pursuing faithfulness to the Word of God and fullness of the Spirit of God
Archive for September, 2006
Benefits of a Large Church? Part 2
Sep 25th
A couple of weeks back, I asked the question whether it is better to have lots of smaller churches or one huge church in a town. This is a controversial issue, and the well thought out responses I got represented both sides of the argument.
I’m planning probably two more posts on this issue, one considering what unique challenges a large church must face, and one on what unique opportunities a large church has. But today I want to consider the two most common arguments I have heard from proponents of the “mega church”. I actually think these are fairly weak arguments, and that those who want to defend big churches could do with improving their case.
1. The World Takes Notice of Big
This is of course true to a certain extent. The big sports clubs get the media coverage, the big companies get noticed by the consumers, the big name celebrities get to publicly air their views. And so the argument for big churches runs something like this – our society has written off the church because it is perceived as dying. If people saw that there were many growing churches then the national media would be forced to report that something amazing is happening.
My problem here is not with individuals taking notice of a vibrant local church that they have come into personal contact with, but the naive idea that the media will gushingly enthuse about churches simply because they are big. In fact, I would say that most of the media coverage of large churches is bad news for Christian witness. For example, possibly the biggest UK church was given a damning review by the charities commission over financial mismanagement. Other more sinister examples could be selected from the national news archives. When a big church is reported on not in the context of a scandal, even then the tone of coverage can be highly cynical. I remember reading a few less than glowing reports in the national press on Abundant Life Church in Bradford after one of its members, Gareth Gates, shot to prominence in the UK. When the church is reported on in the media, it is rare indeed for it to be portrayed in a positive light. A mega-church that seems to me to be quite a good one – Mars Hill Church in Seattle – recently found itself on the wrong end of some harsh criticism. Other mega-churches in the USA came under Time Magazine’s microscope recently and didn’t exactly get a glowing endorsement.
We are of course called to be a city set on a hill – a light in the darkness (Matt 5:14-16). But how are we to shine? By simply being big? I don’t think so. Jesus is himself the light of the world. We shine best be being more like him. In doing so we may not get praise from the media, in fact we may be slandered. But we will impact individual lives who are touched by our love in the same way that Jesus impacted the lives of those around him. Let your light so shine among men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. It is by living out the counter-cultural Sermon on the Mount way of life that we will be noticed in the way that Jesus wants us to be noticed.
2. The Early Church was Big
This is another argument for “mega-churches” I have heard a lot. It follows from counting up the numbers of people in Jerusalem mentioned as being saved and calculates that the Jerusalem church was a “mega-church”.
The problem is, we simply don’t have that much information on how exactly they managed these huge numbers. There is good reason to believe that many of their meetings were much smaller affairs in people’s homes. Verses such as Acts 2:46 and Acts 5:42 are sometimes used to argue that they had huge central gatherings of all the Christians in the temple, but they do not necessarily prove that the whole church gathered regularly in large meetings. In fact, they point to regular small gatherings in people’s homes or public places, possibly headed up by leaders who themselves were under the apostles.
Also our modern western idea of what a church looks like has been so shaped by technological advances such as PA equipment and bands, that we can too easily anachronistically read back our own way of doing things into the first century. Their “big meetings” simply could not function in the same style as some of our conference celebrations.
Still, one good thing about the very early church was that for all the differences they may have had amongst them, there was just one church in each town. With our modern multiplicity of denominations, it is very hard to imagine how we could get back to that.
Again I welcome your comments as I think through these things.
What are the Benefits of a Large Church?
Sep 10th
I have been pondering this question for a little while, and before I post up some reflections of my own, I thought I might fire it out for my readers to comment on. Here in the UK we are seeing the emergence of the “mega-church”, and many churches are eager to grow into the thousands in size. But of course this is not without controversy. For example, Eugene Peterson has resolved never to serve a church so large that he could not remember everyone’s names (from the introduction of “The Contemplative Pastor”).
