Articles for tag: Megachurches

June 4, 2012

Christian Standard

Better with Time?

By Kent E. Fillinger Neuroscience and social science both suggest we are more optimistic than realistic. On average, we expect things to turn out better than they do. The belief that the future will be much better than the past is known as the optimism bias. To make progress, we need to be able to imagine alternative realities””better ones””and we need to believe we can achieve them.1 Senior ministers, especially those of large churches and megachurches, typically believe their congregation”s best days are ahead of them. But research consistently shows church growth rates diminish as the senior minister”s age and

May 26, 2012

Christian Standard

Money Matters

By Kent E. Fillinger Total giving to U.S. nonprofits rose 7.5 percent in 2011, an increase of $24.2 billion over the 2010 total. Although religious institutions represent the largest sector of this giving, those gifts decreased from 37 percent of the total in 2010 to 36 percent in 2011.1 Therefore, while charitable giving increased overall, religious nonprofits, including churches, received a smaller piece of the pie. A Barna Group and Omni Poll from April 2011 found that “69 percent of American adults said they had reduced their giving to churches/religious centers and other nonprofits within the preceding three months and

May 18, 2012

Christian Standard

Interview with Mike Baker

By Paul Boatman   Mike Baker has been senior pastor at Eastview Christian Church in Normal, Illinois, since 2007. He first served at Eastview as youth pastor, beginning in 1995, and became associate pastor in 2002.   How do you happen to be in ministry? I was called to preach when I was 6 years old. It is all I have ever wanted to do. I did a side trip of 16 years in youth ministry. That let me be part of a team, learning from leaders in growing churches. I still preached””to the youth, occasionally to the whole church.

May 18, 2012

Christian Standard

Multisites & Mergers

By Kent E. Fillinger Multisites are being created and church mergers are happening everywhere. Are they a certain path to church growth? Can they help a church evangelize better than it could from a single campus? What must a church do to successfully launch a second site? Multisites now outnumber megachurches, and the number of multisite churches is growing faster than the number of megachurches, according to a Leadership Network survey.1 One factor driving the increase is church mergers. The same Leadership Network survey found that one in three multisite campuses is the result of a church merger. One notable

May 17, 2012

Christian Standard

How to Follow a Great Act

By Kent E. Fillinger Succeeding a well-known, well-loved, successful, retiring senior minister is a daunting task for virtually anyone. But Aaron Brockett also faced stepping into the ministry of a church with minimal growth for five years prior to a major relocation and building project. Granted, several factors contributed to the lengthy attendance stall at Traders Point Christian Church, Indianapolis, Indiana. “¢ A prolonged relocation process kept the church idling in an undersized facility. “¢ A daughter church grew out of Traders Point”s young adult ministry””a good development that nevertheless cleared the bench of younger, upcoming leaders for a time. “¢

May 17, 2012

Christian Standard

A Call for Passionate Commitment

By Kent E. Fillinger Crossroads Christian Church (Corona, California), has grown from 5,400 to more than 8,400 in average worship attendance during Chuck Booher”s first four years, with annual growth rates of 17 to 21 percent. Beyond that, Crossroads has had the best baptism ratio among megachurches for three consecutive years. Last year, Crossroads baptized people at twice the rate of the average megachurch, based on the number of baptisms per 100 people in attendance. Booher quickly identified the biggest contributor to this recent growth surge as the conscious shift from a “seeker sensitive” approach to a call for passionate

May 16, 2012

Christian Standard

Canyon Creek: Reaching Thousands

By Kent E. Fillinger Not all megachurches are exactly alike. But after studying those on this year”s list, a church growth analyst will see several similarities. This description combines them into one hypothetical story. Managing a growing staff and an expanding ministry is an exciting and sometimes exhausting challenge for megachurch senior minister Brian Roberts. Some days, he”s not sure this is what he originally signed on to do when he came to Canyon Creek Christian Church in 1998. In the beginning, Canyon Creek was a small church with a limited vision. Several faithful families who had moved to a

May 15, 2012

Christian Standard

CreekView: Moving to an Exciting Future

By Kent Fillinger Suppose you could describe most emerging megachurches by combining their characteristics into a description of just one congregation. The story you”d tell would likely look something like the composite picture presented here. Things were going well at CreekView Christian Church. Like many large-size churches (those with an average worship attendance of 500 to 999) it had grown large enough to feel successful but remained small enough for the minister to feel comfortable. He could know most in the congregation, at least by face, if not by name. The church”s building was attractive. The church staff had grown

May 15, 2012

Christian Standard

Megachurches: The 2011 List

Our annual megachurch chart is one of CHRISTIAN STANDARD”s most popular features. This year there are more than 100 churches listed as megachurches (those with 2,000 or more in weekly attendance) or emerging megachurches (those with average attendance of 1,000 to 1,999). Click here to look at the chart of the 2011 Megachurches and Emerging Megachuches.

