Latimer Church pastors discuss the challenges and opportunities of becoming a larger congregation
A conversation between two Latimer Church pastors about growth, belonging, and mission.
Summary
Tim Capill and Senior Pastor James de Costobadie (Costa) discuss the experience of Latimer Church growing into a larger congregation, addressing the real feelings of disconnection that members can experience as a church grows. They examine common expectations about church life — such as knowing the senior pastor personally, or knowing everyone in the room — and test those expectations against what the Bible actually teaches about community and care. The conversation also covers the deliberate strategic decision Latimer made to grow a larger building rather than simply planting smaller churches, with the goal of eventually being large enough to plant new congregations across the city, including a planned congregation plant back into the central city in 2027.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Welcome and reflections on the past week
Tim Capill: Welcome back to Latimer Life, and thanks for tuning in. For those who've listened to the last two conversations we've had, this is our third one. I'm Tim Capill, and I'm here with Costa, our Senior Minister. Happy Father's Day for yesterday, Costa. I hope you had a great day. What was the highlight of your Sunday?
James de Costobadie: Thank you, Tim. It really was a great day across the services. One of the things that I find super encouraging in church life is when I see people who I know are going through a difficult time and they're still there on a Sunday. There was actually one guy who's a dad who was there with his kids, and I know that the last few weeks have been really tough for him. So I was really encouraged by seeing him there, and I thought it was a great day. What about for you, looking back over the last week?
Tim Capill: Well, other than the delicious cooked breakfast that my family made me yesterday morning to start Father's Day, last week some of our staff team went away for a couple of days and did some planning for next year. It was just fantastic to spend a bit of time together, studying the scriptures together, praying together, singing together. I'm very thankful for the team, and it's exciting to think about next year, which feels like it's coming around very quickly, but to put a few things into the calendar. Much of it is just church life as normal, but it's just wonderful things — running Life Course again, evangelistic events, Sunday gatherings, and helping people grow in their love for Jesus and each other. I love being away and being able to plan next year. Excited for what the future holds.
What people are really feeling when they ask "are we getting too big?"
We're talking today about being a bigger church, as Latimer is quickly becoming, and sometimes I've heard people say, "Are we getting too big?" — almost really objecting to it and maybe feeling some of the pains of growing. I wonder if you could start, Costa, by reflecting on what people are really feeling when they ask that question, or maybe do complain a bit about becoming too big. What's behind that?
James de Costobadie: I think those feelings are very understandable, and I think most of us feel them at different times. It might come about when we walk in on a Sunday and feel, "I used to walk in and I'd know everyone, and now I don't even recognise half the faces," or "It used to feel like a family and this is my church, and now I don't feel that so much," or "I'm beginning to feel that if I didn't come, no one would miss me or even notice." I think it's important to acknowledge that those really are real feelings and they do matter, because something is changing — which is the reality of the services growing. We're not imagining it, because there are people who've studied in detail church sizes. Tim Keller wrote a well-known article on it, and when a church grows, things actually really do change and the culture changes a little bit, and we ought to recognise the reality of that.
At the same time, we do want to try and help each other think about it well and in the right frame of mind. There are some really great things from it, as well as some challenges. So I wonder if I can ask you, Tim, what kinds of things help us to think about that in the right way?
Testing our expectations about church against the Bible
Tim Capill: Well, I remember when Latimer — previously St John's Latimer Square — was only very small. I think when I first joined the church in the early 90s, it was under 60 people. I think often the expectation is that as a church grows, the things that we experienced as a smaller church will continue, and so we have expectations about what a church should feel like. But a few of those expectations, when we test them against the Bible, aren't quite right.
So, for example, there can be the expectation that when I go to church, I know the congregation pastor or the senior minister — I have access to the pastor — and it's this expectation that being connected means knowing one person on staff, and that if I don't have that, I don't really fit here or I've fallen through the cracks. But as we open the Bible, it's really clear that ministry and church life was never meant to revolve around one man. Ephesians chapter 4 talks about Jesus giving leaders in order to equip the saints for the work of ministry, so that actually the whole body builds itself up in love. The New Testament church is led by a plurality of elders and leaders, not just a single hero in a congregation. So if you're feeling like you don't know the congregation pastor or the senior minister, and therefore no one will care for you, the reassurance is that if that care is shared among the church family, that won't be the case. You may not have access to the senior pastor, but we hope and pray that the church would actually care for each other in a genuine Christian community.
