Sermon Central
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What Are You Doing To Stay Small And Strategic?
By Peter Mead on Dec 1, 2025
Bigger isn’t always better. Lasting impact often comes through small, intentional investments in people rather than ever-expanding programs or crowds.
What Are You Doing to Stay Small and Strategic?
Church culture often equates success with size, but Scripture and history paint a different picture. Whether it’s Paul shaping a handful of key leaders, Jesus investing deeply in twelve—and especially three—or small gatherings that sparked world-changing movements, God often works most powerfully through focused, strategic relationships. Rather than chasing scale for its own sake, preachers are invited to rediscover the quiet, deliberate work that forms disciples and multiplies impact in ways numbers alone can’t measure.
The pressure in church world is almost always expansive. Bigger buildings, bigger programs, bigger numbers, etc. This is not all bad, of course. If you wouldn’t want another person added to the church then something has broken in your heart, and if that’s true for one more, why not fifty more? Still, not everything about bigger is better.
We need to make sure that in our preaching ministry we are not drawn into thinking purely in a “bigger is better” model. For instance, is it better to speak to fifty or five hundred? It depends what you are speaking about, and even more, who the respective groups are. Five hundred conference hoppers going from one event to the next are not worth ten times more than fifty strategic leaders who will influence thousands.
I served for a year on an ocean-going ship-based ministry, a life changing experience for me. That ministry began back in the 1960's with a little group of people praying around a world map in a little converted pub in Bolton, England. Today millions around the world have visited the ships and received the gospel in some form.
Lessons From Ship Ministries and the White Horse Inn
As an Englishman I am very thankful for the “little” conversations that took place at the White Horse Inn in Cambridge. Cranmer, Latimer, Barnes, Bilney, Gardiner, Coverdale, Tyndale, et al . . . men discussing Lutheran thought, “Little Germany,” . . . a group that changed the history of England and the world.
The Apostle Paul had a massive ministry and a massive impact. But let’s not forget the amount of time he invested in a relatively small group of companions – Timothy, Titus, Silas, Luke, Epaphras, etc. God changed the world through Paul. Paul marked the world through these men and others.
Jesus’ Pattern of Small, Intentional Investment
The Lord himself seemed to value a deeper mark on fewer people. He was second-to-none in reaching the masses (although after John 6 some might question that). Yet how much did he do that was “small and strategic” with twelve, with three, with one? He has truly built his church on that foundation.
So here’s the question: as a preacher, what are you doing that is small and strategic? Not the big stuff. Not the big crowds. The small stuff. The strategic. It could be a phone call. It could be a small group praying together. It could be a leisurely dreaming session in a tavern. It could be inviting some into your ministry to value a deeper mark on fewer lives in order to make a greater mark in eternity.
What are you doing that is small and strategic?
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