Mega Churches, Cults of Personality, and Longevity

As illustrated in a recent Christianity Today article, {Willow Creek and Harvest Struggle to Move On The departures of Bill Hybels and James MacDonald leave churches waiting for new leadership and hoping to rebuild trust. - by ABBY PERRY} the transition period for churches that have grown to prominence under a charismatic founder can be extremely dangerous, especially if that founder leaves suddenly under a cloud of moral failure.  Churches both large and small are in danger when their pastor(s) is guilty of gross immorality, whether that revolves around sexual sin, financial theft (or gross luxury; i.e. a private jet and a mansion, even if authorized by the church board such compensation is a theft of funds that should be used for the ministry of the church), or simply an ego run amok.  It stands to reason that a small church, one perhaps barely able to pay its bills, if that, with only a few dozen faithful members would have difficulty in finding a new pastor following a disastrous tenure of a minister who was, or became, unqualified to lead God's people.  Much of that difficulty revolves around the limited resources available, both financial and manpower, to conduct a search and find an effective replacement.  Such constraints would seem to be less of an issue at a mega church with attendance upwards of 10,000, multiple sites, a large paid staff, and a weekly million dollar budget capable of paying a well established and experienced minister to be their next senior pastor.  And yet, as the article by Abby Perry shows, the emotional scars and questions of repentance revolving around those who failed to act earlier, are a common problem for both the tiny church and its seemingly very different mega cousin.
Cults of personality are deadly to a church no matter how big it is.  This may seem obvious when that minister is leading the church down a path of unorthodox heresy, and/or displaying dangerous apocalyptic fanaticism (like, for example, David Koresh), but it is also true when the church simply depends upon the personal leadership of that pastor so much that it cannot function without him/her.  Some churches are able to transition relatively smoothly to a second generation of leadership, many struggle mightily, some don't make it at all.  Coincidentally, this same phenomenon exists when a business attempts to replace an iconic founder, and on a smaller scale is equally challenging when a much simpler family business attempts to move on to a second generation.
Which brings into focus the larger question of mega churches.  I myself am not the pastor of a mega church, although if I would have been this church's 12th pastor instead of its 31st, I would have been preaching regularly to a crowd of over 1,000; likely one of the largest congregations in America at the start of the 20th Century.  Franklin today, however, has less than half the people living here than it did then, and 1st Baptist of Franklin is a small church (in a big building) in a small town.  Venango County only has about 50k people, so we're not going to have a church in our area with weekly attendance of 5,000+ (500 seems to be about the height at this point, we have one church a mile away at that number and another a block away a bit under that).  Thus while the mega church explosion is not directly impacting Church ministry here in rural Pennsylvania, and not likely to directly impact most of the sparsely populated areas of the globe, they still have a tremendous indirect influence upon the Church as a whole, especially given their high-profile ministers and multi-media products (think Hillsong's music {songs sung by 50 million people worldwide each Sunday}, Joel Osteen's books and TV show {7 million weekly viewers}, or Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life {32 million copies sold}.  Personally I appreciated Rick Warren's book, am ambivalent about Hillsong's music (not a strong music opinion person anyway), and think that Joel Osteen's theology would be dangerous at a church of twenty, but whether or not a particular manifestation of the mega church trend is in itself an overall positive or negative for the Church as a whole is actually a secondary question, for the Church has always had to contend with examples of poor leadership, with heretical authors/theologians, and cults of personality.  What has changed, differentiating these mega churches from anything previous in Church history is their very size. 
The Early Church began with house churches, limited in size by their obvious location constraints, after the legalization of the Church by Constantine {The Edict of Milan}, the trend toward an organized system of parish churches began in earnest.  Churches were established where another church was needed, and they were spread out sufficiently so as to not overlap, given that they were not in competition with each other.  Local Christians, at Christendom's height that meant everybody in the village or town, excluding any Jews or other religious minority, were expected to attend their local parish, and instances of going further away (travel being limited to walking or riding a horse) to another parish must have been rare.  A church in such a system could grow, if it convinced an even higher percentage of the local population to attend, or if the local population itself was growing, but it couldn't become any type of 'mega' church.  The cathedrals in principle cities were large, but they too were constrained by the simple fact that a 10,000 seat church was not an architectural possibility. 
Things have changed.  Many (if not most) Christians don't attend the church that is closest to their home, they drive past several seeking the one that they're connected to, thus even large rural churches, let alone mega churches, are drawing from a wide geographic area, not simply a neighborhood.
The parish system, by and large, functioned well for more than a thousand years.  We know that mega churches will not replace the far more numerous smaller churches, nor will they drive out of business, as it were, small churches like Walmart did to the small retailers.  Assuming that the reality of mega churches isn't going anywhere, seemingly a safe assumption, what role will they play in the Church of the future?  How stable will they prove as they transition from the first generation of their leadership?  Without the charisma of the founder, will such a massive organization be able to bring in the people and money it needs to continue?  These are certainly questions with implications for the Church as a whole, and largely ones that seem beyond our ability to have more than anecdotal answers to at this juncture; time will tell.  If the struggles outlined in Christianity Today's article at both Willow Creek and Harvest are harbingers of things to come, individual mega churches may not have the longevity of the small local church.

