"If the electricity goes out in a Mega-church's neighborhood on Sunday, does it make a sound?" asks Susan Arnold who blogs at Heart Soul Mind Strength. Read the Oct. 29 post first and then the Nov. 2 post--she doesn't have her posts archived so I can't link them separately for you. There is a lively discussion in the comments.
Her critique of the Mega-church as entertainment is persuasive and interests me because of my own attempt to understand the appeal of Lakewood Church in Houston--one of the most prominent Mega-churches in the country.
Hat tip to Douglas Groothius who pointed me to this discussion.
3 comments:
I seem to go back and forth with my thoughts on mega-churches. I guess in the end, if they are done properly, they can be very effective. And then, of course, you could say the same with small or medium churches. Each of these can also have some very negative aspects as well if they're not careful, such as becoming exclusive for smaller churches and becoming entertainment for mega churches.
I have to be very careful talking about mega-churches because I have such a strongly negative reaction to them. It is hard for me to separate what I believe the church is and should be from my own dislike of just about everything about that atmosphere.
Yes, there are some legitimate problems -- that most of us have seen, but that doesn't autmoatically make every "mega-church" bad.
I'm more concerned with the philosophy that uses numbers as the measure of the spiritual health of a church. There is only, to my mind, one measure of spiritual healty -- that is faithfulness to Jesus Christ. This trend (to compare every local church to the "megas") causes us to disregard the gifts God has given us and the works God is doing among us. Marketing is not, nor has it ever been, the work of the Holy Spirit.
Pastors and leaders and active church members feel like failures and are unable to do the work they have been given because of this. Often the worst possible thing for them to do is to mimic the marketing methods that they believe will lead to reproducing mega churches.
That was impressive! Thanks for the link.
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