May 2001, Volume 13, No. 05

The case of the very large church

Lyle Schaller, in his recent book, "The Very Large Church: New Rules for Leaders," tells of the school he attended as a youth, a one room schoolhouse much like the 150,000 other such schools at the time. He goes on to relate the changes in education and how school buildings have grown. The one room country school is very hard to find these days and the vast majority of children are educated in large buildings with many teachers per grade.

Likewise we can observe the changes which have taken place in the way we shop. Most folks went to the local corner store 50 years ago to get what they needed. Actually they went to a bunch of local stores, depending on what they were shopping for. They may have gone to the drug store, the meat market, the grocery store, or the clothing store, while the milkman brought milk to the house. Today people typically go to the supermarket for one stop shopping.

The culture we live in today is different than it was when most of our churches were founded. United Methodist Churches by and large more closely resemble the one room school house or the local store. It is no wonder that so many of them are declining, while megachurches are thriving and on the increase. The very large multi-service, multi-program church more closely fits the lifestyles of so many of those people who are not otherwise already plugged into the traditional neighborhood church.

Conventions vary so we will use Lyle Schaller's when defining church size categories. He classifies those with attendance (preferable to membership) of 350 to 750 to be large churches, those from 751 to 1800 to be very large and those above 1800 to be megachurches. Research Office statistics indicate only 28 United Methodist Churches fall into the megachurch category, with 259 in the very large church slot. 99% of UMC's have less than 668 in attendance. Less than 5% of all UMC's have over 350 in worship. To add further perspective, one half of the 36,085 UMC's (1999 data) have less than 55 in attendance.

Recognizing the increasing role of the large church a number of United Methodist leaders have become involved with The Large Church Initiative of the General Board of Discipleship. The committee is chaired by Rev. Bob Pierson, of Christ Church in Tulsa. This group recently presented a fine conference on the large church in one of the outstanding churches in the country, the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in the Kansas City area. Started from scratch in 1990 by Senior Pastor Adam Hamilton, this church now runs over 6000 in attendance. Only Windsor Village UMC Houston may still have greater attendance within the denomination. (Windsor village is quite a story in its own right, having grown from 25 members in 1982 when Kirbyjon Caldwell began as pastor.) Frazier Memorial in Montgomery, AL has 4600 in attendance, followed by several churches in the 3000 range.

When first exposed to the phenomenal success of Church of the Resurrection, one usually wants to know how they did it. Clearly a combination of factors is involved, but when the Senior Pastor responds to this question, he is quick to note that the foundation for all that happens there is prayer. This is affirmed as one visits the website: http://www.cor.org Another key factor is the absolute commitment of the staff and laity to the missional purpose "to create a Christian community where non-religious and nominally-religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians." Others who have observed COR’s growth credit leadership, vision, risk taking, and helpful demographics as well.

Two trends in church life today may contain a suggestive convergence. The first is the well-documented decline in the mainline denominations. The second is the increasing presence of very large churches and megachurches on the religious landscape in this country, along with the corresponding observation that American lifestyle issues encourage this trend. Leaders of The Large Church Initiative and Lyle Schaller believe that one answer to the decline in the UMC is to develop more United Methodist very large churches and megachurches. As the above statistics indicate, this has not been a priority to date.

Denominational leadership has enormous pressure to not emphasize the very large church, mostly because the distribution of churches is so immensely skewed toward small churches. These all have a vote, so to speak, and are usually wanting attention and help in dealing with their own issues. The vast majority of these have zero potential of becoming a very large church, often because they do not want to. Leaders face a challenge in casting the vision and making the case within their conferences for the very large church.

The increased emphasis on the very large church is obviously not intended to ignore all those other churches. Small and medium churches are still relevant in most locations. In many communities, the UMC is the only witness there. The purpose here is to make the case that there is a valid, and even a critical need, to bolster very large churches and to develop more of them. Many conference staff with responsibility for church development, are stating that they view new church starts form the perspective that those churches need to become very large churches. This is in part to justify the enormous costs of starting new churches, but also with the vision of seeing the relevance today of such churches. Part of the equation is for medium to large churches to catch the vision and grow. It can happen. Christ Church, Tulsa doubled their attendance in 10 years in a location that was not conducive to doing so.

As one District Superintendent near Atlanta said, "If we don’t put a new church here, with a mind to grow, the Baptists will." If the UMC does not, someone will. Let’s be the one.

© Copyright 2001, Office of Research, General Board of Global Ministries
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