Seeing the world through a father's eyes

For those of you who don't know, I came to fatherhood later in life than most of my peers.  My wife Nicole and I had already been married for nearly 15 years, I had been a teacher at Portland Adult and Community Education for ten years, concurrently a pastor at 1st Baptist of Palo for five years, and moved here to Franklin PA to be the pastor at First Baptist of Franklin just over three years prior to the birth of our beautiful Clara Marie.  As much life experience as I had: marriage, teaching, being a pastor, all of which had their own unique challenges and lessons to be learned, nothing changed my point-of-view as much as becoming a father.  Books that I had once read, and am now re-reading (I do that a lot), with a father-daughter relationship, or TV/Movies that hadn't struck me that way before, now touch at something in my heart and mind that is both real and powerful.  {For example: The girl in the red dress in Schindler's List, while always being a gut punch, would shake me much harder now}  I consider myself to be a person of empathy and compassion, by the grace of God, it is a characteristic one must have to be an effective pastor, but nothing reinforces these Christian virtues in our hearts quite like having had a similar experience; its just the way we work as human beings.

Clara on the day of her birth, holding dad's finger.

Clara on her way to her first day of pre-school this past August

Hebrews 4:15-16 (NIV)
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

You don't need me to tell you that our experiences powerfully affect us, both for the better and for the worse, but the words of Hebrews offer an insight into our relationship with God that is truly profound.  Jesus knows what it is like to struggle, to feel tired, to be in pain.  Jesus knows what it is like to wait patiently, to have to trust in your friends, and to be let down by them.  Jesus knows the sorrow of being at the graveside of a parent, the frustration of being rejected by people you're only trying to help, and the joy of helping a 'lost cause' find purpose in life again.  Jesus has been there, and his empathy for your life situations is real.  That alone would be a Truth to "cling to when the rain set in".  But Hebrews tells us something far more important: Jesus knows what is like to be you without the failure of sin.  One of the reasons why we have empathy for other people is that many of us recognize the wisdom of the phrase, "there but for the grace of God, go I".  In other shoes we might equally fail, or we might even do worse, than the person whom we now empathize with in their struggles.  That compassion compels us to act, but that weakness limits how much we can do to help.  Not so with Jesus.  Not only does Jesus know what it is like to be you, but he knows what is necessary to overcome and be victorious in your situation as well.  I, and others like me, can comfort you, maybe even assist you, Jesus can save you.  As followers of Jesus Christ, we can point out the way to hope, Jesus is the way.
What do we do with this knowledge?  Hebrews offers the answer there as well, approach the 'throne of grace with confidence', knowing that in our time of need, our compassionate AND victorious savior, who empathizes with our plight, is both willing and capable of giving us the mercy and grace we need to live righteously, no matter what. 

