Megachurch

Large congregations are not a new phenomenon. They have existed at certain times across all the main branches of Christendom. One only has to look at the size of medieval Catholic cathedrals, attend the services of some Orthodox churches or visit meeting places associated with great Protestant preachers like Charles Spurgeon or D. L. Moody to realize this. What is new is the number of very large churches that have appeared during the last generation.

The emergence of so many megachurches is a notable feature of recent church life. Yet even medium-sized congregations of around five hundred or more members are still comparatively rare. For example, only 1 in every 24 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations, 1 in every 36 American Baptist, 1 in every 47 United Methodist and 1 in every 87 United Church of Christ (UCC) have such numbers. Episcopalians and Southern Baptists do even better than Presbyterians; the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and Church of God have fewer than the UCC.

A growing number of churches have several thousand members, and some more than ten thousand. Some churches overseas are immense. At latest count David (Yonggi) Cho’s Presbyterian church in Seoul had around 750,000 members, though these can only be accommodated in a series of services over the weekend and by decentralizing other services around the city. According to the original meaning of the word church as “a gathering” or “an assembly,” this is not a single congregation but rather multiple congregations bound together under a single leadership (see Leadership, Church).

The most recent estimates suggest that only around 6 percent of churches in the United States can be called large or megachurches, and these represent about 14 percent, or one-seventh, of the churchgoing population. While this is a significant phenomenon, to put it in perspective, we should compare it with the rise of the charismatic house-church movement in England, which also attracts around 15 percent of the churchgoing population, primarily in small or medium-sized congregations. (see Church in the Home).

Strengths

The strengths of megachurches are their openness to change, their emphasis on the importance of the local church, their cultural sensitivity to what will interest outsiders and their recognition of the value of the behavioral and communication sciences. In a sense they are the religious counterpart to the large shopping malls that have grown up on the edge of suburban cities and major metropolises. Like them they are strong on innovation, are set in a centralized location easily accessible by car, offer a full range of attractive facilities and programs from which to choose, and make use of the latest data and technology to target their activities.

The leadership of megachurches is generally constructed along the best corporate lines, revolving around a charismatic counterpart of the chief executive officer. Megachurches engage in skillful, and often tasteful, marketing to targeted constituencies of what they have to offer. All this is often symbolized in functional and expressive contemporary buildings in a spacious parklike campus or mall-like setting. Most of them contain eating areas and places for socializing, services of various kinds for those in need, and a festive atmosphere and experience with lots of other people. The latest version of the megachurch phenomenon, the so-called metachurch model, anticipates increased growth beyond the capabilities of any one meeting place or parking area by advocating the decentralization of many activities to a range of locations with only occasional full-scale gatherings for celebration, perhaps in a convention center, amphitheater or even stadium.

Megachurches differ in emphasis. Most, those more traditional in character, frame their main gatherings primarily for their regular attenders, though they generally do so in a way that is culturally attuned to their members’ as well as to outsiders’ needs and longings. An increasing number orient their main meetings, seeker services as they call them, primarily to outsiders who are open to or have begun a spiritual journey. Such services avoid all that is unfamiliar to a non-Christian audience and so omit religious jargon, creedal affirmations, Scripture reading and expository preaching. Some megachurches, on the analogy of the newer “power stores,” are more specialized in approach, targeting a particular subculture, such as the “baby busters” (the under-thirties generation), and orienting their music, preaching and dramatic presentations to that age group.

Megachurches will often hold services of a more conventional kind for their core members at some other time during the week. They will also generally provide a substantial Christian education program for their members, highly segmented according to interest, concern or need. Here and there a few are developing their own programs in theological education. Many of them also have a number of ministries and services to their wider community, as well as a commitment to mission in other parts of the world. A number of them have become show-and-tell centers for pastors and lay leaders from across the country and overseas. Increasingly megachurches are networking with each other, assisted by parachurch groups like the Leadership Foundation that are committed to enhancing them and increasing their number.

Weaknesses and Responses to Them

Critics of megachurches argue that they have several serious weaknesses. Some attack their tendency to rely on human strategies, borrowed from the advertising and marketing world, rather than on the Holy Spirit. This, it is said, opens them up to purveying values more closely associated with modernity than with Christianity, such as a reliance on numbers, techniques and success, and so softening the hard edges of the gospel of sacrifice and suffering. Others point to the class and racial homogeneity that is found in many megachurches. Critics also attack the temptation in the megachurches to focus on the personal, spiritual and moral at the expense of social issues and structures. Still others point to their tendency to drain people away from smaller churches that cannot compete with the range and quality of groups and other services, let alone physical surroundings or corporate worship, that megachurches provide.

Defenders of megachurches reply that they are not adapting or assimilating Christianity to the modern world but opening up and drawing in the modern world to Christianity. Contemporary communication methods and technologies are neutral; it all depends on what you use them for (a position that others are quick to challenge, as does Os Guinness). They also argue that churches among any people group develop most quickly on the homogeneous church growth principle (though in an increasingly pluralistic society this tends to have less force). Many megachurches are also engaged in charitable aid and mission programs (but do not tend to be in the vanguard for structural or institutional change). They also tend to have a planned approach to gradually introducing attenders to the full dimensions of discipleship and giving them multiple opportunities for service (generally still focused on the church, however, and not always as far-reaching as what we find among the early Christians).

There is something to learn from the megachurch about cultural awareness, the use of jargon-free communication, sensitivity to people’s needs and longings, and developing hands-on training and homegrown leadership. But we should also consider whether vital things are lost, such as making love of God and neighbor the center and criterion of church life, moving away from a needs-based consumer approach to God in favor of one more focused on gratitude and service, and relying more on organic rather than organized ways of training and growing leaders. Another troubling factor is that up to 80 percent of megachurch attendance comes from transfer membership rather than the unchurched.

Current Trends

In any case it is interesting to see signs of a move away from megachurches. The growing interest in living and working in a given region in a city is turning people away from metropolitan to more local churches, and the desire for community is tending to attract people to congregations where they feel less overwhelmed by numbers. This is where the metachurch idea and the necessity of a strong cell-group life in a large church become imperative (see Church in the Home; Small Groups). Also, a recent comprehensive study by a major denomination in the United States revealed that in general the larger the church people attended, the less commitment and giving they were likely to exhibit; the smaller the church, the more they tended to be involved in, felt responsible for and contributed to it. As a result, some are now beginning to turn away from encouraging ever bigger churches to planting smaller churches instead.

These trends do not rule out an ongoing function for a number of very large churches. There is room for some to act as mission churches, reaching out to seekers and outsiders, and as feeder institutions to the other churches in their region, perhaps partly supported by such churches in their wide-ranging evangelistic work. There is also room for others to develop into what might be termed cathedral churches, offering a range of educational, organizational, networking and training services to smaller and medium-sized churches in their region. Such churches would be helped by a stronger theological understanding of, and distinction between, church and mission and of ordinary Christians’ vocation in the world as well as the church.

» See also: Church Buildings

» See also: Church, Small

» See also: Consumerism

» See also: Evangelism

» See also: Worship

References and Resources

L. Anderson, A Church for the Twenty-first Century (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1992); P. Y. Cho with R. W. Manzano, More Than Numbers (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1984); C. George, Prepare Your Church to Meet the Future (New York: Revell, 1991); O. Guinness, Dining with the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts with Modernity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993); R. H. Schuller, Your Church Has a Fantastic Future (Ventura, Calif.: Regal, 1986); D. A. Womack, The Pyramid Principle of Church Growth (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1977).

—Robert Banks