One of the many blessings of studying church history is learning that our predecessors in the faith faced many of the same challenges we do today. For example, did you know that the Westminster Assembly dealt with the topic of church-size and what to do when you outgrow your building? Despite its age, the Westminster Assembly’s “Form of Presbyterial Church Government” (1645)—the lesser-known cousin of the “Westminster Confession”—provides several useful lessons for thinking through congregational size. According to the Form, a congregation is a gathering of Christians who “meet in one assembly ordinarily for public worship” (Murray, 214). Such a number may grow until they can no longer “conveniently meet in one place” and appropriately administer “such ordinances as belong unto them” and discharge their “mutual duties” (214). At such a point, it’s “lawful and expedient that they should be divided into distinct and fixed congregations” (214).
From these statements, we can extrapolate principles that help us think wisely about church growth and church size. The Form suggests that the appropriate size of a church depends on (1) the ability of the church to obey Jesus’ command to “gather”; (2) the ability to appropriately administer the ordinances of baptism
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