Faithfully Pruning for Growth When Church Budget & Attendance are Declining

Helping Your Church Align for Health and Strategic Renewal

What happens if rose bushes are not regularly pruned? They get wild with tangled branches, their blooms reduce, their shape becomes lopsided, and their energy is misallocated on dead or dying branches instead of on new growth. While it is still a rose bush, it is no longer thriving.

Churches can get like that too.

Over recent years, multiple factors have impacted the health and vitality of American churches which has only accentuated the need for churches to prune. COVID impacted the worship attendance in many churches. Recent economic instability and increased philanthropic needs have translated into declines in budget sizes as well.

When a church, as an organization, is not tended to regularly—ministries pile on over time, programs lose momentum, and staff positions hang on out of habit. Pruning can help maintain institutional health and act as a path to renewal.

How Do You Know When It’s Time to Prune?

While declining church budget and lower worship attendance are the two main indicators for a need to prune, you do not need to be in a budget crisis to know something is off. Often, the signs can show up before budgets get tighter.

Other indicators may include:

• Leaders stretched too thin 

• Low volunteer engagement across too many ministries

• Programs continuing out of loyalty, rather than effectiveness

• Staff roles that feel blurry, bloated, or unnecessary

• The need to reduce the number of worship services

• Inadequate supervision of staff and volunteers

If your church feels like it is not able to support current programming and structures, it is likely time to prune.

Right-sizing is not just about cutting; it is about reimagining. It means balancing your church’s leadership structures, better stewarding your resources, and preparing your church for the kind of growth that matters.

Understanding the Context: Why Size Matters

Before diving into re-aligning your church, it helps to understand church size dynamics. If your church has transitioned to a different size category, you will have different needs from your leadership structures (i.e. clergy roles, staff design, role of laity, board and governance function, and strategy). For example, clergy in larger churches are more specialized, because there are more of them in the church. In small and medium-sized churches, clergy act more as generalists.

Here is a quick snapshot:

Size Category	MEDIUM	LARGE	VERY LARGE
Average Weekend Attendance	200-400	400-800	800+
Annual Operating Budget	$500k-$1.5 million (avg 680k)	$1-$2 million (avg 1.1 million)	$2-$4 million (avg 2.4 million)
High-Level Overview	Multiple staff are necessary to run specialized programs (e.g. youth, worship, care) Leadership shifts from being pastor-centered to being team- and ministry-driven Teams and programs require structures, delegation, and new communication methods	Staff operate as department heads, and most members are connected through programs, not the senior pastor Organizational complexity demands systems, policies, and a clear mission to maintain health and focus.	Organization functions like a mid-sized business with executive leadership layers Senior leadership focuses on vision, brand, and preaching, while others manage operations Personal relationships with the pastor are rare for congregants

If you are leading a church that used to have 450 weekly worship attendees but now has 230, you may have programs and roles leftover from a different era. When you no longer match your leadership systems to your current reality, you create burdens too heavy for your people to bear. Staff and lay leaders alike feel overwhelmed, caught between old expectations and current capacity.

Faithful pruning acknowledges the body you have now rather than the one you used to be, offering a form of pastoral care both to leaders and the congregation as a whole.

“Congregations are living, breathing organisms. They grow, change, and evolve under our feet as we walk. Even the most insightful and well-intentioned congregations rarely operate with perfectly aligned leadership structures. However, the congregation that actively tends to the rightsizing of its leadership systems generally finds that it has more energy to devote to mission, discipleship, and service.” – Susan Beaumont

What’s the Process? How Do You Actually Prune?

Pruning is tender work, and it must be done thoughtfully and prayerfully. Additionally, aligning as a leadership team to tackle pruning can be challenging. Consider finding someone who can bring an outside perspective to help you understand the nuances of church leadership and organizational needs, facilitate conversation, and drive decision-making.

Phase 1: Recenter

• Root yourself in mission. Before discerning what needs to change, revisit your why. What has God uniquely called your congregation to be and do? Who are you serving? What are the values you are unwilling to compromise? Every pruning decision should flow from this root.

• Outline current challenges. It is important for everyone on the leadership team to align on the issues your church is facing. What trends are you seeing financially and in weekly worship attendance? How do these trends relate to your church’s size and corresponding needs? What other symptoms of misalignment are you seeing?

• Audit your current ministries and staff team design. Begin by asking honest questions:

  • Which ministries are bearing fruit—spiritually, relationally, missionally?

  • Which programs are people actually showing up for?

  • Where are we duplicating efforts or relying on staff to prop up fading initiatives?

  • How are staff roles aligned with programmatic efforts and administrative needs?

  Form a small team—diverse in perspective but aligned in heart—to help you discern with wisdom and love.

Phase 2: Prune with Purpose

Note that during this phase, you may want to do these activities concurrently as they are interdependent.

• Identify ways to trim the budget and grow revenue. Understanding financial parameters will help guide staff needs and ministry program possibilities. Review giving and spending trends over time. For most churches, the biggest budget item is typically staff compensation. For mid-to-large sized churches, 45%-55% of the budget spent on staff salary is healthy (note: this may vary slightly based on geographic location). Start with this reference point in mind to adjust staff design, if needed. Brainstorm areas where you can generate funds and remember that your church is the people—not the building.

• Restructure staff and leadership accordingly. If your church has moved into a smaller size category, your staffing model may need to shift too. That might mean consolidating roles, moving some positions from paid to volunteer, or letting certain positions go entirely. It is best practice to focus on roles first and then align current staff to your organizational needs. Do not get distracted by current team member strengths and weaknesses. This is difficult to do and a very common challenge. Remember, you are designing for the health of the church organization, not for an individual person(s). Start by writing out the role descriptions you need then review current staff member skills to see if you have an alignment of job needs and current staff skills.

• Develop a strategy, including prioritizing ministries and activities. With your audit findings from phase 1, run a “Keep, Clip, Cultivate” exercise across programs and activities. Make sure that decisions are informed by the number of participants in each of these areas, so that your ministry programs serve the maximum amount of congregants going forward. However, be mindful of programs where the biggest givers are active. By cutting programs and services that are dear to those who give the most financially, they may look elsewhere to share their resources.

Phase 3: Reinforce & Replant

• Communicate with courage and care while implementing changes. Be open and transparent. People do not need polished messaging; they need clarity, honesty, and a sense that leaders are not hiding. Start with the why, explain the process, and allow space for questions. People can handle hard news if they feel respected and included.

• Watch what grows and watch for areas that may need adjustment. When you prune, new life shows up in unexpected places. Take the time to identify and celebrate new growth. Also be on the lookout for areas that may need adjustment or additional support going forward.

“When a church is changing sizes, it has to dismantle one way of doing things, and construct a new way…that’s called transition, and it is always uncomfortable. It can be stimulating and life-giving, but it is always uncomfortable.” – Alice Mann

When you prune carefully and prayerfully, you are trusting that God knows how to bring resurrection from what feels like loss. You are trusting that letting go is not the same as giving up—and that smaller, slower, and simpler may sometimes be exactly the soil in which new life will take root.

Remember that growth is not always measured in numbers. It is also seen in spiritual depth and renewed energy that may be devoted to mission, discipleship, and service.

Faithful pruning clears the way for holy growth.