Dr Paul Allen

The number of very large churches continues to increase, as our graphic dramatically illustrates. And within that group, the biggest churches continue to get bigger. In the past I’ve written about everything from sanctuary sizes (very few new ones over 5,000) to  the first megachurch (start with Pentecost when “about 3,000” were converted, per Acts 2:41) to global megachurches ( Korea and Nigeria are currently leading). But what about the people who attend really big churches? Fellow researcher Scott Thumma and I surveyed some 25,000 of them, with some fascinating discoveries: Nearly two-thirds of attenders have been at these churches 5 years or less. Many attenders come from other churches, but nearly a quarter haven’t been in any church for a long time before coming to a megachurch. New people almost always come to the megachurch because family, friends or coworkers invited them. Fifty-five percent of megachurch attenders volunteer at the church in some way (a high

English: Inside Hillsong Church, Sydney (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) There are millions of people in smaller congregations across the country who live with a feeling that they are failures because their church isn’t as big as the megaplex congregation down the street. This is sad and should not be the case. A global survey conducted by Christian Schwartz found that smaller churches consistently scored higher than large churches in seven out of eight qualitative characteristics of a healthy church. A more recent study of churches in America , conducted by Ed Stetzer and Life Way Ministries, revealed that churches of two hundred or less are four times more likely to plant a daughter church than churches of one thousand or more. The research seems to even indicate that the pattern continues—the smaller the size of the church the more fertile they are in planting churches . It pains me that so many churches and leaders suffer from an inferiority complex when in fact they could very

Image via Wikipedia The church is medium-sized in attendance, yet, on paper the membership roll is even larger. Its solo pastor is a frustrated man. There are some good days, and certainly some fine people who encourage him, but he’s frustrated because the job God called him to do just cannot be done.  He has many people to tend to, numbers of which are missing, and even those who are present are more than any average man could possibly care for—that is,  really  care for. So, this good-hearted, spiritually-minded pastor lapses into frustration over his inability to do much more than put out fires. And there are plenty of those. He tries to project the view that he is a true shepherd of all the people. He speaks in warm terms to those attending on Sundays , and to all of the people through the church’s regular publications.  The website shows him as if he were the best friend and confidant of all the members, constantly attending to their spiritual growth , mentoring, guiding, a