So are large churches really that desirable? Would it be better to have more smaller churches? Here is the question I would like you to answer:
Is it preferable to have 10 churches of 300 or 1 church of 3000 in a town?
I chose 300 as a size for the “small” church as it seems to be a generally agreed on “nice size” for a church. It’s big enough to have the resources to do all of the things a church should be doing, and small enough for people to know the names and faces of everyone else in their church.
At the moment, my thinking is that there is potential for a large church to take advantage of its size to accomplish things that smaller churches cannot do, but this will not come automatically – the church must be deliberate about putting its 10 talents to good use. Also, the large church must find ways to ensure that there is real community amongst its members, even though many will not know each other.
There’s lots more that could be said, but I’ll hold back until I’ve had some feedback on this issue.
Book Review – What on Earth is the Church For? (Dave Devonish)
Sep 2nd
I’ve been reading a variety of books on the subject of the church recently, and this one comes from firmly within the group of churches I am part of – newfrontiers. This group of churches came out of the “house church movement” in the 70s and 80s in the UK, also known as restorationism. It had a big vision for what the church could and should be like, and many left the “old wineskins” of the traditional denominations to be part of the new thing that God was doing. So 20 years on, how will the question “what on earth is the church for” be answered?
Basically, Dave Devonish outlines a vision for the church to be the agent of the kingdom of God. He explains what the kingdom is, and urges us not to be cynical about the future of the church, but to believe that God has plans for a glorious end-time church – a city set on a hill, even though there may also be increased persecution to be faced. Early on in the book he points out that social action – bringing practical love to people in need – is an indespensible aspect of the kingdom. The kingdom is about more than “my personal salvation”. The book also includes an explanation of the “now and not yet” nature of the kingdom.
He moves on to talk about being missional – that mission is not just for the few, but that all believers are caught up in God’s mission. We don’t need “missionary societies” because that is what the church is supposed to be. Sanctification is to be understood as being set apart for God’s mission, rather than a retreat from the world.
After laying the foundations, there are some chapters on the practical outworkings of this. He stresses the importance of church planting, an makes the case for modern-day apostles to play a part in this. He gives examples of social action projects and discusses the practical issues of being “missional” in the workplace and as cell groups. There are a few more chapters devoted to fleshing out the concept of the kingdom, including a helpful look at some of Jesus’ parables of the kingdom.
The final chapters of the book explore the concept of the church as “one new man in Christ” – a community made up of people from diverse cultural backgrounds. In these chapters he looks particularly at non-Western cultures, such as Muslim culture, and the issues of reaching out to such people, including them in a church, and what a church plant in such a culture would look like. There is an honest assessment of the real dangers that will be faced by those who seek to reach such people, and a call to be willing to hear the commission of the Lord to go.
I feel this could be an important book for a group of churches such as my own. It builds on the “restorationist” vision, but with a more prominent emphasis on being “missional” along with the social action aspects of the kingdom, which I think are both necessary. Though people who have read books on the kingdom and missional church will not find anything they have not read before, this book does a great job of introducing those topics to those who are new to it. I also appreciated the way that his look at cultural contextualisation was looking at non-Western cultures, rather than rehashing the huge amount of material discussing the cultural shift from modernism to postmodernism in our own society.
If I were to criticise this book in any way, I would suggest that he sets up the “pastoral / discipling” church as bad in contrast to the “missional” church. Although I know what he is getting at, I think that if a church is not serious about the “pastoral” side of caring for people, then we will not create a loving community that attracts anyone. And equally if we are not serious about the need to “disciple” Christians, then we will not expect many of our church members to catch the vision of being a missional people. And this is what I feel that is needed most after reading a book like this. We need thousands of ordinary Christians to get the “big picture” of what it means for God’s kingdom to come on the earth, and to be so captivated by this vision that they will give themselves wholeheartedly to it. I hope this book gets read by many preachers and small group leaders who will be infectious with its message to those they influence.
