Big Churches Put Faith in Big Changes to Revive Growth

Blossoming in suburbs everywhere, megachurches have transformed religion in America, offering polished services and practical messages in super-sized sanctuaries. But many churches in the movement, now approaching middle age, have begun to encounter serious obstacles to growth.

To overcome those problems--ranging from disaffected members to unhappy neighbors and an inability to connect to younger congregants--pastors at leading megachurches nationwide are planning radical change.

Two of the nation’s largest megachurches are setting the pace: At Saddleback Valley Community Church in Lake Forest, leaders are considering tables and chairs--instead of pews--in a new 6,000-seat sanctuary as a way to help worshipers feel connected in small groups. At Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., baby boomer pastors who rose to prominence by targeting other boomers are now scrambling to train dozens of Gen-X men and women and move them into leadership positions in the church.

The number of megachurches--defined as those serving 2,000 congregants or more--nearly doubled in the 1990s to an estimated 500 today. Largely because of them, more Christians in America are forsaking traditional Sunday services with hymns and prayers offered by a small cluster of believers. Instead, they favor elaborate stage productions, complete with contemporary music, mini-dramas and sermons offering life lessons for families with no strong ties to established denominations.

Many of the churches that helped pioneer the trend are now more than two decades old--a point at which, experts say, the average church stops growing. To move ahead, megachurches must not only solve practical problems but also find ways to help parishioners feel connected to each other in the Sunday crowds and attract a new generation of worshipers.

“They have to reinvent themselves,” said Eddie Gibbs, professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. “When you have come to the end of a chapter, you have got to write a new chapter.”

Some experts argue that megachurches have passed their prime and will gradually fade, while others confidently predict the biggest churches in America--each now about 20,000 worshipers strong--are on the verge of making another quantum jump. “The first churches to hit 50,000 will do it in the next decade,” said Carl George, a leading independent expert on church growth.

Nationally, megachurches have been most popular in suburban areas, which offer the room megachurches need, as well as the type of congregant they aim to serve: mobile, well-educated and middle-class, said Scott Thumma, a megachurch researcher at the Center for Social and Religious Research in Hartford, Conn.

Southern California is home to more than 50 such churches, spanning the entire Protestant spectrum--from West Angeles Church of God in Christ, the nation’s largest black Pentecostal church, to Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, pastored by leading conservative theologian John MacArthur, to televangelist Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove.

Southern California’s largest is Saddleback, with about 15,000 attendees every weekend. Pastor Rick Warren, clad in informal attire, preaches practical sermons that double as primers on daily living; music is popular and professional; religious ceremony is minimized but values remain steadfastly conservative.

Saddleback, Mariners Church of Irvine and other so-called “seeker-sensitive” megachurches that reach out to people unfamiliar with traditional religion are led by self-styled religious entrepreneurs, using sophisticated business techniques to create a spiritual product for choosy suburban consumers.

It is the relentless innovation and focus on growth of seeker churches that place them on the forefront of change, experts say. But megachurches of all stripes are evolving to meet changing demands.

Big Congregation, Big Need for Space

Among those demands are strictly physical concerns: the need for space and conflicts with neighbors over traffic, noise and development.

With nearly 20,000 worshipers every Sunday, Willow Creek struggles with traffic congestion on streets adjoining its 155-acre campus. And residents of the normally quiet Chicago suburb complain their neighborhoods are swamped with cars for much of the day.

In Orange County, Saddleback moved in 1992 to a 74-acre campus in a relatively undeveloped area of Lake Forest. The church, which became the fastest growing church in the country during the 1990s and one of the nation’s largest, recently closed escrow on an additional 44 acres, bringing its campus to a whopping 118 acres.

All the same, Saddleback saw a pause in its attendance growth for the first time this past year in part because of its own nightmarish traffic problem. The church spent $4.5 million to build a bridge that linked El Toro Road to a church parking lot, creating a second street entrance. The result: attendance is growing again after the bridge’s Easter Sunday opening.

Some churches have seen even more dramatic growth after investing in expansion, experts said. Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky., for example, moved in December from a 2,500-seat auditorium to a massive 9,100-seat sanctuary, one of the nation’s largest. Southeast saw its attendance shoot up by 3,500 to nearly 14,000 in just a month.

Even with a heavy dose of ingenuity, however, most churches will eventually run out of space, pastors said. One method for continuing the spread of a megachurch’s mission and message is through the planting of daughter churches, or the establishment of quasi-denominational networks of like-minded churches.

Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, one of the grand-daddies of the large church movement, has spawned more than 800 Calvary Chapels nationwide and abroad, some of them going on to become megachurches themselves.

Willow Creek, considered by many to be the nation’s ultimate megachurch, now counts more than 4,000 churches as part of its Willow Creek Assn. Churches continue to join at a rate of three a day, all seeking to emulate Willow Creek’s successful style.

One member, a church that began about a year ago in Rockford, Ill., about an hour’s drive away from Willow Creek, has become the first to offer videotaped replays of sermons from Willow Creek every Sunday in place of a pastor, said Lee Strobel, one of three pastors from Willow Creek whose messages are heard in Rockford every Sunday.

So far, the unorthodox pastor-free concept seems to be working, with the church ballooning to 1,200 congregants, Strobel said.