Another expectation is that when I go to church, this is the family and I should know everyone. I remember distinctly when the 7pm service grew and it got to the point where I no longer knew everyone. It was really hard to get my head around that, because the expectation is this is my family and I should know everyone in the room. But again, as you open up the Bible, God's family has always been bigger than the people that I personally know, or any one person could personally know. In Acts chapter 2, three thousand people were added to the church in a single day, and yet they still devoted themselves to fellowship, sharing what they had, and they cared deeply for each other. So family was never about knowing each person individually, but rather about the unity we have with God as our Father and every Christian as our brother and sister.
Or another expectation — and sometimes I think a false dichotomy — is this idea that small churches love each other but big churches don't, as though small means warm and loving and big equals cold and anonymous. But actually, that again is not quite right. The same sin that will cause a church to feel cold can be in existence in a small church as much as it can be in a big church. The problem is not size. The problem is our own sinfulness. There are cold small churches that are pretty cliquey, and there are also wonderfully warm big churches. The real problem with both is actually a selfishness that's common to all of us. And actually, growing churches are often forced to be a bit more deliberate about care and discipleship and relationships — more intentional — because we can't just coast along. We have to be intentional to make sure that we don't fail to love other people.
James de Costobadie: Yeah, it's interesting you say that, because now I think back to the first church that I went to after I became a Christian, and it would have been a congregation of at least 300 or 400, and there was no way that the ministers at the front knew me. But I always felt connected, precisely because they had it well organised, and gradually over a period of time you'd meet more people, and it wasn't a problem. So maybe, I guess, what you're suggesting is that our expectations are part of what then determines our experience.
I wonder if another concern might be if people think that all of their connection to the church family comes from the Sunday gathering, where you're together in a big crowd. If that's not the case, you kind of don't feel that connected to the Sunday gathering. Where does our sense of connection come from?
The layers of connection in church life
Tim Capill: It's interesting. I think connection in church is multi-layered, and we talk about this at the Connect course when we have people who are wondering whether to make Latimer their church. I talk about the importance of the Sunday gathering first of all. You can think of Sunday like a sports event — going to the stadium — and there's something really important about it because it's the family gathering together as a congregation.
But I ask people at the Connect course, what do you think makes it special? Because when you think about it, nearly everything we do on a Sunday service you could actually do at home. You can listen to a sermon on the internet, you can sing, you can pray, you can get a cup of coffee and enjoy some supper with yourself afterwards. And then you think, actually, why am I going to church? I can do all these things at home. What is it that makes the Sunday gathering different?
I throw it out there for people, and someone inevitably will say, "Is it the other people?" Which it absolutely is. And the reason we know that is because if we turned up on a Sunday and all of those things happened in the Sunday gathering, but it was just us sitting in splendid isolation in the middle of the building with no one else around, we actually wouldn't find it that encouraging. In other words, we gain huge encouragement from seeing others there, even though we probably on a Sunday only speak to two, three, four, five other people. It's the experience of being part of the roar of the crowd. We know it when we hear other people singing — we gain much encouragement. And I think over the years I've found that people consistently underestimate how much encouragement they bring to others without even realising it. We know it works both ways around.
So Sundays are really a foundation. And if ever we get the thought in our minds that people wouldn't miss me, or it wouldn't make any difference if I was here, or they'll be fine anyway with or without me — if we ever think like that, it's because we've forgotten how encouraging it is to be part of God's people, God's family, gathered together, even if we don't speak to most of the people on any given Sunday.
But then you do need other layers within church life where you do get to know others better. A smaller group, for example — in our growth groups, the idea is that we share in groups of 8 to 10 or 12, meeting each week. We share together, we share our lives, we share the scriptures, we pray for each other, we find out how life has been, we help each other. Those are super encouraging. I should say, even there, because it's a mix of people — it's not that we naturally hit it off with everyone, it's not that we're putting a group of friends together. We're brothers and sisters, so we may occasionally naturally connect more, sometimes some years with our growth group less so. That's a natural connection, but we're really talking about a supernatural connection where we're part of God's family, meeting in a smaller group, committed to each other, encouraging each other in those personal relationships.
