People have been writing about the end of the “megachurch” for years. The funny thing is the research continues to confirm that megachurches are healthy and more and more people are attending them.
Prior to Thanksgiving, the Leadership Network released their “2010 Large Church Economic Outlook Report“. The report compiled research from their survey of large churches and found:
“Generally, the larger the church, the more likely it is to have experienced an increase in attendance and giving from 2009 to 2010.”
In very difficult economic times when you might expect “big church” to experience the same downturn as “big business”, just the opposite has been the case. Bigger churches are healthier than ever.
This comes on the heals of Outreach Magazine finding that the fastest-growing churches are growing faster than they have in the past. And, the Hartford Institute for Religion Research documenting the number of megachurches growing from 350 in 1990 to 600 in 2000 to over 1,400 that they’re tracking today.
It’s interesting to me that the voices talking about the decline of the megachurch seem to get more vocal as the number of big churches continue to increase. Have you noticed that?
With that in mind, over the next couple of weeks I’m going to share why I think big churches keep getting bigger…even though some people don’t want them to.
Before I share my opinion, what’s yours?
