Posted on 07/12/2005 7:31:32 AM PDT by ppaul
Top 50 Most Influential Churches
The 2005 survey was sent to 2,000 church leaders with the goal of ranking the nation’s fastest growing churches and churches with more than 2,000 weekend attendance. The 127 churches nominated for the 50 Most Influential Churches survey were located in 32 states and represented 27 affiliation groups and/or denominations. The term affiliation is used to include networks of unaffiliated, independent churches.
(Excerpt) Read more at thechurchreport.com ...
Saddleback Church is the largest Southern Baptist church in North America (makes one proud to be a baptist). And Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life is an incredible book that I think everyone should read.
Go Calvary Chapel!
There are apparently no influential Catholic churches in the US? Hard to believe.
Having attended Saddleback (among many other southern California churches), Saddleback is by far the best one out here, so far... and I like the simplicity with which he started, a few people gathered in a condominium (not even a house). And God blessed...
With what I have read about, Rick Warren, Osteen, Schuler, etc, I feel many of those guys are stuffed suit blow-dries and I pray for them.
The churches are "unaffiliated, independent" churches. At least that's what the article said.
This is NOT about real churches but,.....
....The Top 50 Most Influential RECREATION-CENTERS in America
No Offence only Fun allowed.....
/religious 'Campus'.....
British 'Religion' is Everywhere Growing....
and GAS prices are up to 'friendly' levels now too....
/sarcasm
the article discussed "fastest growing" i haven't heard of a catholic church ever being referred to as "fast growing" something about the fact that catholics don't tend to be as out and about as the more evangelical churches, who tend to encourage "bring your friends, bring your family, bring your co-workers, bring some bum off the street!"
Are any of these liberal "mainline" churches?
So how many of them are plastic-haired, snake-fondling money-grubbers with troweled-on makeup?
They are so sold on rapture theology that she can't make any progress with them at all.
Of course she is the only Catholic on the bus, and there are about 20 of them.
Er, deny Infant Baptism? I will. I was born and raised Catholic, learned the mass as an altar boy in Latin, stayed until I started reading the Bible on my own.
Granted these churches are independent and non-Catholic, but don't tout infant baptism as a crux of faith.
AMEN!
However, they forgot OUR favorite... Jon Courson
embarrassed? not want to be on??
I'm Lutheran and I know about #19. He is a leader of Christians and someone I would follow into heaven.
He's dead, yet I'd still rather listen to him than any of these other bloviators.
One would have to question the criteria that was used in determining what churches are influential. The churches pastored by John MacArthur, Tony Evans, Jack Graham, and Chuck Swindoll are not counted in the top 50 even though the pastors have extensive radio teaching ministries. All four are on the more conservative end of evangelicalism. Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, and Robert Schuller are not inerrantists and tend to "easy believism." It is hard to imagine any mainline churches, Crystal Cathedral excepted, being influential except within their own denomination. Evangelicalism and mainline Protestantism travel in separate worlds, with as wide a gulf as existed 50 years ago between Protestantism and Catholicism.
Actually from the list, most of those pastors are solid bible teachers from various denominations. It's not the name it and claim it bunch.
You can still get replays of Dr. J. Vernon McGee at www.ttb.org
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