Another group of a similar size where we gain connection is by serving together in a serving team. You join a team, you serve with the same people — that's a way of getting to know others in a smaller group. And then there's the individual connection. We pray that each person at Latimer, God would give them one or two closer people. And over a period of time, it's wonderful when people develop personal relationships that can bring us that kind of individual connection.
Tim, perhaps I can ask you — for someone who's been coming for a while, or maybe quite a while, been part of Latimer for a long time, but now feeling a little bit disconnected, what would you say to them?
Examining our own hearts when we feel disconnected
Tim Capill: Well, I think a lot of problems arise when a person starts to look to want to be loved more than they look to love other people, and that can slowly creep in over time, especially as a church grows and you feel disconnected. So I think one thing I'd want to encourage someone to do gently is just to examine their own heart a little bit and ask, "Am I still coming to church with the same love I used to have for others? Or has that grown a little bit cold?"
It's actually a great privilege when you walk into a church and there are people you don't know, because it's an opportunity to show them the love of the Lord Jesus. And it's an opportunity to welcome people who are lost to come to meet Jesus. I think that's a much better idea of church than a small group where we all know each other and no one is ever welcomed in. That wouldn't reflect the heart of God, who is the one who seeks and saves the lost.
So I think it's about challenging your heart a little bit — am I still coming to church with the same desire to serve? Jesus says it's more blessed to give than to receive, and that has lots of application, but one of those is in our relationships. As Christians, we have this extraordinary and really powerful knowledge that we're loved perfectly by our Father in heaven, which means it doesn't actually matter how people treat me — it doesn't change my worth or my feeling of belonging, because it's God himself who loves me. And when a person is really secure in that, they're then free to love other people really generously and sacrificially.
So I think some of those simple things — coming to church, looking for people to say hello to, loving other people, coming to church to serve — you mentioned serving as a way of belonging, and I think that's absolutely right. Over the years there are a number of people who felt disconnected, and part of the problem, I think, has been they've not been serving in any way. They come almost with an expectation to be served but aren't giving themselves. Serving is not actually just about what's good for others — it's also what's good for us. Jesus knew what he was talking about when he called us to serve. So I think that would be where I'd start.
Why Latimer chose to grow bigger rather than just plant smaller churches
The reality is that as a church grows, there are only a few options for how you deal with that growth. One option is you just close the door and say we're full, there's no room for anyone else here. We've actually had that a little bit, I understand, at the 9am service, where the building is literally full and people haven't been able to find a seat and so have left. But I don't think we ever want to be a church where that's the case, because I think of some of my family who don't know Jesus, and I imagine turning up to church with them and then someone telling us, "I'm sorry, we're full, there's no room here." That would just be an awful thing.
If you don't want to turn people away, then you're only left with two options. One is either you plant new congregations and plant new churches, or you grow a bigger church and make room for people. Growth is actually a wonderful answer to our prayers. As a church at Latimer, we've decided to grow to be a little bit bigger, which is really one of the reasons we've built this bigger building. Costa, could you tell us a bit about why we've made that decision — not just to plant lots of little churches, but why to stay together and grow a bit bigger than we are currently?
James de Costobadie: Yeah, sure. It has been a conscious decision. It was a decision back in 2018, 2019, when we were thinking about what kind of a church we'd like to be. But it's also been a decision that we've had to revisit at various stages during the building project, because when you do a building project you're always under pressure financially, and the easy thing is always to cut a piece off the footprint — "It's fine, we'll just do two-thirds of what we were going to do." So we've really had to at different times force ourselves to stretch and pray that we'd be able to complete this building without reducing the number of seats. So it has been a conscious decision.
The reason really behind that is — the image that we've used from time to time is that church is like a lifeboat, and we want to see more people saved. But in a way that slightly stretches the analogy, it's also a lifeboat that we hope can then give birth to other lifeboats. New lifeboats will reach new people. We hope and pray that we'll be able to reach new people at the new site up in Northwood, Rosebank. But then in years to come, we want to be able to give birth to lifeboats in other parts of the city. We're committed to doing a congregation plant in 2027 back into the central city. It's with the same aim of reaching more people and then discipling them to grow up in Christ.
