DEFINITION - I consider a mega church anything over 1,000 people in attendance. I don't care to get into all the terms of meta church and whatever else is out there.
ROOTS - FULLER SEMINARY
Division of the Revivalists
When I went to get my M.A. in Cross Cultural Studies, I met 2 different professors with opposing views of what Christian revival was all about. Both were in the Missions department.
1. J. Edwin Orr - I went to Fuller Seminary because I wanted to sit in classes with J. Edwin Orr, who was at the time, the world's foremost expert in the study of Protestant spiritual revivals. I was able to take 2 or 3 of his classes before his mind was unable to keep up with his duties, due to old age. He dropped names a lot in his classes. He talked about hanging with Billy Graham, Bill Bright, F.F. Bruce and a host of other big Christian names of the 1970s and 1980s. I don't remember most of them, I just remember being mezmerized as I listened to this guy who seemed bigger than life, augmenting his aura more with the name of every person he mentioned.
I loved listening to Orr. He beamed with knowledge, excitement and charisma. He taught that revivals were not planned, but sprang up when and where God decided. Some came as a result of preaching and some came as a result of prayer. Some were centered on a preacher, some had no preacher. In every type of revival, churches filled up and God became the center of daily talk in any community.
2. Donald McGavran - The Father of Church Growth. Every mega church in the U.S. and throughout the world owes its existence in some degree to McGavran. Coming from a Missions background, he was the first to break down church growth into something we can measure, define, and build in business like models. He is not a household name, but his influence has reached worldwide.
During my first week at Fuller, I had supper with Donald McGavran, not knowing who he was. In our conversation, I argued Dr. Orr's position that revivals were unpredictable, cannot be planned, and at best we can pray in revivals, but even then, it is only up to God to pour out His spirit - and it happened when and where He chose. Donald Mcgavran, on the other hand, argued that with the proper tools and study, we can build real spiritual revival.
I am embarassed to say that I argued against Dr. McGavran's point of view, not knowing who he was, or what he taught. When he moved on to another table, as was proper for our event (he moved from table to table), a man came up to me and said, "Do you know who that was?" I didn't know, so he told me, "That was Donald McGavran!" I hadn't heard of him until then.
As far as I know, Dr. Orr's influence has almost died while Dr. McGavran's has burst into every church in the world that studies how to grow. As I said before, just about every large church today owes a huge amount of gratitude to Dr. McGavran.
Division Between Church Growth and Theology
Fuller was divided between the Missions Department with its Church Growth emphasis, and the Theology Department with an emphasis in Karl Barth and the Neo-Orthodox theology in Europe. The students I knew from the Theology Department were very critical of the Church Growth fans.
The Theology students wanted to make the Bible and Theology the center of the church, and believed the Church Growth students and teachers were on the wrong track, focusing on business principles, counting numbers, targeting people, graphs, dissecting geography and culture in order to speak the language and address the symbols of the people and in order to focus on one group over another.
Division Among the Pastors
The Church Growth movement spread from Fuller into the nation, so that its influence is seen just about everywhere. I was a pastor during the 90s and by then the discussion about the Church Growth movement among the pastors was still hot. New words arose, such as "seeker friendly service", which means a church directs all of its attention on Sunday mornings to reach the unchurched. "Unchurched" was the new word used to define those who don't go to church, whether Christian or not. It was a nicer word than "Lost".
Bill Hybels (Willow Creek Community Church, near Chicago, IL) was at the forefront of this journey, and dozens of churches sought out his wisdom in growing their churches to become the new model of Christianity.
To reach the unchurched crosses and religious symbols were taken out of the church building, religious words were taken out of sermons, church names such as "Baptist" were changed, choirs were removed and rock bands (who until then only played in liberal churches) took over. Big screens replaced the organs, and plays and/or film replaced rituals.
Churches morphed overnight and pastors either jumped on board or else stood from the sides criticizing the new wave of "seeker friendliness".
Pluses and Minuses
PLUS
The people they reach:
1. Non-christian - Our big church in the Minneapolis area baptise hundreds of new members a year.
2. Unchurched - People who grew up in some church, but have left for some reason or another. Unchurched is also the person who has never gone to church.
