Megachurched-Introduction

Here is the introduction to my book, Megachurched. Please feel free to comment on the piece and let me know how I can make it stronger. You can also visit megachurched.com/wordpress and provide your email for updates, articles and survey covering each chapter that is released. Thanks for the read!!!

The crowd fills the seats, silent in anticipation. The upper balcony is also packed with faces of all cultures, their attention steered toward the stage.

The lights dim as a light twinkle of piano echoes from the sound system. The room explodes with an aura of fluorescent lights; pink mixed with purple, pulsing to the drummer’s driving beat. The show has begun.

This scene could exist at any rock concert in the country. But we are not here to see U2 or Bruce Springsteen (although they provide their own religious experience). Rather, we are here to see Andy Stanley, lead pastor of North Point Community Church, located in Alpharetta, Georgia, a wealthy suburb of Atlanta.

Andy is the son of Charles Stanley, who runs his own megachurch in downtown Atlanta. Yet Charles’ son draws more crowds than his father, over 30,000 average members per week according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, who runs a website tracking megachurch membership numbers.

A church is officially dubbed “mega” once it reaches 2,000 average weekly members. Stanley’s church eclipsed that magic number fifteen times over. But even more extraordinary than the raw numbers is the amount of young people populating the service. Twentysomethings-many with beards, piercings, and visible tattoos-clap along with the music or raise their hands to the sky, eyes closed as they lose themselves in the moment.

The show initially draws this large number to North Point, especially among the younger crowd. Not only do they dig the music, but also the impressive amount of technology involved to stage a performance of this magnitude.

A cameraman glides above our seats as the band finishes their set with a cathartic crash of the cymbals. The captured footage is simultaneously beamed to the television studio, also located within the church. Later, the footage is edited and streamed on North Point’s website, where viewers across the world can access the service. Across from the band is a mixing station that sits atop a raised stage with two additional tripod-mounted cameras on either side.

The scene is as bewildering as it is interesting. “Is this really church?” I ask myself. I always associated church with ritual and repetition. Yet what I witness appears to be more of a performance, although a well-produced and impressive one. I am unsure of how someone can find inner peace with cameramen flying overhead and Jumbotrons beaming images of a rock band on either side of the stage.

Regardless, it appears that the congregants are indeed experiencing something special, evident by the ecstatic looks on their young faces, some with tears streaming down their cheeks. Maybe I was missing something.

So why am I here? How did a Catholic-raised, Catholic-schooled kid from Boston, grandson of a minister of a small Congregational church, come to find himself at one of the largest denominational churches in the country?

To answer that question, we have to flash back years earlier, when Stanley’s North Point, or megachurches in general, were non-existent to me. I was visiting some friends in Liverpool, England during the summer of 2004. While on vacation I picked up a weekend edition of The Independent, a well-known British newspaper. Flipping through the pages, a feature in the Lifestyles section caught my eye. The article concerned megachurch pastor and best-selling author Joel Osteen, who heads Lakewood Church in Houston. Lakewood is the largest church in the country, with over 40,000 members attending weekly.

Around the time of the article, Lakewood had just purchased The Compaq Center, where the Houston Rockets formerly played basketball. Rather than alley-oops and foam fingers, the arena’s audience would now cheer for Jesus instead of Jeremy Lin.

The article opened my eyes to an aspect of America that I never knew existed. Of course Texas, and the American south in general, has always worn their religion on their sleeves. So it was no surprise that their churches would dwarf the ones in my native New England, no longer known as a hothouse for Protestantism, at least in this super-sized form. But the size of Osteen’s church was surprising to me, if only because I had never heard of it before. I had seen Osteen’s smiling pearly whites on bookshelves for a few years, but I always assumed he was a self-help author, in the Dr. Phil mold of pop culture. Little did I know that Osteen was the most popular, arguably most influential, and certainly most divisive, preacher in the nation. I needed to know more and I needed, most of all, to go there myself.

