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Do mega churches do mega ministry?

By Jeremy Myers
56 Comments

Do mega churches do mega ministry?

I had an interesting conversation recently with a man who attends a local mega church. Well, the church is about 1000 people, so it’s not quite “mega” (Which I think is defined as 2,000+ in attendance). 

He was challenging my decision to follow Jesus outside the four walls of the church building, and had the usual objections: 

Him: Why would you leave Christ’s church?

Me: I didn’t leave it. I just practice church differently than you do. 

Him: But how do you use your spiritual gifts?

Me: In a multitude of ways, none of which require my butt to be in a pew on Sunday morning. 

Him: But Christians are to live in community. Where is your community?

Me: First, church attendance does not necessarily equal community, but second, I live in deep community with other people like myself who also do not sit in pews on Sunday morning. 

Anyway, the conversation went on like this for some time. At one point though, he said this: 

Him: But you could be accomplishing so much more for the Kingdom of God if you were part of a large group of people. Sure, your small community can accomplish a few small things, but imagine if you were all working together with thousands of others! Your work would be multiplied! You would see exponential growth! 

I told him it was a good point, and one that I would consider. 

multiply your ministry

I have since considered his point … and I would like your input on how you might respond to such a question. Here are my points. What can you add?

1. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed

First, I have great trouble with this mindset that only big things are worthwhile.

Jesus constantly modeled that the small things, the unimportant people, the little children, the cup of cold water, the tiny mustard seed, the one act of faith, the shameful, the foolish, and the insignificant, … these are the things that mattered to God and where God was most at work. 

Sure, Jesus performed some large-scale miracles, but it seems that as Jesus progressed in His ministry, He went smaller and smaller; not larger and larger. If Jesus had wanted to, He could have had thousands of followers at His back after 3 years of ministry. But this is not what He wanted. …So why is this what we want?

Even Jesus’ parable of the tiny mustard seed shows this. It is not uncommon to hear pastors say, “See? This church started as a tiny little group of people meeting in my living room. But now, it is thousands of people with a multi-million dollar budget. The tiny mustard seed has grown into a giant tree!” 

It sounds good, but it’s plain wrong. Yes, the tiny mustard seed grows into a large tree so that even the birds can sit in its branches, but if we ever say our particular church or ministry is “the large tree” we have completely misunderstood what Jesus was saying.

mega ministry

What grows into a large tree? The Kingdom of God does … not my little corner of it. No matter how large we become, our part in the Kingdom will always be small. 

2. Fuzzy Ministry Math

Here is often how these comparisons go: 

You and your small group did a good thing there helping that poor family in town pay their rent this month. But at our church, we raised enough money to build an entire orphanage in Africa and staff it for an entire year! 

Sure, you’re small group of six people spent $300 to help that family, but if you could have joined that money with the $250,000 raised by our church this year to build that orphanage, imagine how your investment in the Kingdom would have multiplied! 

Initially, such a comparison sounds compelling. It’s true … helping one family pay rent for one month does not sound as impressive as building and staffing an African orphanage to help rescue, feed, and teach orphans for a year. 

But if you begin to crunch the numbers, things look quite different. If 6 people raised $300 in one month to help one family, then this comes to about $50 per person per month. Who’s to say they won’t do something similar next month? And the month after that? Over the course of one year, this is about $600 per person. 

Meanwhile, if you take the $250,000 that church raised for the orphanage, and divide it between the 1000 people in the church, this comes to $250 per person. 

Obviously, I’m just making these numbers up, but this is how these ministry comparison’s are often done. The tiny little ministry a small group does for a local need is compared with some giant project that a large group does for some other (usually foreign) ministry. But if you really start to compare apples to apples, you will almost always find that the small groups are more generous. 

But what about what is accomplished? Isn’t that important? Yeah, let’s talk about that?

3. Where’s the Ministry Love?

Here is the main concern I have with big ministry projects done by big churches. Usually (but not always!), because of the large scale of the project, there is relatively little personal interaction between the “givers” and the “receivers.” 

Instead of six people helping out a family across the street, whose names are known, whose needs are obvious, and where relationships can get developed, 2,000 people give money into a giant pot to help a nameless “need” in some other part of town or across the country. Then, after administrative costs and overhead are deducted out of the money that comes in, a team of people goes out to perform the ministry to the massive group whose “need” is trying to be met. 

But because the ministry team has to meet the “need” of such a large group of people, there is very little opportunity to get to know the people. Very little relationship building is accomplished.

Sure, bellies are filled, buildings are raised, classes are taught, and books are distributed, but how many long-term relationships were built? How many names were learned? How many conversations were had? 

I sometimes think that the way some churches define ministry is not always identical to the way Jesus defines ministry. 

