Yesterday I mentioned "megachurches" and how they are failing in whatever it was they set out to do. This is most tellingly exposed in a statement by Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, in the Fall of 2007, "If you simply want a crowd, the seeker-sensitive model produces results. If you want solid, sincere, mature followers of Christ, it's a bust." Let me say that I do not question the motives of most megachurch pastors, I just think they went the wrong way and have inadvertently hurt the church in the process. Let me make one clarifying statement here...not every large church should be categorized as a megachurch and thereby cast aside as "not working." I am familiar with some large churches that do not function as a megachurch does, and do not have the attitudes that megachurches do. These churches function well and biblically, and they should be commended for their ministries.
How did megachurches become "the next big thing?" My simple, probably overly simple, analysis, is that the megachurch sprang from the same place as mega-corporations and mega-corporate headquarters. In the 40s, 50s and 60s, as a nation, our transportation abilities increased faster than our information transfer technologies did. This called for gathering people into large spaces (corporate headquarters) to facilitate information transfer, thus making business run more efficiently. The idea was that it was easier to move the people than the info, so let's do that!
The churches decided that they needed to understand and borrow this idea in order to make church more "efficient," whatever that might mean. They, too, began to gather people into large spaces, and the people, having been inured to traveling some distance and gathering with large groups to receive vital information, went along with the churches. This, of course, ignores the fact that the Christian life is about far more than "information," but hey, it was working, at least in the view of some churches.
Famous unbiblical doctrines arose to spur this growth in large, centrally located churches, doctrines like the famous "Three to Thrive." The idea here was that if churches could get people to come to a central location three times per week, Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening, they will be tied to a local church and the local church will "thrive" along with its people. Not to sound too Clintonesque, but the truth of that doctrine really does ride on the definition of "thrive," doesn't it? Who is the "thriving" supposed to benefit, the local church entity and its budget and ability to build edifices and programs, or the people in their relationship to God and one another?
So throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and into the 90s, megachurches seemed to thrive (there's that word again!) What has happened to change the minds of people in those churches? Why are some megachurches finding it harder and harder to attract younger generations? Why are many megachurches becoming cultural non-entities, unable or unwilling to penetrate the culture surrounding them with the Gospel? What are the attitudes that make even some smaller churches function like that grand oxymoron, "mini-megachurches?"
Stay tuned. More tomorrow. What do you think?