Sermon Video: Don't Mess with God - Jude 5-11

Jude utilizes six examples from the Hebrew Scriptures to warn his readers about the danger of being ungodly in relation to God {the example in vs. 1-4 was of a group that tried to utilize God's grace as an excuse for immorality}. In each case the story doesn't end well for the person(s) who sought to rebel against and defy the will of God. As a counter-example, Jude offers the humility of the archangel Michael who, according to the Assumption of Moses, did not even slander Satan himself but simply replied, "The Lord rebuke you!" In this vein, consider the arrogance of the Prosperity Gospel (and its many proponents: Paula White Cain, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, TD Jakes, Joel Osteen, Robert Schuller, etc.), with its tendency to claiming the power to 'bind Satan' and grant material blessings to those who either have enough faith and/or (likely and) send money to the already wealthy 'minister' in question. We are not 'little gods', we are not the epicenter of God's will as they would have us believe, we are instead servants in the Kingdom of God, here to sacrifice on behalf of the Gospel, not to prosper from it. It doesn't end well for those who defy the will of God, who warp the Gospel for their own benefit.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

Sermon Video: God's grace is not a license to sin - Jude 1-4

Jude, half-brother of Jesus (along with James "the just", the leader of the Jerusalem Church), begins his letter by speaking of the common salvation he shares along with those whom God has called, love, and kept for Jesus, a salvation that results in our being given mercy, peace, and love.  Unfortunately, Jude cannot continue writing about these uplifting topics as he must warn the recipients of the letter about individuals within the Church who have embrace a form of Gnosticism (apparently) that both denies Jesus Christ (probably by denying that he came in the flesh, see 1 John for a parallel) and bizarrely claims that God's grace which has been given to us is in fact a license to sin.  The Apostle Paul rejects this same line of thought in Romans 6, for how could God's grace take us further from God by encouraging us to continue to sin?  In addition, taking advantage of grace would be an insult to the blood of Christ, poured out for us, as well as a narrow focus upon our relationship with God being only about forgiveness of sins, rather than about total transformation that must begin here and now.  Lastly, any view of our relationship with God that tolerates the ongoing indulgence in sin is incompatible with the presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who have been redeemed.  For reasons such as these, Jude warns his fellow believers against this dangerous notion.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

Interaction with: "Keeping a church going is a tough cross to bear" by Peter Greene

In this morning's News-Herald/The Derrick is a column from Peter Greene, retired Franklin High School English teacher regarding the challenge of keeping the county's numerous churches going, in particular its number of massive (relative to our current population) church buildings.  The article ends with a call to attend tonight's forum that is being hosted here at First Baptist with the Oil Region Alliance, the Bridge Builders Community Foundation, and a national group called Sacred Places.  The meeting will discuss how to preserve sacred spaces through utilizing them as community resources, a function that the building here at First Baptist already performs, but one which we are eager to learn more about.  So please, join us tonight if you can.

In addition, Greene's article touches upon a number of topics related to church attendance and church growth, I'll quote the relevant portions below in bold and interact with them.

We've had a real estate problem in Venango County for a while.  We have too much excess capacity, too many buildings with too much space, built in a time when the county had many thousands more people than it does now.

This is true across the board in real estate: residential, commercial, educational, and sacred.  The population drop since the height of the oil boom has been remarkable, resulting in a population downward trend that must bottom out at some point, but hasn't yet.  It is thus inevitable that the county contain "too many" churches, unless the % of people within the county who attend church were to have risen as the population declines, it hasn't.  Some churches have closed, as evidenced by the consolidation in Oil City of the Catholic parishes from five to one, but most remain open.  Within two miles of my office in downtown Franklin there are 18 churches, and while that includes several in small buildings, it also includes the sizable buildings of First Baptist, St. Patrick's, First UMC, Christ UMC, St. John's Episcopal, First Presbyterian, and Atlantic Ave. United Brethren.

Gallup Poll shows that church membership hung around 70 percent from 1938 until 1996, then dropped off a cliff, landing at 50 percent in 2018...young folks are the most likely to be unchurched these days.

That this is a trend isn't news to anyone involved in church ministry.  However, here in our county the affects of it are harder to gauge because so many of this community's young people leave the area for college and don't return.  Thus churches in Venango County (and much of rural America) must face the prospect of lesser proportions of the younger generations simply because their community's population is trending that way anyway.  Once again, in order to have as many people in their 20's or 30's in our church as we have people in their 60's or 70's, we would have to be reaching a significantly higher percentage of that target population.

There are a gazillion explanations out there.  Some argue that the mainstream churches lost ground because they got too wrapped up in social causes.

