Today’s Alban Weekly Newsletter promotes a book, The Small Church, by Steve Willis.
Willis points out that large churches are historically a new phenomenon—only 100 years old!
2×2 has made this point for a while. Most churches set out to serve their own communities with little thought of growth.
When churches grow, it is usually because of societal change, not a dedication to mission, fueled by a carefully drafted mission statement.
Willis points to the rise of mega church as a result of mobility in society made possible by mass transit and a reliable highway system.
The article quotes Tony Pappas, an American Baptist minister:
So for the first time in human history, thousands of people could get to a one- or two-hour event and get home for lunch! So large churches, big steeples, big pulpits, Old Firsts came into being. As we think of them today, large churches have only been around for a little over a century–only 5% of the history of our faith.
Before the concept of mega church, most congregations were pretty much the same in their needs and mission. Pastors were expected to do the same things and there was little mobility. There was no need. Pastors served the same church for decades.
Today, a pastor may, in following a call, carefully calculate how accepting the call will position him or her for a “better” or more lucrative call in three years.
Meanwhile, the congregations still think they are calling a pastor for the long haul.
The article makes a case for the mega church as an attractive business venture. Business entrepreneurs supported large congregations as an investment.
The early mega churches included congregations of just 1000 or 2000 members. Today, the mega church aims for five times that number. (Churches with 1000 or more members are called corporate churches. There aren’t many of them either.)
A model church budget today relies on the support of 1000 members. Most churches with 1000 members have only 10% worshiping on a typical Sunday morning.
In our 55 Ambassador visits, we have encountered only a handful of churches with worship attendance of more than 100. Most of those were on holiday Sundays. The average attendance of all the churches we have visited has been under 50. One congregation listed its average attendance as 400 in its Trend Report. Attendance at the 11 am service the day we visited was 27 (including us, the pastor and the organist).
In the last 100 years, we have created a model that the Church and its volunteer memberships never set out to support. And can’t.
So here we are in 2013, looking at the ruins of our church. And we are still thinking — if everyone can just change and be like the one or two percent of churches that manage to reach “mega” status, all would be wonderful.
Pastors are still trained to serve congregations as if they are neighborhood congregations. When expectations don’t match reality, the laity are blamed.
Most lay people just want to join a church to worship. They never set out to reinvent it.
But then there is 2×2.