I’ve added a new utility to my software page. It splits MIDI files up at their markers. If you don’t know what that means, you don’t need it.

But here’s the link for those you are interested: MIDI File Splitter.

I have had lots of very interesting conversations over recent weeks on the subject of large churches, mainly prompted by my two recent posts (part 1,part 2). This will be the penultimate one in a four part series, and today I want to think about how a large church can address some of the issues that proponents of small church warn against.

Lost in the Crowd

One issue with a huge church is that of simply not knowing everyone. People can find that they simply don’t know the people they are sitting next to in church, the people who are on the platform leading the meeting, the people who are teaching their children and so on. It can leave people feeling isolated and without a real sense of community.

Obviously a good cell group structure goes a long way to alleviating this problem. However, I also feel that there needs to be opportunities to gather in groups bigger than 10-20, but smaller than 1000s from time to time. Mark Stibbe at St Andrews Chorleywood is promoting the idea of mid-size communities where a subset of the entire church gather together for Sunday worship. The smaller size makes it easier to get to know a wider variety of people, and to develop and use your gifts in an appropriately sized context. I’ve arranged for my cell group to have a joint meeting with three other groups in December to try this idea out for myself.

Developing Gifts

This point follows on from the previous one. A huge church will (quite rightly) make use of their exceptionally gifted preachers and worship leaders for their Sunday gatherings. But this often means that their is no context in which novices can grow and develop their own gifts. Similarly, those growing in charismatic gifts may feel less intimidated by a meeting of 100 people than one of 1000. Again mid-sized communities may be an answer to this. Dave Bish reports that his church of 450 meets as four congregations of 100 which has enabled many more people to develop in a preaching gifting than would otherwise be possible.

Local Impact

Here’s another big issue that large churches must face, and Richard brought it up in his comments. If the church is out of town, or even in a town centre, then what happens to the Christian witness in the villages, council estates and suburbs around? Wouldn’t it be better for there to be a good church in walking distance for the people living in those places, even if it is smaller?

Many leaders of mega-churches have actually acknowledged that there is still a need for such local churches. But the big churches also need to get creative about how they can reach those local communities. This is more than just having a cell group in the area. Perhaps hiring the village hall or a school hall for regular events would be one way that the local residents can see the church as being genuinely interested in their community. My church runs a Kidz Klub in a school in a nearby estate, which has enabled us to build some bridges with that community. A bus also runs to our church from that estate, as many who live their do not have their own transport.

Logistics of Scale

Mega-churches often have the very big – their Sunday meeting, and the very small – their cell groups. But what about other ministries? How do you run a work with 200 teenagers? The dynamic is very different to a smaller church which might have say 30 teenagers. One answer is to take the cell group approach for all these areas. When the mothers and toddlers, or elderly people’s groups get too big, simply find more leaders and spit them. This allows them to retain a sense of community and avoids the lost in the crowd issue, although requires a lot of organisation. The opposite approach is to super-size it, and change the way you run those ministries to a much more front-led model with less one on one interaction from leaders to individuals. To be honest, both approaches have their benefits. I’m not sure one is better than the other, but churches need to carefully think this through to ensure that the quality of ministry is not watered down.

Follow the Money

Another criticism often leveled at big churches is their handling of money. It can be a real hinderance to witness when the local community notices that the church is spending vast amounts of money on its own property (or even its pastor’s birthday party). Large churches, because they have a bigger budget are perhaps more easily tempted into self-indulgent extravagance than a small church struggling to get by would be. In reality, there must be a “big picture” kingdom mentality from the leaders of a church, that desires to see God’s will be done outside their immediate local context if money is to be put to wise use.

The Great Omission?

Dallas Willard’s recent book The Great Omission” (I’ve not read it) asks whether the church has neglected Jesus’ command to make disciples, not just ‘converts’. This is perhaps one of the great dangers of the church growth movement’s emphasis on “evangelism”. It is all to easy for a large church to congratulate itself simply for being large, and having many new converts. But if there is no discipleship going on, then the spiritual health of the church will be extremely poor. It is a shame really, because large churches are usually better resourced than small to implement really good discipleship programs. It just needs someone to champion them, or else the “seeker sensitive” agenda can become the only agenda.

A couple of weeks back, I asked the question whether it is better to have lots of smaller churches or one huge church in a town. This is a controversial issue, and the well thought out responses I got represented both sides of the argument.