This is the go-to explanation from conservative churches regarding the trends within liberal churches (using those terms despite the inevitable comparison to politics, here they rather reflect theological perspectives, although the two tend to bleed together).  To the extent that any church or denomination has walked away from the historic creeds and teachings of the Church, and/or replaced the primary focus of the Church (the proclamation of the Gospel and the making of disciples) with unrelated causes, that explanation seems to have traction.  If what once brought people to Church, the worship of God and the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins, is no longer relevant to what a church is doing, why exactly would people go there?  I have not, however, experienced this with the 'liberal' churches here in Venango County, instead I've found authentic and passionate commitment to the Gospel at, for example, St. John's Episcopal Church (with whom we partner for the Shepherd's Green Food Pantry).

Others argue that more conservative religious voices have turned off young folks with their political involvement.

I have certainly argued about the danger of mixing religion and politics, describing it as an unequal marriage that will corrupt the Church with the pragmatism (and win-at-all-cost) of politics rather than impacting politics with the morality of Christianity.  In 1999, Pastor Ed Dobson and Cal Thomas warned about the failures of the Moral Majority in their book, Blinded by Might but unfortunately that warning has not been heeded and things have grown much worse.  Examples of my writings on this include: A rejection of a One-Party Church, and pastors as political operatives and The Culture War rages on; the Church's role in it is toxic.

Oddly enough, those arguments represent two sides of the old saying, "When you mix religion and politics, you get politics."

And this is where it gets dicey.  'Liberal' churches and their leaders decry the politics of 'Conservative' churches and their leaders, and vice versa, without both sides realizing that they are doing the same things, just from a different perspective.  For example: the mixing of the Gospel with socialism is just as dangerous as the mixing of the Gospel with free-market capitalism.  That sentence might upset some of you because you hate one of those economic systems but love the other, but from a Christian Worldview that honors the teachings of the Apostles and Church History, there can be no other conclusion.  The Gospel cannot be mixed with our economic, social, or political viewpoints and remain the Gospel.  This is a dilemma as old as the first generation of the Church, one that our ancestors in the faith struggled mightily to not be overcome by (See for example their failure: The Thirty Years War), and one that endures to this day.  In the end, a Republican Gospel is just as much of an anathema as a Democrat Gospel, both must be rejected.  In this I am somewhat fortunate, as the American Baptist Churches have a history of supporting the separation of Church and State.  However, with the 'liberal' and 'conservative' Church in America leaning heavily in the direction of greater involvement in politics, I've often felt like a 'voice calling out in the wilderness' on this issue.

Locally, churches have had nowhere to go over the last century but down.  Churches like First Baptist in Franklin were built by wealthy patrons who help(ed) both raise the building and fill it.  General Miller expected his employees to be in church Sunday morning, and he sweetened the pot with features like a nationally respected orchestra.  The church was filled to overflowing, though how many were there because of deep religious commitment is open to debate.

First off, thanks for the shout out in the newspaper to First Baptist.  It is certainly true that First Baptist was overflowing 100+ years ago.  We have Sunday School attendance books that show weeks with 1,000+ in attendance between the various classes for men, women, and children.  General Miller taught his afternoon class for decades, it would be fascinating to me to learn what those classes consisted of.  About half of the cost of the 1,800 seat addition that was completed in 1904 (it was all part of a 3/4 circle sanctuary then, now that  mega-sanctuary addition is a recreation area and auditorium) was borne by Charles Miller personally.  Whatever else he was, Charles Miller was a titan in this church's history, and the primary reason why we have this big, and beautiful, building.  I've also been told that Charles paid his workers, either a nickel or a dime, to come to church each week.  That story is ubiquitous here in Venango County, leading me to believe that it has some basis in truth, although no records from the time attest to it.  How genuine was that church attendance?  How much of it was simply giving in to social pressure?  We have no way of knowing, although the social pressure thing has certainly decreased in recent generations.

If we still had 1,000+ people here on Sundays it would now represent 15% of Franklin's total population, an amazing amount.  That ship, however, sailed a long time ago, as the impressive numbers here at the turn of the 20th century faded as the century wore on.  In theory, there is a large number of people who could walk here to church on Sunday (only a few do, most who attend here live miles away), although parking is an issue at downtown churches (all across the country), a limitation that evidently didn't stop our ancestors from getting here (in part utilizing Franklin's trolley system, yes, we had trolley lines back then) .