When an Evangelical friend mentioned a year later that she would be visiting family in Georgia and would be attending a megachurch in the area, I signed on before she could finish asking me. At that point, a book on the topic wasn’t even a thought. I simply wanted to experience the culture and see what it was all about.

And that is what brought me to North Point, the second largest church in the country. I was finally experiencing the megachurch.

Yet while the band played on, with the song lyrics displayed on the large screens, all I could think was, “When are they going to get to the church?” The “mega” was verified for sure. Yet a half-hour into the service and all I could say was that we were basically seeing a rock show.

I am starting to tune out. But with the final note barely faded, Stanley takes the stage to whoops and cheers.

If the band was only the warm-up act, Stanley is the headliner.

Prior to writing and researching this book, I was largely ignorant of Evangelicals. My main source of information was the occasional newspaper article about some scandal or an Evangelical gathering together to oppose same-sex marriage or abortion. Because of this, I expected a politically-loaded, confrontational sermon from Stanley. Maybe he would denounce abortion or criticize the secular members of Congress. Honestly, I was looking for something juicy. So I was surprised when Stanley launched into a reading from Kings and delivered a completely ideology-free sermon. It appeared that, far from urging political involvement, Stanley’s message was simply to trust in God and never lose faith. Despite the light show and other high-profile features, Stanley’s message was overwhelmingly conventional.

I left the service feeling a bit deflated. I was happy to know that megachurches were not the bigoted dens of arch-conservative proselytizing that they are sometimes portrayed to be in the media. But I was bothered by the simplification of the Bible passage. I wanted to be inspired, moved spiritually. Stanley’s passage choice was a perfect opportunity to connect Biblical issues with modern-day problems, yet he fell back on the generalized point that everything will work out fine as long as you have faith in God.

Was I expecting too much? Perhaps. Admittedly, one day of attendance is not enough to fully experience what the church has to offer. But what about the others in attendance? Surely, they started somewhere. So what brought them back to the church a second time? What attracted them initially? These were the questions that launched the idea of this book.

Megachurches are growing at an accelerating pace. The recession of 2008 had no apparent impact on megachurch growth- one of the few sectors of the economy unaffected- despite the church’s immense costs in building size and land. According to the Hartford Institute of Religion Studies, megachurches increased their numbers by 47% from 2005–2011, or 8% per year. Additionally, single megachurches have expanded into “multi-site” churches because of size limitations. These multi-site churches have grown by 70% over the past five years.

Along with the physical size, megachurches have expanded the variety of services that they provide. It is not unusual to see a modern-day megachurch provide everything from day-care and 12-step programs, to weekend yoga classes and movie premieres. Much like a Walmart Supercenter, combining grocery shopping, health clinics and retail shopping, the megachurch is a way to combine all of one’s spiritual and mental needs under one (gigantic) roof.

But this begs the question: With this need to expand be everything to everyone, have these churches subsequently watered down the fundamental tenets of their actual doctrine?

The answer, as is the answer to most loaded questions, is a (somewhat disappointing) yes and no. It is impossible, not to mention irresponsible, to lump all megachurches into a single category. In researching and personally visiting these churches, I witnessed a multitude of different interpretations and methods, from the money-grubbing huckster- familiar to most of secular society from sensationalist news reports- to the humble, earnest preacher, who saw his congregation grow beyond his control, initially due to the powerful and honest message being delivered.

So what is it that drives an increasing amount of people into the pews (or folding chairs) of these 2,000 plus member churches? Could it be that our current generation, awash in giant, maze-like department stores like Target and Home Depot, are simply used to finding themselves in oversized places? Or is it the quintessential American philosophy of “Go big or go home,” the idea that if something is going to get better, it has to get bigger?

Certainly these reasons, among many others, contribute to American’s level of comfort in religious institutions of this size. But size itself does not adequately explain why Americans are increasingly becoming “megachurched.” After all, if you want to wander around a giant building, why not spend your Sunday morning at an actual Home Depot?

