Bigger is Better Attitude Losing Support?

Have you seen those big box buildings lately, the ones that house 1-2 thousands adherents every Sunday? At one point they were the glowing pride of some Christian denominations. Nowadays there is a growing rumbling that big churches aren't as efficient as the model would assume.

Back in the 80's all the way into the 2000's there was a growing movement in mostly Protestant evangelical churches to grow by leaps and bounds. That wasn't anything new, but how they did it was.

Most of the churches that housed white collar businessmen used similar strategies that worked for profit maximizing organizations and in turn applied it to the church. That meant organizational structures with boards and CEOs, high value of visions and strategies, and focus on efficiency and development of core ministries.

Church itself became the Sunday show, with little community activity going on during the week, and anything that was happening were distinct 'ministries' designed to meet needs of the faithful in the congregation. Topics became more about feeling good in everyday living, music got hip and happening, communion moved to monthly events if you were lucky.

In Restless Churches by Reginald Bibby (2004), the Canadian version of Gallup or Barna, one of the chapters included leaders from larger single churches who were touting BIGGER as the answer to Western Christianity's existence. The President of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Franklyn Pyles boasted about how big churches were the key to maintaining influence in Canadian culture.

Centre Street Church, the biggest church by attendance in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, legitimized a massive capital expansion by suggesting that it was essentially more efficient to be bigger since your resources could be used to minister to more people.

Their basic math was 200 member church = 2 full time pastors = 1 million in value; meant 10000 people ministered to would take 50 congregations, 150 staff, and $50 million. (This assumes each person ministers to one other person).

The efficient model suggested in the huge box church was: 10000 people for only a 15 million expansion and less than 150 pastors..... that's savings of $35 million dollars.

Fair enough, however, if you're going to play the numbers game for capital campaigns then let's do the same for their 'success rate'. Average attendance has grown marginally at Centre Street Church over the past three years. In 2007 average attendance about 5500 (over four services).

(So keeping with the 1 person per 1 person ministered to equation they would hit 10000 people for under 30 million, still cheaper than the 50 million dollar estimate of 'small churches'.)

What about other numbers? Well check out their total baptisms for 2007--a whopping 97.

I believe baptisms are the most important measurable aspect of a churches capability to draw people into the reign of God versus 'faith decisions' or 'adherents'. Baptising 1.75% of average weekday attendance (by the way, the same 5500 don't show up every week, the turnover is probably at least 30% so the number of baptisms is even lower) from a church that touts efficiency and the numbers game for capital campaigns is absolutely abysmal. Period.

Is bigger really better?

Let's take a minute to look at Centre Street's and other big box church models. For Centre Street they wanted to establish 700 small groups....they think that it's better to have one large church made up of many small groups/churches.

I actually like this idea, in fact most evangelical churches have the same goal. Is it working? Well they are on the way to 700, yet, numbers don't mean a thing when the overall posture of the church is still consumption.

The message on the outside can be 'get into your community', but if the posture inside is actually 'sit and consume' then there will in the very least clarity issues, and at the worst, lazy 'Christians'.

If small groups are defined to merely get Christians together to study materials and Bible, to pray their shopping lists of maladies, to talk about their week, then how does this help the Kingdom of God? Yes, there is an important component of discipleship and training our own, however, small groups on average are the least equipped to accomplish the enormous task they are expected to do.

That's not news to big churches either, they know they're doing a bad job of training leaders in a model of church that relies so heavily on the small group.

So I certainly favour the 'get a bunch of small groups into one place and celebrate". However, if that celebration consists of 5500 people sitting in a theater to watch a music show then a talking dude for 30 minutes, how conducive is this event to support the purpose of the church of 'being sent'? That is how can we expect participants for the redemption of communities when all you do at church is sit, pray, pay, listen, go home?

Surely, if there was success found in economies of scale churches then they'd surely be baptising more than 1.7% of their adherents no? I know other evangelical churches that boast 5% targets....some even have a 'dream' for 10% yet hold nobody accountable when the best church can only do 4%.

Why is this an issue? If the single more important measurement of drawing people into real and committed relationships in Christ is baptism, why aren't we doing it?

My how times have changed....

.

To the credit the C&MA (not sure about Centre Street), there is a renewed realization that the 'bigger better' mentality may not be wisest choice. Since the book was written 5 years ago, denominational leaders have acknowledged that bigger may not be better, and attracting white collar suburbanites may not be the extent of God's redemption mission for the entire city.

Although the model looked efficient, if we use the same measurement rules used to attract donations and apply them to community and spiritual progress there is a big FAIL sign attached.

Perhaps bigger isn't better after all. Maybe small groups and celebrating together as one community united are crucial, and maybe watching a church show with 2000 people isn't the best way to communicate an intent to get down and dirty participating and redeeming our communities.

We're half way there I guess.

[tags]pyles, franklin pyles, C&MA, christian and missionary alliance, centre street, centre street church, attractional, missional, missional church[/tags]