Posted on 07/01/2009 4:07:19 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
WHEN PASTOR JOEL OSTEEN STRIDES ONSTAGE at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, klieg lights strobe, the Jumbotron flashes his perfect smile, and sixteen thousand worshipers roar their approval. It is an entrance worthy of a pro athlete or a pop star. Megachurches are often compared to big-box sports-and-entertainment venues, but Lakewood is one of the few that actually inhabits one: In 2003, the nondenominational church moved into the Compaq Center, a twenty-nine-year-old arena that had hosted the NBA Finals, bull-riding championships, and concerts by Paul McCartney and Kiss. The building, which came equipped with state-of-the-art A/V equipment, seemed like the most logical setting for the nation’s largest religious congregation.
And yet, Lakewood and America’s twelve hundred other megachurches—congregations that draw between two thousand and fifty thousand people per weekend—are not simply vast machines for passive spectatorship. Sunday services are convergences of worshipers who spend their weeknights at prayer groups, Bible studies, ministries, and missionary-training sessions. Successful megachurches are like well-run companies, with intricate corporate structures devised to keep each member personally engaged; their pastors are like chief executives, maximizing the productivity of laborers in the evangelism enterprise. Jumbotron notwithstanding, the architectural and organizational tropes of the megachurch are best compared to those of the modern white-collar workplace.
LARGE CHURCHES HAVE EXISTED since a few centuries after Christ, but the modern megachurch has its roots in nineteenth-century British and American Protestantism. This was the era of Christian camp meetings, forerunners of modern revivals that brought hundreds of enthusiastic worshipers out to the countryside, where they passed their afternoons listening to the harangues of charismatic men of God. England’s top evangelical leader in the 1850s was Charles Spurgeon, pastor at a London Baptist church that eventually outgrew its building and moved into a converted music hall. Spurgeon’s self-proclaimed forte was “soul-winning,” and
(Excerpt) Read more at canopycanopycanopy.com ...
It's no coincidence that Saddleback mirrors the top office environments of its day. Warren was a good friend of Drucker’s (the consultant died in 2005), and the books he has written for pastors quote Drucker liberally. Drucker, in turn, was so impressed with the business acumen of evangelical leaders that in 1998 he declared the megachurch “surely the most important social phenomenon in American society in the last 30 years.”
How is something like Lord's Supper handled in a megaplex like Lakewood or a mall like "Willowback". Or Rob't Schuller's original drive-in church? (Assuming, of course, it's done at all.)
Protestant worship services, once consisting almost entirely of preaching, had begun to include more elaborate participatory singing, recited exchanges between congregation and minister, and musical performances.
I suspect the author may not know much about the history of Protestant worship.
When did 2000 become “mega”? Guess you have to define “mega” down in order to get to the author’s number of “megachurches.”
And does a congregation of, say, 1000 that is part of a denomination of over a million or more not qualify as a “megachurch”? Guess you only achieve megosity if you cram everyone in one building.
When did 2000 become “mega”?
Don't know, but I've seen that other places. This guy didn't make it up.
He didn’t, but someone did exactly that. Made it up.
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