Rather, it is apparent that the prevalent message heard from many megachurches is one that connects with our present culture, vaguely dubbed the “post-modern age.” (I know, I hate it too!). We would be better described as the “Me” age. Ours is a culture where the self is worshipped, where knowing God has been replaced by knowing the person in the mirror. Selflessness has turned into selfishness and, perversely, is seen as a virtue, a path to ultimate wisdom.

This turn inward, which can be traced to development in the 1960s, can certainly have some positive effects. It is difficult to establish deep relationships and affect positive change if one does not know themselves. However, the current level of inward thinking has increased nearly to the point of narcissism. As a result, universal truths have been tossed aside in favor of moral relativism, the idea that whatever is good for the individual must be right. This has created a society where the difference between good and bad has been blurred, where people seek momentary satisfaction and instant gratification opposed to long-term commitment and lasting relationships.

In the endless search for inner contentment our culture produced a generation with perhaps the greatest level of self-esteem. Meanwhile, we don’t appear to be any happier in any real sense. Consider that one in ten Americans are prescribed antidepressants each year.

Our social world is one that is unstable and constantly changing. Gone are the days when you would stay with the same company for forty years, collect a pension, then retire in the same house, surrounded by the same friends, family and community. Globalization and an increasingly competitive economy have uprooted individuals and virtually reverted us back to the nomadic lifestyle, except with bigger televisions. Instead of chasing food like our ancestors, we chase the scarce jobs so that we can live a materially comfortable lifestyle.

At the same time, rapid technological change enables us to learn of multiple “truths” by way of the democratized internet, which empowers anyone with a high-speed connection to discover their own personal version of how the world works.

Here is where we begin to see a massive redirection of thought. The accepted truths, morals, and traditions of the past progressed to an ever evolving, amorphous, sometimes contradictory nature of today’s information flood.

So it is no surprise that in addition to our physical lives becoming unstable, so have our spiritual lives. “Truth” has become a relative term, as have “morals” in the age of the post-modern.

Nowhere is this relativity more apparent than in the world of religion. Ask a twenty-something about religion and you will often hear the familiar response that “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.” Young people have largely turned their backs on organized religion, viewing it as an archaic vestige of another time when people simply accepted an explanation and did not question what they were told.

As a result, many young Americans embraced forms of spirituality that formerly existed on the fringes of western society. We see examples of this in the embrace of eastern-influenced spirituality, such as Kabbalah and yoga .

But at the same time, these new forms of spirituality are largely practiced in a superficial manner, not in the traditional mode of worship, but rather used as a way to complement their already established worldview. This casual approach produced a cross-pollination of beliefs, with spiritual seekers patching together their favorite aspects from a variety of religions.

Taboos against inter-religious marriages have also declined over time, further contributing to this religious patchwork.

The kaleidoscope of mixed religions makes sense in a country like the United States, which formed upon the pretense of religious freedom and the welcoming of different cultures. It could be viewed as a natural development to our national psyche that we would eventually see this blending of different religions.

And this is not a bad thing. Possessing knowledge of different religions often results in an increased tolerance of other cultures and ways of thinking. We are far away from the brutality of the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades, possibly because of this embrace, or least tolerance, of the “other.”

However, there is perhaps a sinister side effect of having too much relativity and lack of concrete truths. Our culture’s wavering view on spirituality encourages religion to be more of a convenience rather than a duty. If one disagrees with an aspect of their newly adopted religion, they are free to simply ignore it if it doesn’t conform to their worldview. If this cherry-picking continues to its logical end, then religion as a whole could someday disappear, dismissed as unnecessary in a world where religion is customizable, just like our cars and phones.

Which brings us back to the growth of the megachurch. Just as society has become disenchanted with labels and sought greater autonomy in decision making, churches attract these spiritual seekers by shedding their own labels. As we will later see in greater detail, megachurches have increasingly run under the “Non-Denominational” label, shedding the burdensome classifications that post-moderns find so constricting.

