches out to people in their economically depressed county.”

The Spilgers saw that vision and said yes to the pastoral call. The clinic is still in the beginning stages, but every person who walks in the door not only receives valuable health care but also hears the gospel.

“Before we came to Fern Cliff,” Bob says, “our experience in small churches was, We’re too small, we can’t do that, and this has been the exact opposite: We’re small but we serve a big God.”

In 2007, Christopher and Linda Barnes were ready for a change from their 26-year pastorate in suburban Chicago. “Going rural” actually wasn’t on their radar, Christopher admits. But then they heard about St. Luke EFC in Wellington, Mo. (a church of close to 110 in a town of 800).

What caught the Barneses’ attention was the church’s passion to develop a community center that would host sports teams, GED classes (which Linda helps teach), a community youth group and more.

“That was part of my vision,” Christopher says, “to be leading a church whose campus was primarily for the good of the community rather than just for themselves.

“When everyone talks about a small-town mentality, the people in our church do not function with that mentality. For our community to build an 18,000-square-foot community center, these people have to be thinking outside the box.”

“The small church is going to be here tomorrow,” Bob Spilger says. “It will. It may be smaller, but it’ll be here and God will still be God and people will still be hearing the gospel.”