Two new reports on the size and strength of American congregations present contrasting pictures of church life today.
The October issue of Outreach magazine is all about growth. It lists the 100 largest U.S. churches, based on attendance statistics gathered by LifeWay Research, Nashville.
Leading the list, as in 2008, is Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, Houston; 43,500 attend weekend worship.
“aggressively evangelistic and evangelical…” Hmmmm. But do these churches have coordinators of law suits?
I would take issue with the fact that traditional worship stalls growth. True, its not going to bring in 40000 people, but from an Anglo-catholic perspective, church is community and sacramental. 40000 people on a Sunday isn’t community.
I remember visiting the mega church in Chicago a few years back that is close to having 40000 seekers on a Sunday. I overheard two people in front of me have this conversation:
Person 1: Are you new here?
Person 2: No, are you? I’ve been going here for 18 years.
Person 1: No, I’ve been going here for 15.
I mean, honestly. If two people can go to the same church regularly for over a decade and honestly never had see each other once in all that time, is that really community, or a mass gathering of individuals?
Archer: We need to have a little humility as Anglicans. I’ve heard the same conversation several times over the years in parishes to which I’ve belonged–usually when a denizen of the 8:00 service meets a regular attender of the 10:00.
… and Archer, most of these mega churches have small group or cell communities that provide for the close community you describe. My son is pastor of such a church (large, but not mega by these standards) and their “D” groups (discipleship groups) are very effective in providing this. They have a gathering (2 services) on Sunday where everybody worships together and hears from the pastor and then the processing and mutual care happen in the groups.
…. and ps …… another advantage of large churches is that with such a large base of contributors they are able to do far more of the work of the larger church in mission and outreach as well as provide exceptional opportunities for the young people in their congregations.
i confess i did not read the article but when it mentioned joel osteen, i used to watch him on sundays when i couldn’t make church. very nice guy, but i think it is more self help feel good type lecturing than anything else. perhaps they actually read the Bible in some of their classes, but he rarely mentions it during the sermon.
I wasn’t bad mouthing anyone attempting to be arrogant. In fact, just the opposite. I know a lot of Episcopal types that get really defensive about mega churches, and I usually tell them something along the lines of reminding them that we’re all on the same side, even though we might not agree on theology or worship styles or whatever. I have no doubt that Mega Churches can reach people that we never could in the Episcopal Church, and we can reach people that Mega Churches just don’t minister to. It doesn’t make one better or worse.
My point was that we buy into the “Bigger must be better” line in America hook, line, and sinker, and that’s not always the case.
badmouthing anyone *or* attempting to be arrogant. Sorry for the typo.
First, I agree with Archer that we should not buy into “bigger must be better.” Joel Osteen’s church is a great example of that. Christian George said in Godology that “A sinless sermon is the quickest way to get a monster crowd.” Of course, that’s not always the case (go visit a liberal TEC parish for a good example), but he makes a good point.
As someone who was raised and confirmed (as a college student) in the Episcopal Church, served as a youth minister and lay associate in two parishes, and is now a pastor at a large Baptist church, Anglo-catholic churches by nature won’t usually be large, because the solid Anglo-catholic churches I’ve seen also are built around a good, solid, but not-so-large core group of people. To me, that’s their DNA. However, this doesn’t mean that a smaller church isn’t making a huge impact through service and outreach, taking advantage of the opportunities at Christmas and Easter by preaching the Word and offering a meaningful, high church worship experience, and by planting other churches and ministries. Numbers can be a good indicator (among many) of health, especially over a long period of time, but we need to learn to think in terms of faithfulness and impact. These can shine through in ASA numbers, but new guests, people served in outreach, compassion, and service ministries, and even money given to overseas missions should be factored as well. I believe that just as some people are called to be bishops and some to make an impact by leading a small Sunday school class in rural Iowa for thirty years, local churches are called to simply do what they’ve been called to do the best they can, whether it’s serve a group of 100 people, plant lots of churches, support a rescue mission, or grow to 10,000 people.
I believe that mega-church “worship” is actually slightly disguised entertainment, unconsciously aimed at building an income. I do not believe that such activity is biblical or apostolic worship. I think that such activities are descriptive of worshipping one’s emotion, which is simply worshipping oneself.
kb9gzg (#10):
I think that in some instances, this does happen. Would you mind fleshing out your statement a bit more?
