Ranges Community Church

Some of you may or might not know that Yarra Valley Vineyard has commenced two services in the morning. Geoff on his blog comments

And at the moment, that’s the challenge (it seems to me) for YVV. My church has grown to the point where we can’t all fit into one service, and while that’s fundamentally a practical issue, the move to two (theoretically identical) services has the potential to change how the church community sees itself, as well as how the church sees it’s leadership. The size of the church necessitates that the leadership doesn’t know everyone in the church. So how we deal with that necessary aloofness without having that communcate value and status, is a very difficult thing.

An interesting reply from kbutters (who I think Geoff is referring to as Kevin Butterfield) uses an interesting analogy of families and different church sizes which I think is a pretty good way of looking at things.

I see the dangers of a small family (sometimes kids get more spoiled in small families) I see the dangers of a big family (sometimes kids get lost in the grand shuffle) However, I’m so glad that we can have diversity. Geoff, the hard part comes when you think you are part of a small family and then some more kids get adopted and you become a medium size family and Mom and Dad say more kids may be on the way. That can be very difficult. For some part of the strategy is to build more rooms, Build bigger rooms, build extensions, buy more houses and start more families in the long run, but what do you do with the kids on your doorstep? Things change, and for some, change means loss. Can we ever change and have all gain and no loss?