Why is it our ‘goal’ to be a Mega-Church?

Monday, April 04, 2011

In the past few days, several people have asked me a version of this question: “Why is it our goal to have 4500 members in the next 10 years? Haven’t we learned our lesson from “mega churches” in the past? Why would we set it as our vision to be like them when we’ve seen those pitfalls?” How would you respond?

Great question. First of all, let me apologize if I left the impression that the ‘GOAL’ of Southwood was to be a large church, a very large church or a ‘mega’ church (although I don’t like the baggage that word brings with it but I do understand the question). Our ‘goal’ is to advance the Kingdom of God, not to be a 4,500 member church. We are growing and we believe that is wonderful. You are either growing or you are dying. No church ever plateaus in number. Churches are either growing or dying. If a church believes it has plateaued it is actually in decline it just doesn’t know it yet. For more on that discussion I’d recommend Thom Rainer’s book, “Breakout Churches”. So that’s the first thing: we’re growing and growth is good, no apologies there.

Secondly, we believe that our particular church is gifted, called and equipped in a unique way to help advance the Kingdom of God. We are intentionally firing on two cylinders: experiencing and expressing grace. We are intentionally creating a grace incubator. We preach it, read it, marinate in it, struggle in it and rest in it, but it cannot stop there. Grace which is only experienced for my sake IS NOT grace. True grace is experienced and then it MUST BE expressed. Grace shows up in my life. It has to. I have to experience it personally FIRST (you can’t give away what you don’t have) but then it shows up as love for neighbor, service, mercy, advocating for justice, righteousness and truth as well as loving the poor and downtrodden. This grace thing is dangerous because it will propel you to places of service and sacrifice that non-grace never will!

So what about the 4,500 members, you DID SAY 4,500 right? I did.

Now, let me tell you why I said it. Some suggested: “Don’t say a number. Why not just tell everyone ‘we will grow to whatever size God wants us to be…’?” The thinking of the Session and long-range planning committee was this: While it may sound very ‘spiritual’ and ‘open to the Lord’s leading’ to say that we ‘just want to grow to the size that Lord allows us to be..’ in many ways that can be a disingenuous way of avoiding the real questions looming in people’s minds.

There are questions like:
When are we going to plant another church? How soon?
What is our max-out number at the Carl T. Jones campus?
Aren’t we too BIG already?
Shouldn’t we be hiring a church planter immediately?
We still seem to be ‘growing’- how do we stop that or at least manage that?

All of those type of questions loom in the minds of congregation members and without a clear, definitive statement of identity i.e. we are a “large, resource church” and a clear, definitive statement of campus intent i.e. “full campus build-out to accommodate up to 4,500 members” then we would face (and I would add rightly so) years of further ambiguity and discomfort for our members with each incremental strategic decision. Without a definitive statement about where we thought God might be ultimately leading us those decisions would never seem to ‘make sense.’

Imagine how many times the question “WHY?” would be asked incrementally if we raised money, added more staff, added worship services, built buildings and never gave any numerical indication as to what we thought a maximum growth number might be——giving a 10-year vision and a max-campus build-out number clarifies decisions and eliminates the ambiguity that can plague a growing church. Giving the two numbers: “4,500 maximum members” and “25 million dollars” were both given to eliminate questions and clarify expectations, NOT to set up some un-Biblical goal for Southwood where we measure ‘success’ or ‘spirituality’ by numbers.

I should say again that church size is a morally neutral reality. There are strengths and challenges with EVERY church size. Clearly defining and acknowledging your church’s size, identity and culture actually removes one of the major challenges that every church faces: size-culture schizophrenia.

Size-culture schizophrenia can occur in lots of ways. It can occur when a 45 member country church tries to host “Behold the Lamb” at Christmas because one of the members says, “I went at Southwood and they had 1,000 people- it was awesome! WE need to do that!” It can also occur when a 1,500 member church tries to host a pot-luck supper for all the members because one of the members went to a country church the previous weekend and they had a ‘covered dish supper’ which was ‘so sweet and intimate. It just felt like one big family.’ When any church, regardless of size, tries to emulate programs or policies that are more suited to another size-culture then size-culture schizophrenia occurs. That church simply has not had the emotional strength to acknowledge who they are and what they are best suited and equipped to embrace. That can happen with 45 or 4,500 people.

