Supersizing the Church

As a small church pastor, reading articles that tell how the percentage of Christians gathering in mega-churches is growing is a bit depressing. Well, not depressing, but it is thought provoking. Mark Chaves. a sociologist at the U. of Arizona published an article in the Christian Century (this week, so it's likely not posted on the site yet --Nov. 28) that carries the title: "Supersized: Analyzing the trend toward larger churches." Chaves provides a variety of reasons why this is happening, but the most interesting and for me the most problematic is the economic one. Just as Walmart and Home Depot can provide price and selection that the small store cannot, the same is true of the mega-church.

Rising costs make it more and more difficult for smaller churches to compete and even survive. The issue is not decreased giving, because giving has continued to be strong (I know that my little congregation goes beyond the call of duty at many levels), but giving hasn't been able to keep up with costs. He writes:

When cost increases outpace revenue increases, churches cut corners and reduce quality by deferring maintenance, declining to replace youth ministers when they leave (oh, if only I had that luxury) replacing retiring full-time ministers with half-time ministers, and so on. In short,
churches find it difficult to maintain the same level of programming and quality they had before. And this will be true even if the church loses no members.



He also notes that the minimum size of an economical viable church will continue to increase. That's disturbing, because we're already way under that number. But, we have hope that we'll grow and "compete" not by offering programming that is competitive but only because we're one of the few progressive alternatives in town. So, we'll see what happens. The news isn't good, but it's not final, because there is always hope in the Spirit.

Comments

Leege said…
I'm hopeful that small churches where everyone can feel at home and are more like a family than a city will still be able to thrive in a world of megachurches. Keep up the good work and God bless.

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