Short Term Recommendations for St. David's

Brandon J. O'Brien has written a new book entitled "The Strategically Small Church."
The book is tendentious and poorly organized, but it makes cogent recommendations.
After seventy-five pages of "small is beautiful," O'Brien focuses on ways to make
a small church "intimate, nimble, authentic, effective." He does not promote ways to
grow, as a principal objective.

One could derive changes to the functioning of St. David's that, according to the author
would lead to success, as he defines it. That would be:

Schedule only one service on Sunday.

Bring children back into the Sunday service, at least part.

Discontinue church-sponsored programs that are starved for volunteers.

Encourage individual unfunded ministries to the community.

You would have to read the book yourself to understand the rationale behind each. His
emphasis is on building an intergenerational family. Making these changes would, no
doubt, be extraordinarily contentious.