Main Menu
Home
FAQs
Links
Contact Us
Search
Church News
Unity Newsletter

Sign up for our occasional newsletter when new content is added or important events occur within the Restoration Movement.(Registered Users are automatically subscribed)






Mega-Churches PDF Print E-mail
User Rating: / 0
PoorBest 
News - Current Events
Contributed by Phil Spadaro   
Thursday, 12 April 2007
The Christian Standard, a publication of the Christian Churches, has a series of articles (listed below) about mega-churches within their family of congregations. Statistics and ideology are also included with the write ups. Outreach Magazine sited 8 Christian Churches / churches of Christ within their top 100 edition for growth. The articles indicate a flexible attitude toward innovative techniques and strategies to win the lost while not compromising core convictions concerning theology and salvation doctrine.


The churches of Christ and the ICOC have both had their heydays in the 1950s and 1990s respectively. What can each branch of the Restoration Movement learn from the other? What benefits are there to cooperative efforts in reaching out to the lost?

MEGACHURCHES: Why Count? by Kent Fillinger

MEGACHURCHES: By the Numbers by Kent Fillinger

MEGACHURCH CHART: The 2006 list of 117 Megachurches and Emerging Megachurches


MEGACHURCH PROFILE: Parkview Christian Church, Orland Park, IN by Kent Fillinger

MEGACHURCH PROFILE: Parkway Christian Church, Surprise, AZ by Kent Fillinger

MEGACHURCHES: Crunching the Numbers by Ben Simms (a downloadable pdf)


CHRISTIAN STANDARD Interview with Sue Wilson by Brad Dupray



Bookmark Article
Add to Blink
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Digg
Add to Furl
Add to Google
Add to Simpy
Add to Y!MyWeb
Add to Spurl
Powered by Components Lab Tag Mambot

Comments
Impressive
Written by Alan on 2007-04-16 10:25:06
Some of those churches are baptizing a lot of people. There must be some differences in what these churches are doing to explain the wide variation in baptisms. Still, it would be good to know more about what some of these folks are doing.
Be careful what you wish for
Written by kingmasada on 2007-04-24 17:05:33
I was a member of the icoc for a number of years and it was impressive the huge baptism # each church was having. What often went unreported was the large # of people who left as well. Those # are equally alarming. I wonder how involved on a deep intimate level people are in these megachurches. A church of 20,000, is people's needs truly been met and are people able to fall under the radar. I think, hope, and pray that the icoc is seeing now that bigger # doesn't necessarily mean better churches. What good is it to baptise, if you can't keep those saved; saved.
RE: Be careful what you wish for
Written by pspadaro on 2007-04-24 18:08:06
In church growth models, some are beginning to focus on closing the "back door" as a means of growing a congregation. If they have moderate growth via evangelism and low attrition, it proves to be more resource efficient than high outreach (new members) and moderate to high attrition. Attrition and (sometimes) growth can be difficult metrics. Is the attrition (growth) due to a general population move, i.e. rural to suburban? Is the attrition due to an aging congregation? The question is not what are we trying to measure, but what will the measurement indicate we need to change.  
 
Phil

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment 2.0!

Last Updated ( Thursday, 12 April 2007 )
< Prev   Next >
Most Popular
Polls
I want to see my congregation _____ with another Restoration church
  
I see the Restoration Unity Movement as...
  
Copyright 2005-2006 Phil Spadaro
Please contact me if you wish to copy any material from this site.
Photos courtesy of BigFoto.com and
Stock.xchng