April 10, 2012

Christian Standard

Gen X Rising (Part 1)

By Rick Chromey The next two decades will produce unimaginable change. By 2040, much of what we now call “modernity” will be history as the digital revolution finalizes its reinvention of commerce, communication, and education. In 2010, Amazon e-books outsold print books, and in 2011, Borders booksellers filed bankruptcy, signaling an end of the age of Gutenberg. The iPad and Kindle are changing how we read. The CD and DVD are dead media (and books are next), while Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter continue to flex digital muscles. In the midst of this cyber revolution stands a generation waiting to

January 6, 2012

Christian Standard

In Just One Year: Pundit Predictions

Nothing challenges us to think about changing times more than the transition from one year to the next. On this first day of 2012, we asked six Christian leaders to think about the church a year from now and to draw a picture of our progress””and our problems””then.  * * * By Paul Boatman To predict what we”ll be saying about the church one year from now is difficult, and it”s easy to see why: The January 2013 evaluators of our predictions will have the benefit of hindsight. With information that was simply not available to us at the dawn

November 7, 2011

Christian Standard

Negatives We Can”t Ignore

By Mark A. Taylor A quick skim of the newspaper on a Friday in September reminds me of other correspondence I had seen earlier in the week. “¢ A Wall Street Journal report quotes the Pope who warned against increasing apathy toward religion in Germany. “We are witnessing a growing indifference to religion in society,” he said in Berlin. “¢ A column appearing a few pages later chronicles and decries efforts of the Obama administration to promote sermonizing by rabbis on such topics as the President”s jobs bill, the impact of budget cuts on the poor, and the country”s need

July 25, 2011

Christian Standard

Innumerable! (Part 1: Starting at the Wrong Place)

By Greg Nettle In the early church, Christology (what we believe about Jesus) determined missiology (what we believe about the church”s mission), which in turn determined ecclesiology (how the church must function). And since Jesus was all about proclaiming his good news so that people could be saved (Luke 19:10), the mission of the followers of Jesus must be to proclaim the good news so that people can be saved (Matthew 28:19). Therefore, the primary function of the church should be to seek and save the lost.1 Unfortunately, around AD 325, the order of things started getting out of whack.

July 17, 2011

Christian Standard

CIY Teams for Movie with Voice of the Martyrs

By Jennifer Taylor Last-minute trips, amazing “coincidences,” and the consistent witness of faithful believers around the world helped Christ In Youth (Joplin, MO) partner with Voice of the Martyrs to create a new feature-length film, Love Costs Every Thing, about the persecuted church. The CIY team started by recording the testimonies of Christians in India. “Then we waited on God,” says Chris Jefferson, director of organizational advancement. “And through my mom I met a Marine, who had married an Iraqi Christian girl, whose brother fled to France after bombs destroyed his church in Iraq. Bill Carroll, a church planter and

June 13, 2011

Christian Standard

What About Christian Churches?

We asked former contributing editor Robert Wetzel to get answers from scholars to a question we have considered in several different ways in recent months: What is the future of our movement of churches? By C. Robert Wetzel ________ The future always grows out of the past, of course, so this week we decided to put the question before three historians: Paul Blowers, Dean E. Walker professor of church history at Emmanuel Christian Seminary, Johnson City, Tennessee. Doug Foster, professor of church history; director, Center for Restoration Studies, Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas. Newell Williams, president and professor of modern

May 2, 2011

Christian Standard

Is the Church in a Recession?

By Kent E. Fillinger Financial experts disagree on the economic status of our country. Have we rebounded from the recession or are we preparing for a second dip? The economic impact has been unevenly felt across the country and in churches. Two years ago, I wrote an article titled “Sustaining Ministry in a Shrinking Economy” for the megachurch issue, so it seemed valuable to assess the current financial state of the churches in our survey by examining several economic indicators. Strap on your financial seat belt, break out your calculator, and get ready to review a detailed financial portfolio of

April 22, 2011

Christian Standard

Christmas or Easter?

By Kent E. Fillinger Why do churches pay more attention to Christmas than to Easter? If you surveyed a group of church leaders, the common response probably would be, “Evangelism””we want to create welcoming environments for people to bring guests, and Christmas is an optimal opportunity to do so.” Really? Businesses measure “return on investment”””whether a product or venture yields a return that warrants the investment required to offer it. From the standpoint of a return on investment, Easter consistently dominates Christmas in attendance. For example, the average megachurch experienced a 74 percent increase in attendance on Easter, compared with

April 22, 2011

Christian Standard

¿Hablas Espanol?

By Kent E. Fillinger The odds are good that the face of your neighborhood has changed in the last decade, regardless of where you live, because “between 2000 and 2007 alone, the number of Hispanics grew in 2,991 of America”s 3,141 counties.”1 A recent Pew Research study said that “using 2009 population estimates from the American Community Survey, Hispanics accounted for 51 percent of the nation”s population growth since the 2000 Census. From 2000 to 2010, the nation”s population grew 9.7 percent. From 2000 to 2009 (the last year available), the Hispanic population grew 37 percent.”2 Another study said by

April 20, 2011

Christian Standard

The Church Size Matrix (Part 2)

By Kent E. Fillinger The Church Size Matrix looks at six types of organizational change that take place as a church grows. In Part 1 of this article (April 10/17), we looked at two of these changes, Orientation and Structure. This week we consider the remaining four. Minister”s Role In his book One Size Doesn”t Fit All, Gary McIntosh wrote, “As the size of a church increases, the perception of a pastor changes from an emphasis on relational skills, to functional skills, to leadership skills.” It is essential, therefore, to understand the progression of roles required by the senior minister

April 19, 2011

Christian Standard

The Church Size Matrix (Part 1)

By Kent E. Fillinger Less than 20 years ago, a megachurch was an anomaly. Today there are roughly 1,500 Protestant megachurches””56 from among the Christian churches and churches of Christ, representing a 250 percent increase from the 16 megachurches recorded in 1997, the first year Christian Standard reported megachurch attendances. But while the number of megachurches has dramatically increased during the past decade, the size of the average church has not changed since 1998. The median conservative Protestant church in the United States has 117 regular participants in worship on Sunday mornings. The median refers to the point at which

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