Growing a church in this area is a special challenge.  There are few "new" people moving in to the area and looking for a new church home, and the ranks of the unchurched who can be won to the faith - well, that's a pretty shallow pool too.  So there are only a couple of ways to grow a church.

It is indeed easier to grow a church when new people are moving to the area and one need not increase the % of various demographics being reached to still grow.  It is much harder to grown when the population is shrinking.  What about the unchurched? (FYI, I keep getting that red line below 'unchurched' that tells me it isn't a real word as far as the computer is concerned, as a former English teacher myself, I wonder if it bothered Peter while he was typing his column).  They are certainly the key to this whole issue.  If the churches in Venango County don't find a way to get more people to become a part of the church who are not currently, we will have to contend in this next decade or so with a number of additional church closures.  As the Baby Boomers leave us, what will be left behind?  To reach the unchurched is a serious challenge.  There are reasons why certain individuals and certain families have no connection to a church, those reasons are not easy to overcome.  From an outside perspective the challenge seems insurmountable.  From the inside it looks really tough too.  In the past decade our church has helped hundreds of people through the Central Help Fund and various other forms of assistance, the vast majority of whom are unchurched.  In response, one of them came to church, once, and although many have promised while asking for help that they would come to church, they haven't.  Results like that are disheartening (and topics of discussions at our Franklin ministerium meetings), but there is a bigger picture.  We, a Christians, are planters of seeds, not the one who makes them grow.  I disagree with Peter Greene that the ranks of the unchurched who can be won to the faith are a shallow pool, but at the same time I do not believe that the answer to that is in my hands.  The Holy Spirit can bring revival to our community, turning stony soil into fertile ground, bringing forth new life from seeds that were planted long ago.  I don't know if that blessing is coming, God's people have certainly prayed for it, but it is not for us to determine the outpouring of God's grace.  Until then, our efforts to show the love of Christ to the unchurched will continue, whatever the results may be.

One is to gather up the young folks.  Use video games, parties, fun trips - anything that gets them in the door.  They'll bring their friends, and maybe their families, but so many young people grow up to leave the area that this approach gives limited returns.

Going after the young is the #1 Church Growth approach.  Churches with full bands and a pastor wearing hipster jeans have cornered this market, but as Peter sees clearly, in a rural community this process is never-ending, as the teens of today are tomorrow's ex-Venango County residents.  In addition, in a town like Franklin, there can be only one or two "cool" churches where the teens hang out.  Today they are Atlantic Ave UB and Christ UMC, a generation ago they were different churches.  Reaching the young people certainly has value, but it can only be one piece of the puzzle, especially for the rest of us.

The other approach is to grab disaffected churchgoers who just left their old church because something there upset them.  Some local churches used to specialize in this type of recruitment, just as some churchgoers have a long line of abandoned churches stretched out behind them.

Yeah, this is definitely true.  I'm not sure which local church specialized in sheep stealing back in the day (I've been in this community 9 years now {I know, right} but Peter Greene has been here longer), but as a pastor I can tell you that none of us is happy with a pastor who builds his church by recruiting people from other churches.  The Kingdom of God doesn't grow a bit when people simply swap churches.  Of the growth that we've had since my arrival, a majority have been through people who used to go somewhere else (most were are the time, however, not attending), although we have had the joy of adding a few people 'from the outside'.  I have not, however, nor would I, encouraged people to leave their church to come to mine.  The opposite is actually how I operate.  When I speak with people in need (of counsel or assistance) I recommend to them that they become connected with a church in their neighborhood, personally recommending churches and pastors by name that I know will be a good home for that person.  