Small Groups Help Foster Connections

In addition to overcoming physical barriers to growth, megachurches also must find ways to keep congregants feeling connected, church observers said. Megachurch pastors acknowledge the turnover rate in their churches is sizable.

Among the hundreds who have left megachurches for smaller, cozier environs are Irvine residents Steve Bjorkman, 47, and his wife. Bjorkman said he became frustrated with the lack of meaningful relationships in the church they left. “People have an inborn hunger to be known,” he said. “A big church can’t know me.”

Small groups, or gatherings of a half-dozen or more believers, have long been a part of church life. But megachurches, by necessity, are now elevating the importance of these groups, pastors said.

“The bottom line is if you don’t figure out how to get smaller as you’re getting larger, growth will definitely peak,” said Brett Eastman, membership pastor at Saddleback. “If you don’t keep a sense of heart and family and connectedness, then growth tends to level off.”

Some experts predict megachurches of the future may resemble the decentralized churches of Korea, where 24 of the 50 largest churches in the world are located. At Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, for example, 250,000 come to worship at 13 services every week. In many Korean churches, “cell groups” are considered the basic components of the church. A typical member might only attend the Sunday worship service every two or three weeks, meeting instead in another member’s home for regular service.

Saddleback’s plans for replacing church pews with tables and chairs reflect its renewed emphasis on small groups, said executive pastor Glen Kreun. The goal is to have parishioners leave every Sunday not only having heard a message but also with a new set of friends.

In Riverside, Harvest Christian Fellowship is poised to join the dozens of megachurches nationwide with their own community centers. Harvest’s will offer a coffeehouse, eatery, bookstore and outdoor amphitheater, all intended to give the thousands who frequent the church daily somewhere to simply “hang out” in groups, said John Collins, administrative pastor.

Pastors are also increasingly emphasizing membership in a continuum of groups, ranging from the small group to a mid-sized group to the large celebration services on the weekend.

Jim Aragon, a divorced electronics salesman from Lake Forest, credits members of the singles group at Saddleback for helping him with the recent death of his brother and sudden illness of his mother.

“They carried me through this,” he said.

But, he admits, navigating the immensity of the megachurch requires persistence: “You have to be a little bit determined, a little bit flexible and keep your eyes on God.”

Return of Boomers Fueled Early Growth

Some experts believe the megachurch phenomenon will inevitably fade with the aging of the baby boomers who created it. Historically, a primary cause of the decline of many churches is their inability to reach past a particular generation, they point out.

Thumma, at the Center for Social and Religious Research, believes the “seeker” megachurches, with their innovative market-driven approach, are a passing fad.

“The style of worship and the style of presentation, that’s all going to go away eventually,” he said. “It’s more a momentary reaction to the culture than it is a phenomenon of staying power.”

Megachurches arrived at a time when boomers were returning to church in droves with the onset of parenthood but looking for spiritual outlets different from those they discarded in their youth. Also, megachurches rose to prominence amid a consumer culture that featured large institutions in general, like megamalls and multiplex movie theaters, experts say.

But today’s younger seekers, who place a premium on authenticity, may be turned off by the large church, said Gibbs of Fuller Theological Seminary. Megachurches must remake themselves to meet the changing rules, Gibbs said.

Churches tailored to Gen-Xers have already begun to emerge. But megachurches, known for their relentless innovation of church forms, have no intention of ceding their place as the church of the future.

Mariners Church senior pastor Kenton Beshore envisions three churches someday running simultaneously on the church’s Irvine campus--one offering a liturgical service in a New England-style chapel and another aimed specifically at Gen-X worshipers.

Next month, Calvary Chapel Golden Springs in Diamond Bar will begin hosting monthly “millennium concerts” at the church, directed at teenage frequenters of the “rave” scene. The goal is to reach the younger generation, which has so far been missed by the church, with their kind of music, said senior pastor Raul Ries.

At Saddleback, pastors are also beginning to mull an alternative service for the Gen-Xers, realizing that failing to meet their needs could ultimately doom their church.

“There’s going to be a day real soon we’re going to start losing an entire generation if we don’t design a service for them,” Kreun said.

Understanding what continues to motivate these megachurches to reach the next wave of worshipers is to comprehend their core evangelical belief structure, pastors said.

Said Saddleback’s Eastman: “As long there are people whose lives need to be touched by God, we will continue growing and trying.”

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Thinking Big

More than 1.7 million U.S. Protestants attend megachurches--those with a congregation of more than 2,000. Growth in number of megachurches nationwide:

1979: 10

1980: 50

1990: 300

1999: 500

Saddleback Valley Community Church grew explosively over the last decade, with a brief lull in 1998 attributed in part to traffic congestion problems.

1990: 3,823

1998: 14,914

More than 50 megachurches dot Southern California. Following are the 10 largest and their approximate weekend attendance:

Saddleback Valley Community Church (Lake Forest): 14,900

Los Angeles Church of Christ: 13,400

Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa: 12,000

Calvary Chapel Golden Springs (Diamond Bar): 12,000

Harvest Community Fellowship (Riverside): 12,000

Grace Community Church (Sun Valley): 10,000

West Angeles Church of God in Christ (Los Angeles): 9,000

Crenshaw Christian Center (Los Angeles): 6,000

First AME Church (Los Angeles): 6,000

Mariners Church (Irvine): 6,000

Sources: John Vaughan, Church Growth Today; Saddleback Valley Community Church