3. Church Shoppers - People who live life moving from church to church.
4. The Burnt Out - People who got overloaded with work at some church and need a break.
The message they preach:
1. To be as big as they are, these churches have to have preachers that can entertain.
2. The message is easy enough for anybody to understand.
3. Some of these preachers know the Bible and preach amazing sermons.
4. The Gospel is reaching people who would not get it anywhere else.
The quality and quantity:
1. There are more choices for small groups and programs.
2. There are larger youth groups.
3. There are amazing media, bulletins, monitors, posters, etc.
4. You can bring coffee into church.
5. Music quality is far better and more up to date than other churches.
The Ministry:
1. There's something for everybody,
a. Outreaches such as missions trips, and homeless shelters, and singles, addicted, and so on.
b. Inreaches such as groups for the addicted, singles, and so on.
2. Bigger and often times better Youth Groups. With more resourses available, mega churches can bring bigger and better into the youth groups. The groups themselves are also bigger, thus leaving the teen with more people to meet or date.
3. Awesome children's ministries. Once again, resources are huge.
The Variety of Involvement:
1. If you don't want to get involved, you can sit in a chair every Sunday and enjoy the entertainment, worship and listen to a feel good message. No one knows you and you can sit back and receive.
2. If you want to get involved, there are plenty of opportunities.
There is so much more to talk about, but I will end it here, lest I bore you.
MINUS
The people they reach:
1. The church I go to baptises people who have been Christian all their lives as well as those who are recent converts. Believer's baptism means that if you were baptised as a child, the baptism is no good. So although it is amazing to see several hundred people get baptised at once, not all those people are new believers.
2. I have no negative thing to say about bringing the unchurched into the church.
3. Church shoppers are anywhere in any church. Shopping is an American past time. Church shoppers may stay at a church, but don't count on it. There are different church shoppers, some good and some not so good:
a. The wounded who have been hurt in some other church.
b. The complainers for whom no church is good enough.
c. The tired and weary who need a break from too much involvement.
d. The idealists who believe there is some almost perfect church out there where God is doing amazing things.
4. Many smaller churches complain that their members are leaving for the mega churches. In other words, a lot of people going to mega churches were not the unsaved, lost, or the unchurched. They are people who want a different church experience.
The message they preach:
1. I have seen some awsome Biblical preaching from pastors in megachurches. For years I listened to Stuart Briscoe in Milwaukee, WI. I heard Greg Boyd from St. Paul, MN preach a solidly biblical message that captivated the audience. Although I have never heard him, I am told that John Piper in Minneapolis, MN preaches sermons that go deep into the Word. But I have also heard preachers who preached more about the latest Christian self help topics and/or prosperity than they did about the Bible. Bible verses were used as feeble supports to the message, rather than opened up for what they were suppose to say.
2. At Fuller Seminary, I heard some students complain that Robert Schuller (pastor of the Glass Cathedral) did not preach repentance because it was too negative of a message. I don't know how true this was, but it seemed that way, and I do see, on T.V. and in some churches, a lack of preaching about the death and resurrection in favor of the latest Christian "how to" books.
Everything the Apostle Paul said or taught was tied to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Everything the Apostle John taught came from and centered on the incarnation (the life and teachings of Jesus). Neo-orthodox preachers from the mid-Twentieth Century, such as Karl Barth, dug deeply into the Bible centering their writings on the cross and resurrection of Jesus. Billy Graham who focused only on evangelism likewise centered everything he preached on the cross and resurrection of Jesus.
Quantity and Quality:
My uncle use to be an usher for a small church. He loved his position, feeling that he was important to the ministry of that church. As the church grew into a mega church, his ministry to the same amount of people seemed smaller and smaller. Furthermore, he no longer knew the people he ministered to. He was always the same, but turned from the big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big pond. People like to feel important when they serve. They like to feel like they are contributing something that few if anybody else can. In a large church, it is much harder to feel important.
MINISTRIES THAT ONLY A SMALL CHURCH CAN DO
There are ministries that only a small church can do. When I pastored in MN, a large group of Sudanese refugees settled into our church. It was hard on the church as a whole, but still half the church got involved in helping them settle into the U.S. One of them was hired as a pastor for the Sudanese, went on to a local Bible College, and is now a full time missionary for our denomination.
There is little chance that this could have happened in a large church where the focus is far more on bringing in new people and focusing on certain people groups (usually White).
The fact is, and will always remain, that smaller churches are more intimate. When someone new visits, everybody in the church knows it. This is both the negative and the positive of a smaller church.
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