And yes, there are a number of people in our community who are on a church-hopping merry-go-round.  The pastors know who they are, aren't surprised when they leave, and won't be surprised years later when they come back around.  It is a recent phenomenon, one that was not possible in the old village parish church days, but one that has a negative affect upon the Church as a whole.  If people don't take ownership of their local church, if they don't invest themselves in it, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, they'll never become the pillars upon which the next generation of the church needs to be built.  Sometimes it is necessary to leave a church, to walk away from a toxic situation, but that's a rarity, not the real reason why church loyalty has plummeted in recent decades.  Instead, churches are now viewed, by many, as a service provider, much like any other business, and if the service you receive from that church isn't up to your expectations, drop them just like you did AT&T or Chevrolet.  This is, of course, the opposite viewpoint from what it ought to be.  A church is a place where you give to the work of the Kingdom; you will certainly receive great blessings through that connection, but that isn't the reason why you should be there.  We live in a consumer culture, where advertisements try to lure you away from the businesses you utilize now each day; that attitude, when applied to the Church, is toxic.

Is there some secret to recruiting and retaining church members?  If somebody knew it, I'm sure they'd be making a mint running a church consulting service.

Welcome to Christian ministry.  The number of books, seminars, and consulting businesses that have grown up around the question of Church Growth are astounding.  It seems like the only thing preventing us from being a multi-site mega-church is our failure to follow the 7 easy steps outlined in the latest craze.  There are some good resources, and some useful habits and ideas that churches ought to adopt, but no magic bullet.  There is, by the way, a lot of money flowing in the Church Growth consulting field, distinguishing between the genuine ministries with a passion for the Gospel, and the ones just making money is no small task.

In the meantime, churches might try mastering some of the basics.

Amen and amen.  Focus on what church is supposed to be, on doing things the right way for the right reasons, and let God be responsible (as he already is) for the results.  Worship, Pray, Love, Serve, Share.

Don't announce that certain people aren't welcome there.

Absolutely, I'm not sure what type of 'announcement' he has in mind, but it is foolhardy in the extreme to put forth the impression that the Gospel isn't for a particular subset of 'tax collectors and sinners' to which your church objects.  All have sinned, all are lost, all need a Savior.  Our doors are open to anyone, from any background, who wants to hear the Gospel.  In the long-run, churches do need to integrate into their community people who are willing to accept the teachings of God's Word and live accordingly, but the call of the Gospel needs to go out to everyone

Act as if you believe what you claim to believe.

Few things get under my skin as quickly as Christian hypocrisy.  We, that is all of us in the American 21st century Church, have done a poor job of convincing the world that we take our own beliefs seriously.  The number of scandals related to immoral church leaders is sickening, we must do better.  Oddly enough, I was preaching about this very topic last Sunday: Sermon Video: The Dark Side of Church Leadership 

Be welcoming without being creepy.
There's a sweet spot there that isn't that hard to find.  As far as I can tell, our churches are doing a pretty good job on this front.  But yeah, avoid creepy.

And maybe ask yourself why, exactly, you want to recruit new members.
A good question.  "So that we survive as a church" isn't a good enough answer, even if it is an honest one.  The correct answer is, "Because this is what Jesus told us to do."  We are in the business of replicating in the lives of others what God has done in our lives (through the power of the Holy Spirit).  Why?  #1  For God's glory.  #2  Because it is what people need #3  Because we can't help but share the love, joy, and peace that we've found with others.

But in the meantime, Venango County is loaded with big, beautiful, underused churches that are a financial burden to their congregation.  We're in a place where having your giant aging church burn down can be one of the best things for its long-term health.
Sadly I've heard this sentiment before from a fellow ABC pastor who bemoaned that our church building hadn't burned down a long time ago.  There is no doubt that a bigger building than your congregation needs is a resource drain, but it is also an opportunity.  Our church isn't 'underused' despite our congregation being a tiny fraction of its peak 100 years ago, thankfully our board and congregation have made it a priority to invite local non-profits and community service providers to use our space Monday through Saturday {For example: AA, MSM, Jamie's Kids, Girl Scouts, Celebrate Recovery, AARP tax prep, etc.}
Each day as I walk from the parsonage, circa 1881, into the church building, retaining almost all of its architectural and artistic beauty from 1904, it uplifts my spirit and encourages me, reminding me of the legacy that we are a part of.  If this building were to burn down, not only would it be a travesty to Franklin's historic district, our heritage and culture, it would be a brutal loss of beauty in its own right.  We can keep this church going, in this building, for generations to come.  We can continue the legacy of Charles Miller (and countless others) who brought us to this point from the church's founding in 1867, through its 31 pastors, to this present day.

I'll see you at tonight's meeting.