Big church bloomers

To attend a church with hundreds of people in the congregation is a joyous experience which we surely all find very uplifting, especially if the preaching is powerfully biblical and the praise is thunderously heartfelt. There is a wonderful buzz about such places and we thank God for them and their leaders.

However, I want to issue a challenge to the big churches, partially on behalf of smaller churches, but partially for their own spiritual health. Could it be that some kinds of large church inadvertently work against bringing individual Christians to maturity and also are contributing to the ongoing decline of Christianity in our country? Here are seven points to consider. I state them starkly to be provocative. All these things could be said of some smaller churches as well, but I suspect the larger congregations are more susceptible.

Big churches have an image to keep up

Big church culture seems to give much attention to professionalism in the services. Things need to be slick and classy. There is a great emphasis on how the preaching or the worship time ‘comes over’ to the congregation. In other words, there can be more concern about the outward appearance than the inward heart. We live in an image conscious society. But Jesus said that to follow that road is the path to hypocrisy (Matthew 23.25). By contrast, the meagre gift of the insignificant poor widow meant most to God because the gift came from her heart.

Big churches are rarely local

The big church frequently encourages people to travel some distance, often a longish car journey, to attend. This has encouraged the demise of the local church and dislocates the connection between daily life and Sunday worship. Christians can easily pigeon-hole their lives into separate boxes of home, church and work, and it facilitates the privatisation of belief. We do not engage with our local communities and so the salt loses its influence. Perhaps our neighbours do not even know we are Christians.

Big church pastors can be distant

I did a phone-in recently for Premier Radio on the big church / small church question. One of the callers said with some feeling, ‘I like a small church because it doesn’t take six weeks to see the pastor’. Perhaps he was exaggerating, but perhaps his comment came out of bitter experience. And the detrimental distance between pew and pulpit in the big church cuts both ways. In a booklet soon to be published, Christopher Ash points out that, to apply the Bible well, preaching has to be earthed in realistic engagement with individuals in the congregation. ‘That engagement comes only from week by week time with people… There are obvious reasons why we may prefer large churches; but it is more relational to preach to a church small enough for you (the preacher) to know its members and for them to know you.’

Big churches can bury talents

Such is the pressure in many big churches to be impressive and professional that amateurs are never given a look in. Not too long ago I spoke in a little church which has no musicians and has to use a kind of Christian karaoke machine to play the hymns. The congregation got out of time with the machine which played relentlessly and unthinkingly on and it was a disaster. In fact, my wife got the giggles, it was so bad. It made me think of many large congregations where Grade 7 pianists sit unused each Lord’s day, their musical gift rusting away. It is rather like the top Premiership football teams having many good players sitting on the bench who are never used. This situation relates to other gifts too, not just music.

Big churches encourage passengers

My experience is not vast, but I have become increasingly aware of large churches where either the morning congregation is big and the evening congregation is not, or where the morning congregation is big and the evening congregation is large but made up of mostly different people. It seems that large churches encourage Sunday ‘oncers’. Now, I must be careful. Not all people who attend church only once a week are lukewarm Christians. But many are. In a large church it is easy to hide and be a passenger, not a real worker for the kingdom.

Big churches groom young people

A crowd attracts a crowd and amid the crowds attending big churches are many young people. In some ways that is understandable. But unconsciously these young people are being groomed in ‘big church culture’. They become used to the professionalism, the event-style Sunday worship, and what is taken for granted in a cash-rich church. Meanwhile, in our land there are many small churches, with a very different church culture, which are on the verge of closure. If a younger generation does not at some point move on to support them, in 20 years these small churches will all be gone, so furthering the spiritual poverty of our land. But groomed in a big church, how will younger people ever relate to or roll up their sleeves and get involved with small, needy causes?

Big churches don’t need God

I don’t know if it is apocryphal, but I heard the story of a Chinese Christian who visited America with its mega-churches. When he returned home he gave his opinion: ‘It’s remarkable what Christians can achieve without the Holy Spirit’. The story makes my blood run cold. But the question has to be faced: if God withdrew his influence would our church just keep running anyway? This is surely a greater possibility for bigger congregations than smaller ones. They have the people, the talents, the money and the momentum to keep going.

These are ‘bloomers’, gaffes, mistakes to which large churches are especially prone. But I must come clean. In recent years our own congregation has become larger, so I am not just pointing the finger at other churches. The things noted above contain pitfalls and questions which haunt me too.

Response?

How are bigger churches to react to all this? Not long ago I heard David Jackman say in answer to a question, ‘Big churches exist to provide workers for small churches’. I may have misheard him, but I think that’s what he said. I was so pleased to hear that.

What should big churches do? First, they need to become aware of their own spiritual vulnerability. The big church, though in a better position to take risks for God, often will not. It can become self-serving and self-satisfied. To be large is not necessarily to be strong. Second, they could take loving interest in seeking to help smaller congregations. They could positively train young men and women for both church planting and reviving existing dwindling churches in needy areas of the country.

Thankfully some bigger churches are already doing this.

A challenge to large congregations