Scaling a Church

andy stanley, the senior pastor of a mega-church in suburban atlanta (north point community church), is an interesting guy. Interesting comment he made in responding to a discussion on church sizing:

Our theory is that a church should be allowed or encouraged to grow large enough to sustain a viable high school and middle school ministry. A successful student ministriy requires critical mass in order to capture and keep the attention of their target audience. So the question becomes, how many aduilts are required to generate critical mass for a student ministry? That depends upon the demographic of a community.

If you are a twenty six year old seminary student with a couple of kids in diapers that may not sound like a great answer. But if you are a church planter with 150 people and one of your elders just informed you that her family is leaving because you don’t have anything for her thirteen year old, it makes painful sense.

What a great youth-ministry centric additude on church growth.