In seeking new converts, these “seeker friendly” megachurches have adopted the language and idioms of popular culture in order to appease those that are on the fence about church. Bill Hybels of Chicago’s Willow Creek dubs these fence-sitters the “Unchurched Harrys.” These Unchurched Harrys (and Marys, in the feminine) characterize themselves by possessing at least some interest in spirituality, yet lack a commitment to a single creed. They are the groups most aggressively sought by seeker churches, due to their wandering, free-agent status.

The general dogma of many megachurches looks a lot like our culture’s disposition. Ancient scripture is replaced with self-help books, as if Jesus were not a stern nonconformist warning the world of their wicked ways, but rather as a gentle Dr. Phil type, the kind of guy who watches the game with you on Sunday and listens patiently as you talk about your girl problems.

As opposed to focusing on sin and redemption or indiscriminate love toward others, scriptural interpretations have turned inward. This reinforces the idea that if a message does not directly relate to the listener, then there is no reason to listen. Largely because of this concept, the message is often watered down in order to attract the short attention spans of our media-saturated culture. Uncomfortable truths are tossed aside and questionable behavior, such as conspicuous consumption, becomes accepted, even encouraged in a world with no moral absolutes. Critics claim that rather than condemn immoral acts, modern churches adapt to culture for the purposes of growth by any means.

This attitude of “ends justifying the means” begs the question: Is it worth it? Is growing the church physically worth potentially compromising its message? What then defines progress in terms of spirituality?

What is more important, quality or quantity? This question could just as well relate to our modern economy, where we ceaselessly seek “economic growth” or a rise in GDP at the expense of environmental degradation, less time spent with family and friends, as well as the need for constant consumption.

I honestly did not expect to encounter these issues when studying the growth of the megachurch. Initially, I was simply curious. I thought it was slightly strange, different and more enthusiastic way of “doing church” than I was used to. I never could have imagined the amount of cultural considerations that paved the way for the megachurch and the changes within the Christian landscape.

Soon after deciding to write the book, I thought of my grandfather, Harry Foster, who died in 2004 after serving as head pastor of The Congregational Church of Chelmsford for thirty years. I remember Sundays, going to his house, located on a hill above the church. In the afternoon, my brother and I would run through the labyrinth-like halls of the church, sometimes shoot a few baskets in the gym. To us, at that young age, this was our version of a megachurch.

Everyone in the church, in fact everyone in North Chelmsford, knew Reverend Foster. Not because he was on television or because of his website or because his services featured a rocking band, but rather because he was a major part of the community. Whether running Camp Weetamoo in the summer, coaching a basketball team, or marrying a local couple, Reverend Foster was everywhere.

I remember his wake. The air was joyous, with relatives who hadn’t seen each other in years catching up, marveling at how much the young ones grew and how others stayed the same. It was galaxies away from the dour mood of most wakes.

I noticed a middle aged man talking with my uncles as they readied themselves to carry my grandfather’s casket. Curious as to why this man I had never seen before would be a pallbearer, I asked my mother who he was. “That’s Jimmy,” my mother responded casually. “He used to live with papa when he was a kid.” I learned that my grandfather had taken in a kid named Jimmy, who had come from a broken home and needed a stable home. My head buzzed with confusion and a heightened respect for my grandfather. For the past week, I heard many stories of Harry’s selflessness, his embrace of community, but I had no idea that this man, this minister, would take a neighborhood kid into his home and ask for nothing in return. I was speechless. At the wake we learned that Jimmy was now a local school teacher, a football coach and had a family of his own. Seeing Jimmy so positively impacted by my grandfather made me proud, but it also made me realize the communal importance of a good Christian.

I thought about the deeper roots of Christianity; what it means beyond the sacraments, the rituals, and the politics. My grandfather displayed the characteristics of a true follower of Christ, one who put others in front of himself. I wondered if pastors still performed selfless acts such as these, particularly in the new super-sized version of Christianity we see in megachurches. I would eventually learn that it still does happen, although the positive news rarely spreads to the masses. Negativity always attracts more page views.

