Barnabas File

In a recent blog entitled “Low Wages, Student Debt, and 'The Call:' Financing Seminary Education,” LeAnn Snow Flesher put this entire ongoing discussion in context.  Flesher is not an outsider to theological education but serves as Academic Dean/CAO and Professor of Old Testament at American Baptist Seminary of the West at The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. I agree with Flesher that at the core of the issue is the changing concept of “church” and what people expect from a faith community.  From my perspective, this has not happened overnight and is the result of several factors. First, since the 1960s traditional forms of authority have been questioned.  Initially, politicians came under fire (often for good cause—think Richard Nixon), then it was corporations, and then religious leaders (plenty of scandals to go around here).  Second, the church growth emphasis helped to build a consumer mentality so that people became more concerned...

In going through some files recently, I came across a church newsletter from April 1976.  It provided an interesting snapshot of this particular church at that time.  This county seat Baptist church in a southern state was averaging over 650 in Sunday morning worship.  What caught my attention was that they had only three full-time staff members!  Today we talk in terms of a church needing one full-time staff member for every 100 worshippers.  The same church today runs about 450 on a Sunday and has the equivalent of six full-time staff ministers.  What changed? A lot has changed in three and a half decades.  Let me suggest five primary changes that have impacted churches, their staffing expectations, and their effectiveness in mission. First, society has changed.  In this particular case, what was once a small county seat town is now part of a metropolitan area made up not only of individuals commuting 45 minutes  to an hour to ...

The Nashville Tennessean carried the story this week of a former megachurch that is putting its facility on the market.  Built for a congregation of 6000, the church now averages about 850 on Sundays.  They plan to use the receipts of the sale to fund two or more satellite locations.  The pastor is reported to have said that worshipers prefer smaller locations where they can build friendships.   “It used to be that everyone wanted to drive to a big church,” the pastor said. “Now, they want to be at a church in their community.” I sincerely doubt his generalization that “everybody” wanted to be part of a megachurch.  There are many of people who do like to attend big churches (and 850 attendance is still a big church to most of us), but there are many smaller congregations that have continued to survive and even prosper despite the growth of megachurches across our nation.  A lot of folks have invested themselves in ...

Recent news reports tell us that Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in California has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The church leaders disclosed that the church is close to $50 million in debt. Some have seen this as the harbinger of the death of the megachurch. Of course, the reality is not that simple. The Crystal Cathedral is probably unique among others in that category because it has practiced a rather traditional approach to worship albeit on a grand scale. The church has also been embroiled in a leadership transition crisis. The problems at this one megachurch do not mean that this expression of the church is dying out. In fact, Scott Thumma, an authority on megachurches, says mammoth churches aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. In the CNN blog that reports the Crystal Cathedral’s bankruptcy, Thumma states that most megachurches are holding their own financially amid this "great recession." He defines a megachurch as a congregation with 2,000 members and a...

At the Global Leadership Summit last week, pastor Bill Hybels set up a hypothetical situation and provided several possible responses. He suggested that the leaders present imagine that they were sitting there and received a text message that a staff member had just resigned. He suggested several possible responses. First, the leader might say, “Whew! That’s a relief.” Second, the leader’s reaction might be, “Ugh! That’s a real loss for us.” Third, the response might be, “Oh, no! This is an irreplaceable person. What are we going to do now?” Let me suggest a fourth response. When receiving such a message, the leader might respond, “Well, this will be a loss, but it may be an opportunity for us to rethink some things.” In most churches and church-related organizations, we are reluctant to make staff changes. When tough economic times come, we struggle with budgets and will “lay off” staff members only as a last resort. In normal circumstances if a person is doing an adequate but no...

Megachurches have developed several new patterns of cooperation. As writer John Dart explains in his article in The Christian Century: “[M]ost supersized churches want the freedom to customize their programs and avoid bureaucratic delays. . . . Megachurch leaders find resources for adult education, youth programs and for hiring an experienced and successful pastor ‘without ever needing a denomination or seminary, board of missions or other baggage of hierarchical institutional structures.’” (The quote is from Scott Thumma of Hartford Seminary.) This approach presents a challenge to the survival of denominations, mission boards, and seminaries, and the responses from those entities vary. Although some of these institutions label the strategy of the megachurches as a fasting fad, others realize that it is part of a new way of doing church that will be with us for many years to come. Seminaries are especially challenged to come up with new ways to partner with these megachurches....

In his article “Going Mega” in the current issue of The Christian Century , John Dart reports some figures from the United Methodist Church. He states that the UMC’s overall membership dropped 1.01 percent in 2008, its largest annual decline in decades. He goes on to explain that UMC churches with 3000 or more adherents increased their membership during this period by 1.9 percent, while congregations with 100 or fewer members reported a 2.25 percent decline that same year. Dart argues that this shows, “Larger churches tend to weather economic downturns better.” No, it doesn’t. It simply shows that bigger churches are growing while smaller congregations are declining. This can be due to a number of factors, but part of it is certainly related to demographics. The smaller churches in most denominations are made up primarily of older adults who tend to die off! These smaller churches are not replenishing their numbers with young adults with school age children. Our church runs 450 to...

I love the church—all sizes, types, etc. I love the church when it is hard to love it. I even have an unusual fascination with the megachurch. I am a fan of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. Although the megachurch is not for everyone, the folks at Willow Creek know how to do it well. There are several things I like about them. They involve women in leadership roles, they seek to be multiethnic, they embrace social action, and they are open about their failures (for example, AXIS, the attempt to reach young adults that was something of an embarrassment). Each megachurch is different, of course, but I think that those of us who are more traditional in our approach to church tend to look down our noses at our mega brothers and sisters. In so doing, we may be missing an important learning opportunity. In light of that, I found the article “Going Mega” by John Dart in the current issue of Christian Century very interesting and informative. Dart draws on recent...