I’m planning probably two more posts on this issue, one considering what unique challenges a large church must face, and one on what unique opportunities a large church has. But today I want to consider the two most common arguments I have heard from proponents of the “mega church”. I actually think these are fairly weak arguments, and that those who want to defend big churches could do with improving their case.

1. The World Takes Notice of Big

This is of course true to a certain extent. The big sports clubs get the media coverage, the big companies get noticed by the consumers, the big name celebrities get to publicly air their views. And so the argument for big churches runs something like this – our society has written off the church because it is perceived as dying. If people saw that there were many growing churches then the national media would be forced to report that something amazing is happening.

My problem here is not with individuals taking notice of a vibrant local church that they have come into personal contact with, but the naive idea that the media will gushingly enthuse about churches simply because they are big. In fact, I would say that most of the media coverage of large churches is bad news for Christian witness. For example, possibly the biggest UK church was given a damning review by the charities commission over financial mismanagement. Other more sinister examples could be selected from the national news archives. When a big church is reported on not in the context of a scandal, even then the tone of coverage can be highly cynical. I remember reading a few less than glowing reports in the national press on Abundant Life Church in Bradford after one of its members, Gareth Gates, shot to prominence in the UK. When the church is reported on in the media, it is rare indeed for it to be portrayed in a positive light. A mega-church that seems to me to be quite a good one – Mars Hill Church in Seattle – recently found itself on the wrong end of some harsh criticism. Other mega-churches in the USA came under Time Magazine’s microscope recently and didn’t exactly get a glowing endorsement.

We are of course called to be a city set on a hill – a light in the darkness (Matt 5:14-16). But how are we to shine? By simply being big? I don’t think so. Jesus is himself the light of the world. We shine best be being more like him. In doing so we may not get praise from the media, in fact we may be slandered. But we will impact individual lives who are touched by our love in the same way that Jesus impacted the lives of those around him. Let your light so shine among men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. It is by living out the counter-cultural Sermon on the Mount way of life that we will be noticed in the way that Jesus wants us to be noticed.

2. The Early Church was Big

This is another argument for “mega-churches” I have heard a lot. It follows from counting up the numbers of people in Jerusalem mentioned as being saved and calculates that the Jerusalem church was a “mega-church”.

The problem is, we simply don’t have that much information on how exactly they managed these huge numbers. There is good reason to believe that many of their meetings were much smaller affairs in people’s homes. Verses such as Acts 2:46 and Acts 5:42 are sometimes used to argue that they had huge central gatherings of all the Christians in the temple, but they do not necessarily prove that the whole church gathered regularly in large meetings. In fact, they point to regular small gatherings in people’s homes or public places, possibly headed up by leaders who themselves were under the apostles.

Also our modern western idea of what a church looks like has been so shaped by technological advances such as PA equipment and bands, that we can too easily anachronistically read back our own way of doing things into the first century. Their “big meetings” simply could not function in the same style as some of our conference celebrations.

Still, one good thing about the very early church was that for all the differences they may have had amongst them, there was just one church in each town. With our modern multiplicity of denominations, it is very hard to imagine how we could get back to that.

Again I welcome your comments as I think through these things.

I have been pondering this question for a little while, and before I post up some reflections of my own, I thought I might fire it out for my readers to comment on. Here in the UK we are seeing the emergence of the “mega-church”, and many churches are eager to grow into the thousands in size. But of course this is not without controversy. For example, Eugene Peterson has resolved never to serve a church so large that he could not remember everyone’s names (from the introduction of “The Contemplative Pastor”).

So are large churches really that desirable? Would it be better to have more smaller churches? Here is the question I would like you to answer:

Is it preferable to have 10 churches of 300 or 1 church of 3000 in a town?

I chose 300 as a size for the “small” church as it seems to be a generally agreed on “nice size” for a church. It’s big enough to have the resources to do all of the things a church should be doing, and small enough for people to know the names and faces of everyone else in their church.

At the moment, my thinking is that there is potential for a large church to take advantage of its size to accomplish things that smaller churches cannot do, but this will not come automatically – the church must be deliberate about putting its 10 talents to good use. Also, the large church must find ways to ensure that there is real community amongst its members, even though many will not know each other.

There’s lots more that could be said, but I’ll hold back until I’ve had some feedback on this issue.