Some claim that our country has lost its way not just politically, but also spiritually. Christianity, at least as it’s portrayed in the media, now represents hardline views and intolerance. Our skeptical generation turned away from Christianity and organized religion as a whole, preferring a more tolerant spirituality, more in line with their progressive world.

But what if Christianity were associated with people like Reverend Foster, people who sacrifice their own comfort for others? Would we continue to see the same ideological clashes that we see today?

I became interested in the type of message being presented by the biggest churches and what effect it was having on our culture as a whole.

So we decided to hit the road.

I decided to travel the country and visit as many megachurches as I could. I would talk to numerous congregants, plenty of preachers and a host of interesting characters along the way.

This book is based on the information gathered from the trip, along with additional sources related to the history and current cultural impact of megachurches and “seeker” churches.

The book is organized into two sections: The first primarily deals with the causes of megachurch growth. The second examines the cultural impact, both positive and negative, from a country rapidly becoming “megachurched.”

Between the two sections, the book is divided into ten chapters, each encompassing a different aspect of either growth or effect.

Chapter one covers the history of the modern megachurch, which concurrently runs along with the decline of mainline protestant denominations. The collapse of mainline groups such as the Presbyterians and Methodists provides a sobering look at the consequences of trying to adapt to mainstream culture without regarding its members’ points of view.

Chapter two provides the first stops of the megachurch road trip; McLean Bible Church and Church of the Redeemer. The experience reveals an ultra-modern church, adept at connecting on a technological level. The two churches show how evangelism is no longer targeted at lower-class, rural communities, but more often engages emerging, upper-middle class suburbs.

Chapter three gives an overview of the various styles that the most popular megachurches use to attract members. These churches incorporate lavish stage shows and emotional sermons, blurring the line between religion and entertainment.

Chapter four focuses on the “prosperity gospel,” a theological point of view popularized through the books of Joel Osteen, but utilized by many others across the country. The basic idea is that God wants you to be successful and as long as you put your faith in God, then prosperity will come your way.

Chapter five concludes the first section with a look into the management styles that pastors use to run their churches. Often the most popular megachurches operate similar to that of a modern corporation, with some even employing those with MBA degrees to help grow their churches. This style was popularized by Bill Hybels’ Willow Creek outside Chicago, along with Hybels’ Willow Creek Association, which provides guidance for other churches looking to grow in size.

Chapter six begins the second section by charting the effects of religion on the political landscape. Scandals attract headlines and there is no exception when it comes to megachurches. Most people assume that megachurches are a hotbed of political activity based upon the stories popping up in the mainstream press. Through our visits, we find that the relationships between megachurches and politics are more subtle than people tend to give credit. We investigate the major figures of the megachurch world and their outsize influence on American public policy.

Chapter seven concerns the effect of promoting entertainment and celebrity in the name of attracting converts. It is no secret that our society obsesses over the lives of celebrities. Many of the most popular megachurch pastors have become celebrities in their own right, with their books on the nation’s bestseller lists and television programs that attract millions of viewers. Is this an earnest attempt at converting our broken culture or a spiritual sellout designed to enrich their own selves?

Chapter eight looks at how the meaning of “community” has changed over time and whether the megachurch encourages a different type of community or simply destroys the classically understand definition of community.

As stated in previous pages, our culture has become more concerned with the self. In chapter nine, we look at the effects of this “me” culture and whether it can be reconciled with Christianity, a religion that traditionally demands obedience and humility.

Chapter ten examines the impact of a culture that is always seeking to “supersize” their way of life. We assume that desiring growth is a natural part of our world, whether we are discussing megachurches, the economy or business. We will look at the potential negative effects that result from always wanting more.

Megachurches proved to be more varied and subtle than I could have ever imagined. No two megachurches seemed the same, as their mission and tactics differed among each visit. Much like Christianity itself, it is difficult to provide a single definition of a megachurch, especially as they continually evolve in modern times. Throughout the book, we will see the different ways in which megachurches adapt to the ever evolving concept of community and what this means to the future of Christianity.

Read on to chapter one here