It might happen in some cases, but it can also happen in a liturgical setting where folks worship the form. To say that all mega-church worship is aimed at building an income is very judgemental. Different people have different backgrounds and styles and are reached and reach out to God in various forms, traditions and styles. BTW I am an anglican who enjoys “high” and “low” worship.
My diocese glories in small churches. There is no real incentive to grow and they appeal to only a few folks. This is not good either.
Yes, I should have qualified my perspective. Thank you for providing the necessary corrective.
Just freely-associated thoughts-at-the-moment; yet, without citing “chapter and verse,” I would maintain that St. Paul’s view and those of the subsequent Fathers would suggest that worship is to be eucharistically focused. While it may be loosely defined as “worship” when people get together to sing multiple choruses of a couple of spiritual songs and to hear pep-talks that most often are devoid of soteriological considerations, those practices come nowhere close to meeting the test of…say somebody like Rudolf Otto as he discusses the numinous and mysterium tremendum in his The Idea of the Holy.
Please forgive my ramblings, folks. Guess I was too tired to get into this discussion. Maybe later. Fascinating topic.
Mega-churches are good places for a person to go and get lost in, sometimes intentionally. For those who want their “faith” to be an internal thing, in which they are not required to go out into that ugly world out there, and actually get faithful hands dirty, big “mega” churches allow that type of person to be in their seat on Sunday morning, meet in their cell group on Wednesday, and then “call it a day.” One can develop a good internal faith, but no one else need ever know of it, unless one wants them to. Not so good.
jkc1945: It is certainly possible to “get lost” in a large church and to have a faith that, as you call it, is internal. However, I don’t believe that this is largely the case, at least any more than in a small church. Anecdotally, in my last (small) Episcopal parish, I knew several people who were content to go to church on Sunday and “call it a day” as you put it. I don’t think this is a function of church size as it was the collective theology and ecclesiology of our church.
Food for thought:
[url=http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/289-how-faith-varies-by-church-size]From this Barna survey[/url]:
[blockquote]On seven of the eight behavioral measures, attenders of large churches were substantially more likely than those of small churches to be active. (These included behaviors such as attending church in the past week, reading the Bible in the past week, volunteering at their church in the past week, etc.) The average difference related to these seven behaviors was 17 percentage points.[/blockquote]
[url=http://chuckwarnockblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/barna-bungles-small-church-vs-big-church-survey/]Rebuttal of the Barna survey[/url]
[url=http://www.newbirth.org/seven_reasons.asp]One pastor’s list of why he believes a large church is a positive thing[/url]
In my own church, the “cell groups” (we call them GO Groups) are where a lot of the best grass-roots service, evangelism, and outreach happens, rather than being a place to hide. However, we constantly train our group leaders to think that way. Ultimately, the fruitfulness of churches comes down to faithfulness, commitment to the authority of Scripture (including a right view of sin, Christ, and redemption), and solid leadership. If we focus too much on size, we might miss the important foundational issues.
Interesting thread.
On a platform of social significance, the Mega Church’s have eclipsed the main line. Today, a friend mentioned to me that something like 2/3’s of the signers of the constitution were Anglican Clergy. I haven’t corroborated that, but it certainly fits our self image. 🙂
A few things we do know is that larger churches tend to grow by attracting dedicated and burned out leaders of smaller churches, and not so much by conversion. I must confess a certain suspicion here at the number of adult conversions/baptisms claimed by some mega churches: re how many are re-baptisms of those baptized as infants that drifted from faith as opposed to genuinely new conversions?
We also know that smaller churches often burn people out and “export” them to larger churches.
Rather than question the validity or efficacy of larger churches that are lighting it up and making an impact culturally, perhaps we would be better served by trying to learn from them the practices that translate to our environment. Mega Churches are rare in any denomination. They make up the extreme end of the bell curve. We would be wise to learn from them. In my experience they are overwhelmingly generous to small churches, willing to share what they have learned and constantly seeking to learn from others.
Bottom line: they are not our opposition. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ facing a common enemy.
Suburban Roman Catholic Parishes regularly have 3 to 4 thousand FAMILIES (upwards of 10,000 people). Hardly “agressively evangelical”