5 Crucial Challenges to the American Megachurch

Myth No. 4: Megachurches water down the faith. The research says just the opposite. From the work of the Barna Group to research by Pulitzer Prize-nominated Rodney Stark, studies consistently find large-church congregations have higher levels of biblical literacy and higher agreement with various behaviors taught in Scripture than do their smaller-church counterparts. (This reality also is influenced by the fact that large churches tend to be heavily evangelical, while smaller churches reflect a wider theological range.)

Myth No. 5: Megachurches are bad for other churches. Yes, many pastors rightly feel they have lost members and opportunities because of the rise of a megachurch in their area. The balancing challenge is that nearly all churches—large or small, conservative or liberal—grow more from the “recirculation of the saints” than from new converts or from those who have recently moved to town. But when one church—of any size—is doing well in a community, it often has a positive growth effect on all the others, like the tide that raises all boats in a harbor.

Myth No. 6: Megachurches are full of people of the same race and class. In reality, the larger the church, the more likely it is to be diverse. Megachurches are more likely to be multiethnic than are churches of other sizes.

Myth No. 7: Megachurches grow because of the show. This myth implies that the worship experience consists of too much entertainment and too little Jesus. But for many megachurches, the “show” is usually an intentional effort to create a safe, inviting environment that supports spiritual decision-making.

Myth No. 8: The megachurch movement is dying because young adults hate large churches. Of the roughly 1,650 megachurches across North America, 17 percent are led by someone under age 45. One of my recent assignments was to visit 100 such churches. Almost all are packed with millennials—as are many megachurches led by older pastors.

Challenge No. 2: Breaking In

I co-authored a book with Scott Thumma titled The Other 80 Percent, based on a study of more than 40,000 megachurch attendees. We asked them what drew them to the church and what kept them. To the question, “What drew you to the church?” the answers were predictable: worship style, senior pastor, reputation of the church in the community, and children’s and youth programs (in that order). No matter which of these “front doors” that people selected, personal invitations played a big role.

The “why they stay” responses were more eye-opening. For any church, and especially megachurches, if attendees don’t feel connected, they tend to leave. That is, people come to church for many reasons, but they stay if at least one thing has happened: They’ve found a friend or a group that works for them. Smaller, established churches often bring new people in through sponsorship, whether formal or informal, as an existing member or family takes the newcomer under their wing, developing a relationship in the process.

The larger the church, the harder it is to identify newcomers and intentionally pair them with a sponsor. Therefore, most large churches put a lot of effort into establishing multiple pathways for helping newcomers move from spectator to participant, from outsider to insider, from a perspective of “that church” to “my church.”

The way this typically happens is by being extremely intentional about creating ways for people to develop friendships, and to get connected in small groups, teams, classes or other highly relational settings. As a result, the healthiest megachurches grow bigger by intentionally getting “smaller.”

Leadership Network published a report, “Not Who You Think They Are” (free download at LeadNet.org/megachurch), which profiles megachurch participants. One sobering statistic: Nearly two-thirds of megachurch attendees have been at their church for five years or less. That churn factor is a continual challenge for megachurches.

Challenge No. 3: Turning the Queen Mary With a Single Oar

The bigger the church, the harder it is to change it. To make things worse, the more a church’s leaders feel that they found a winning formula in the past, the more reluctant they are to mess with it, even when it shows signs of no longer being as effective. Any church that cannot separate its mission from its methodology is certain to decline.

By contrast, I recently listened to a long-term small-group director explain how, if a church’s group system is to maintain and increase its spiritual effectiveness, it has to reinvent its approach every few years. For that church, it required more than just changing the name of its groups—which started in the ’70s with the then-appealing term “Tender Loving Care Groups.” Today, six different name conventions later, they’re simply called “Home Groups”—but the latest development of the home group strategy is to involve a service component. Each group is challenged to do something beyond itself each month. This works really well, especially among millennials.

In church surveys that include questions about how willing a church is to try a new methodology, growing churches tend to score higher (and in Leadership Network’s latest research, 73 percent of megachurches are growing). This indicates that they are open to sacrificing sacred cows that start to impair the mission.

If churches want to communicate the timeless gospel to an ever-changing culture, they must continually identify methodologies that are no longer working and skillfully transition them to more effective approaches.

Challenge No. 4: Expanding via Multisites, Mergers and Church Planting

The bigger the church, the more likely to be multisite—one church in two or more locations. Among megachurches, 63 percent are multisite. If you limit it to megachurches with attendance of 5,000 or more, 87 percent are multisite, according to Leadership Network data.

Multisite ministry has literally changed the face of the church in America over the past 25 years. In 1990, there were only about 10 churches in America that did ministry as one church on two or more campuses. As so often happens with other innovations, multisite experimentation happened around the edges in churches of all sizes, and then a number of megachurches embraced it, giving it visibility and added credibility. Now with each passing year, the typical church that becomes multisite has a slightly smaller size than the average church that went multisite the year before. This is another example of helpful learning collaboration between churches of all sizes.

Warren Bird
Warren Bird

Warren Bird, an Outreach magazine contributing editor, is the vice president of research at ECFA, former research director for Leadership Network and author of more than 30 books for church leaders.

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