Bigger, smaller, shrinking and growing

To church and with a boiler on the blink we meet in the hall and dscover how many of us there are. It's amazing how full it seems with a smaller building and closer chairs.
It reminded me of something Robin Gill wrote in the myth of the empty church. he told how at the turn of the 19th century confident victorian christians built big churches so that a congregation of 100 found itself in a church that seated 200. Very soon that congregation would begin to shrink, somehow thinking that because it couldn't fill a building it was shrinking and so confidence left. Before long with the myth of the empty church we had a faith community in decline.
It's a worry that as we change from a pattern of growth to a pattern of maintenance in our community and country we don't think ourselves into decline.