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Are you excited? Outreach magazine just published their compilation of the top 100 largest churches in America. While I’m glad that people are still gathering in masses to worship the one true God, I find myself scratching my head at why anyone would want to glorify the church in this manner.

The sad fact of the matter is that there are pastors out there that will inflate their attendance numbers so that they can run with the big boys. They are immersed in the numbers game. They seek to grow numerically in order to confirm their status within the kingdom of heaven. In the minds of many senior pastors is the misconception that a growing church is a healthy church.

However, when polled most senior pastors will say that they are not interested in numbers, but instead they desire to see many to come to know Christ as their Lord and Savior. That’s a noble thing, but at the same time many encourage people that were previously baptized in a church already to come forward and be baptized in their church, thus inflating the numbers of salvations and diminishing the scripture in Romans 10:9 which clearly states:

That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

I guess contrary to the word, confessing once isn’t enough?

We are taught not to envy or covet, yet we see statistics like this glorifying the local church and putting them on a pedestal because of the number of attendees they draw. When health and numerical size are used as factors to determine “success” in the church, how can a pastor not want to seek credibility for what God is doing in their church in the same fashion? It can cause us to see our numbers diminish within the smaller church because people are flocking to the mega-church because the music is so professional or they have more technology and staff in their children’s ministry and then believe that God is working in the mega-church, but abandoning us in the smaller churches.

I believe that God is working through the mega-church model to see people come to honest professions of faith in the Lord, with transformed lives making a difference in their community as the result. My criticism isn’t on the mega-church, but it’s on the glorification of the mega-church. Look closely at the image above or click here to see the whole list of the top 100 largest churches. It’s not just the top 100 churches listed, but they are ranked in order from largest to smallest and there is also the name and photo of the senior pastor and in addition to that, there is even a link to books that some of the pastors have authored. Sorry, but this just brings the kind of attention to the pastor that rewards him for obtaining such high status on lists like this. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem like such a godly thing for pastors to be recognized in this way or worse yet, to see them strive for such notoriety.

As I write this, I think the thing that gets me most is the notion that it’s all about attendance and not about transformations and loving others. As many of you know, I’m excited about the missional church movement. Not only the missional church ethos, but of the nature of the missional church to be more organic and empowering others to lead and disciple communities based on visions God gives them to be pastors and ministers of the gospel. What about the missional church that honors God through the Greatest Commandment and the Great Commission and sees itself being reproduced throughout the city or the world? If a mother church grows to 200 in attendance and then starts reproducing itself by sending missionaries/pastors out to lead others and disciple them in the ways of Christ, only to see this repeating itself time and time again, isn’t this the way of the first century church? The mother church may ebb and flow and never break the 200 barrier by intention, yet be responsible for seeing 20,000 come to know Christ and carry on his mission through daughter churches and other ministries. Should they be off the radar screen or not viewed in as high a regard as the mega-church of 10,000 members that lands on the list of top 100 churches? I don’t think so. Is having a congregation of 12,000 meeting in one building a better definition of outreach than having groups of 1,000 people meeting in 12 different buildings? Again, I don’t think so.

We should not be working to receive our rewards here on earth. Pastors can say that who am I to write about this when God is the one sending people to their church and they are just doing their best to shepherd his people. Okay, I’m with you on that. However, what about the inverse of this? How about when your mega-church of 10,000 people and 40 staff members sees its attendance drop to 5,000 in less than a year. Do you believe that God has his hand in moving the sheep to another shepherd, or do you go into panic mode and start cutting programs and laying off people and doing all you can to figure out how to get your attendance numbers back up to justify the big building and church campus?

Church attendance numbers in no way portray the effectiveness of outreach or seeing people come to know Christ for the first time. They do not accurately reflect the health of a church, nor the genuine nature of those that gather. A mega-church of 10,000 in attendance on Sundays, but 90% of the congregation is from church hoppers is not deserving of being more highly regarded than a church of 50 that live the mission of Christ everyday, drawing in people that may take years of living in a community of faith before they actually take the step of faith to put their trust in Christ eternally.

[At this point I feel a disclaimer is in order. I'm not envious of the mega-church or their pastors. I have not had any negative experience from serving or attending in mega-churches.

I have a great respect for the calling and vision of every pastor on the top 100 list of largest churches!

Those that know of my work in the ministry know that I speak highly of Pastor Craig Groeschel and participated with LifeChurch.tv in their One Prayer campaign last July. I have read and been blessed by several books authored by Andy Stanley of North Point. I'm amazed at what it took to see Bill Hybels ask for a raw and unfiltered assessment of Willow Creek through surveying their members and then responding in revolutionary ways to change the course and direction of their ministry in order to see true discipleship and transformation occur.

I am encouraged when I see how the Reveal study that was done by Willow Creek is causing local churches to take a look at what they are doing and why they are doing it. When things like this surface not because of diminishing numbers, but because of lack of discipleship and mission it can only be a positive step that deserves recognition. Most of my friends within ministry are pastors of larger, non-denominational churches with seeker-sensitive services. I love and respect each of them and sometimes feel they are better-suited to ministry than I am because of the larger resources at their disposal and their big faith to serve and make a difference. Again, I'm not in opposition to the mega-church model. I just think we are flirting with danger and temptation when we in ministry and those in the media begin putting so much attention to only those with larger attendance numbers. Bottom line is that I love the church and I love God and I pray daily that the church will start working to be more unified and seeing the love of Christ personified in cities all over the world. I just believe that in our humility we should seek to have God get all the glory and for people to see Jesus and not be awestruck by the celebrity status that pastors are being encouraged to embrace. It's a dangerous thing and we've already seen the enemy take too many people out of their calling to see the gospel reach the ends of the earth.]

Church envy…is it godly?