Once again, the Sunday faithful have packed the cavernous sanctuary at Shepherd of the Hills Church in the San Fernando Valley, clapping and swaying for Jesus as a band rocks the hall.
“Come bless the Lord,” the worshipers sing. “Praise his name to the ends of the Earth.”
Most churches would be thrilled to fill their sanctuaries any day of the year.
Shepherd of the Hills, a nondenominational church in Porter Ranch, does it six times a weekend, attracting 8,000 people to its energetic services and offering a lesson about the growth of evangelical Christianity in California.
Not terribly informative and pretty shallow, but for the LA Times, this is probably as good a write-up as you could expect.
I was particularly struck by the stunning statistic that there are now over 1,300 “megachurches” in the US (i.e., with an ASA over 2K), [b]which is more than double the number just a decade ago![/b] Wow! That’s an impressive trend.
Meanwhile, the average ASA of TEC congregations continues to decline, and is now around 75. It appears that TEC actually has fewer really large churches than almost any other “mainline” denomination. Which is one reason why TEC is declining so badly, although by no means the most important one. Young adults and new Christian converts are disproportionately to be found in such huge churches.
David Handy+
Thought-provoking. I could not help but wonder, though, how such churches would fare in a different demographic, eg inner city, ethnically mixed, poor. I think I remember reading about one such mega-church ?in the LA area? that had moved to establish a downtown hub, and had replicated its original success in the muesli belt.
As it happens, I attended a cousin’s funeral at an evangelical church yesterday. They have an ASA of about 2500 yet don’t really consider themselves a “megachurch”, I suppose it being in Dallas and all. That’s pretty standard size over there.
I also found interesting that two ex-wives (the first being deceased) and the current live-in girlfriend were at the funeral and the man had basically drank himself to death. I don’t condemn nor judge (particularly knowing the circumstances of his childhood), but it certainly put the lie to the image of evangelicals being hard-nosed puritans.