Sep 30 2008
Congregants find mega churches offer more personal worship and sense of community than smaller churches
Congregants find megachurches offer more personal worship and sense of community than smaller churches, according to a study released yesterday that challenges the conventional wisdom that some large churches are too big to offer a spiritual experience.
Researchers at the Institute for Studies of Religion, who defined megachurches as those with more than 1,000 worshipers, found that their members were twice as likely to have friends in the congregation than members of small churches. They also displayed a higher level of personal commitment to the church — attending services and tithing more often than small-church members.
Megachurches are often criticized for having “all sorts of flaws,” said Rodney Stark, co-director of the institute, based at Baylor University. “They’re big . . . they’re kind of cold, they have kind of like theater audiences — all wrong.”
The findings come on the heels of a survey released last week that found that megachurches’ three-decade expansion shows no signs of abating. That study, of churches with weekend worship attendance of 2,000 or more, found that the average megachurch’s attendance grew 50 percent in the past five years.
Read more here.
[From me]
I guess bigger is better according to this survey. Although I read just last week that many of the mega churches are shrinking. So which survey do you believe? I guess if I had my choice I’d rather be in a larger setting than smaller. Most of the mega churches that I’ve observed up close seemed to have a keen sense of ownership in doing the ministry of the church than smaller ones. But I’m sure that is not true everywhere.
What do you think?