If you write a check for $500 to help build an orphanage in Africa … but don’t know your neighbor’s first name, what good is it? 

If you attend every mission’s conference your church hosts, but have never learned about the marital problems of your coworker, what good is it? 

If you know your Bible forward and backward and memorize 365 verses a year, but don’t know the names of the children on your street, what good is it? 

Look, everybody has different ministries and different goals, but I just get tired of having to defend small, one-on-one, loving-my-neighbor ministry to people who think that the only true ministry is one that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, involved thousands of people, and takes place on another continent. 

Ministry does not become more spiritual when it is baptized in salt water (when it takes place across the sea).

If you are not loving your neighbors right now, you cannot write a big check and call it “ministry.” 

Okay… so you can weigh in below. Have you ever encountered this “Go big or go home” mentality when it comes to ministry, and that small groups of believers would be wiser to pool their time and resources with large churches so that their ministry effectiveness can be multiplied? If so, how do you respond?

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship, following Jesus, mega church, ministry, mustard seed, service, Theology of the Church

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A House Church Argument

By Jeremy Myers
9 Comments

A House Church Argument

house churchI am not against “House churches.” I love house churches, and I love house church people.

But I do get nervous when house church proponents (HCP) start to condemn all other forms of church. It sounds ominously familiar…

To see what I mean, listen in as I discuss house with with a house church proponent:

HCP: The Book of Acts describes house churches. So house churches are the only biblical way of doing church.

Me: But this is 2013. Things have changed. Don’t you think Jesus might want His church to have changed too?

HCP: No! God wrote down in the Bible the way God wanted church done. Any other way is unbiblical and is doing whatever is right in your own eyes.

Me: But even you don’t do  church exactly like they did it in Acts. You’ve made some modifications for our time and culture. So doesn’t this mean that you are unbiblical?

HCP: No. The changes we made are still consistent with what the Spirit was doing in Acts. We have maintained the pattern found in the Bible.

Me: Who gets to decide which changes are allowable and which ones are not?

HCP: We studied the Scripture, prayed, sought the leading of the Spirit, and made these adjustments.

Me: Yes, but other believers have done the same thing, and made a few adjustments that you did not make, and now you are condemning them for their changes. Why do you want to say that your way is the one right way, and theirs is wrong?

HCP: They adopted their ways from pagan practices, like buildings, priests, choirs, sermons, and salaries.

Me: So anything that pagans do is wrong for churches to do also?

HCP: Yes, that’s right.

Me: Well, you know there are lots of pagan religions around the world and throughout time that look remarkably similar to a house church. They meet in homes, teach each other the ideas of their faith, share some food, and do what they can to encourage each other to follow their religion. Often they pray to their gods and sing some songs too.

HCP: What religions are those?

Me: Almost all religious groups, to tell you the truth. They only move into temples and other buildings once they reach a certain size. But some groups try to remain in homes, such as Bahai, Santeria, Voodoo, and many forms of Buddhism and Hinduism.

HCP: Well, just because these groups are similar to House Churches doesn’t mean that House Churches are following their practices.

Me: I agree. And the same argument applies to churches with buildings, pastors, choirs, sermons, and salaries.

HCP: I don’t know about that.

Me: Even if history shows (which is does) that the church borrowed these things from pagan cults, history also shows that the early church borrowed their practices from Jewish and Greco-Roman patterns. The early believers didn’t just invent this house church pattern out of thin air. The followed some of the cultural patterns that were around them at the time.

Furthermore, just because something used to be “pagan” does not make it wrong.  You and I used to be pagan, but God has washed us, redeemed us, and raised us up in Christ to live in a new way. If God can do this for people, why can’t He do it for customs and cultural patterns also?

—–

The conversation continues like this for quite some time. As we debate, I keep thinking I’ve heard all these arguments before.

Then it dawns on me.

The arguments are not identical, but the whole “This is the right way to do church and everybody else is wrong” idea is taken right out of the mega church model handbook: “This is the right way to do things, and if you want to reach our culture for Christ, you must follow this pattern. Otherwise, God can’t use you.”

As it turns out, house churches and mega churches have something in common after all…

I am not trying to criticize house churches (or mega churches). Instead, I am hoping that all of us who seek to follow Jesus, can simply follow Him in the way that helps us live out the Gospel in our lives to the fullest extent possible, and extend grace to those who follow Jesus differently. People who attend a mega church can bless people who attend a house church, and vise versa. And people who don’t attend any church at all, but simply  try to follow Jesus relationally, can bless both groups as well and be blessed in return.

And if you want some more arguments for and against the house church, here is funny chart I found: Enjoy!

house church is cool. House church is lame.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: church models, house church, mega church, Theology of the Church

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