The benefit of having the new site we're about to move to is that it's a bigger lifeboat that then makes it easier to plant others. If you're in a smaller building, and therefore have smaller congregations and a smaller church, it's a much harder thing to plant new services, because you're basically having to split in two or whatever it is. But if you grow to a certain size, then it makes it much, much easier to be able to send out positively a decent group of people to start a new lifeboat in a different part of the city. So we wanted to grow to — if God wills it — a bigger size, to enable the planting of more churches. In addition to the reasons we talked about last week, being able to serve other smaller churches, both within CCA and churches across the city, is something we can do as a larger church that we would struggle to do as a smaller church. So those are some of the reasons and some of the thinking behind why that's helpful.
Tim Capill: I love that image of a lifeboat, because a lifeboat is about rescuing people, saving people who are drowning, and that really reflects the heart of God. We're told in Luke chapter 9 that Jesus came to seek and save the lost. One of the things I love about Latimer Church is that we're a missional church, and I think it is easy sometimes to look at how big we are and almost get comfortable thinking we're doing really well, and then not lift our eyes beyond the walls and be concerned for the people who aren't in the room. As soon as you realise that you're in a city of over 400,000 people who are lost, you realise that we're not that big, and there are plenty of lives to be saved. So I love that picture of a lifeboat.
Either we have to shut our doors or we keep growing, which I think then encourages us to call our bigness what it really is — answered prayer. We've been praying for many years that God would add to the number of those being saved, and God is answering those prayers. We should really thank God, roll up our sleeves, and pray for more.
James de Costobadie: Definitely. We have a weekly church prayer meeting on a Friday morning, and we pray every week for people to be saved and for God's people to be built up. So it would be an odd thing to pray those prayers on a Friday and then on a Sunday feel resentful that God's answered them and is building up his people and adding to the number of those who are being saved. To bring the reality of the situation in line with what we've been praying for is probably a helpful thing to do.
Rejoicing in growth rather than just coping with it
What would it look like for us to genuinely rejoice in growing and being a big church, rather than just cope with it?
Tim Capill: I think to rejoice means having a love for people. We sometimes talk about having an eye on the inside and an eye on the outside — having a love for God's people. I love coming to meet together on a Sunday, however I'm feeling and whatever the week's been. I look forward to seeing God's people. More people means more people to love. So I think to come with that appetite to care for our brothers and sisters in Christ, and then to have a love for the outsider — to come on a Sunday with eyes open. On Sunday gatherings on just about every Sunday, I would speak to non-Christians who are at church. I did yesterday at two of the four services I went to, and that would be true nearly every Sunday. So we ought to have our eyes open.
We're praying particularly, as we move to a new site, that God would bring others in. So we've got an eye on God's family, and we've got an eye on the outsider. A love for people — and maybe instead of seeing someone we don't know across the room and feeling that we don't belong, getting up and getting out of our seats and introducing ourselves to them. By reputation, sometimes the reason that people don't come back to a church is they say, "No one spoke to me there." One thing that all of us can do is speak to people around us.
So I think to rejoice in what God is doing means to embrace it, and maybe a little bit to get out of our comfort zone and out of our seat and go and talk to someone — which, if we were just thinking about ourselves as if we were attending a concert, we wouldn't do. It would just be us and the experience. But it's not just us and God and the experience. It's us and the people that he's put around us at the same time.
James de Costobadie: Yeah, that's helpful. The antidote to a big church feeling cold is actually hundreds of people who genuinely love each other. And as much as we might need a few more structures to help us love each other — such as our Connect course to help people get connected, or growth groups — none of those structures ever replace a genuine love for individuals. We can't just rely on a few people to do that. It's actually a whole church.
I hope you found this conversation helpful if you've been listening. If you are feeling a little bit disconnected, maybe feeling the pain of being part of a bigger church that you want to remember being smaller, I hope you know you're not alone in that. There is a real change that happens, and we pray for you. I hope you might be able to pray for yourself and for others in our church family, that we wouldn't let that pull us away from Jesus and his people, but actually that God would enlarge our hearts so that we keep loving God's people and the lost in our city.
As always, feel free to reach out if we can help with anything at this time of change. As we move to this new building, "no one left behind" has been our phrase, and we really mean that. If you've got questions or concerns, or if we can help with anything, please do reach out to Costa or myself — we'd really love to hear from you, or anyone else on our staff team.