In 2004 Chris Anderson wrote a seminal article in Wired magazine about “the long tail” in which he essentially describes the success strategy for Amazon. The gist is that while a brick and mortar store can only afford to stock the top hits, Amazon can stock even obscure titles that get purchased much less often. The insight is that the long tail of those non-hit records actually contains an equal or greater area than the hits.

It’s probably counterintuitive that there are more albums sold that aren’t hits, than there are that are hits, but that is his insight.

If we think of mega-churches as the big hits that everyone knows about, there is a similar counterintuitive dynamic going on in churches.

Approximately 94% of church worshipers are in churches smaller than 500. Only about 2% of church worshipers are in churches larger than 1000.

– source

I think our instinct might be that most people go to larger churches, but as it turns out, church attendance has a similar long tail, with 94% of worshipers in churches under 500.

Perhaps this should inform our efforts to support and love the church by focusing our efforts not just on the large churches but perhaps moreso towards smaller ones.