One of our challenges and opportunities in 2011 will be to regularly look in the proverbial ‘mirror’ and acknowledge who we are, where we are going and what WE, as a large resource church, do best. There is great gospel freedom in that. We can then cheer for the 45 member country church when they have their pot luck supper! We are now FREE from trying to be them. We can actually, without regret or fear, help people find their way to that church if such a program is of utmost importance to them in a church home. By the same token, we can with great joy offer to host those same brothers and sisters in Christ a seat right next to us at ‘Behold the Lamb.’ They can be concurrently set FREE from trying to be us!

The Kingdom of God is bigger than Southwood. Our acknowledgement of who we are, where God has brought us and where we could go is nothing more than the body of Christ doing something very healthy. We are saying, “I know I am an eye or a hand or a foot. I know what I am made for; what I’m gifted to do and I’m going to do that. I refuse the jealousy and insecurity that says, ‘because I am not a foot I’m not good’ or ‘because I’m not an eye I really can’t make a difference’! I am aware of who I am. I’m aware of my strengths. I’m aware of my limitations. I am ready to function with one goal: the advancement of the kingdom, nothing else.”

ONE LAST NOTE: part of growing will involve dispersing. Part of identifying church-size culture corporately also involves identifying church-size preferences personally. There may be some at the 45-member country church who NEED for the sake of the Gospel to drive to Southwood every Sunday because we are a better ‘fit’ for them. By the same token, there will be some at Southwood who NEED for the sake of the Gospel to drive to that little country church each Sunday because they are a better ‘fit’ for them. We must expect, embrace and help to free people from guilt when these types of changes occur.

Comments

Jahnonymous | April 05 2011 at 1:49 pm

I totally agree that church size is a morally neutral reality. And I am very prepared to acknowledge that Southwood is a very large church, and will most likely continue to grow in size. However, when you make this statement;

“4,500 maximum members” and “25 million dollars” were both given to eliminate questions and clarify expectations, NOT to set up some un-Biblical goal for Southwood where we measure ‘success’ or ‘spirituality’ by numbers.

to me it begs the question, “how do we measure success in a church that is so large?” In a 45 member country church, it is much simpler for the congregants to interact with one another on deeper levels. and the pastor would even be able to participate in those interactions. spiritual/emotional maturity is easier to gauge when in the context of a deep relationship. So the pastor himself could be able to very accurately assess the spiritual/emotional health of his congregation. and when the pastor sees it first hand, he can gauge the success of his work, or fruit of his labor to put it in a “scriptury sounding way.”

So, in a huge church how do we measure success? is it destined to be a vague intuition by the church leadership? do we point to our growing numbers along side the vague intuition? or is there some way in which the 45 member church scenario described above, is adaptable to the 4500 member church scenario so that both congregations can achieve the same goal (spiritual/emotional maturity) with the same clarity?

I’m not asking these questions because I want to be subversive or anything. I just genuinely want to hear your thoughts…

thanks.

Jean Larroux | April 05 2011 at 3:41 pm

Jahnonymous,

A couple of quick thoughts and thank you for the question.

First things first, give yourself a ‘gut check’. You say that you ‘totally agree’ that church size is morally neutral, but you have presuppositions that speak louder than your words.

When you say that it is ‘much simpler’ for congregants to ‘interact with one another on deeper levels’ that is a very loaded and false assumption. I have been in those churches. That is simply not true. Often small, country churches are driven by a few families and often those families use money and tradition as power and a select few end up being power brokers in those churches.

I have heard the complaints from those ‘outsiders’ who have always felt kept at arm’s length because the small church was ingrown, not outward facing.

Ironically, many in those smaller churches would have had false assumptions about larger churches similar to yours about smaller churches. I have heard it said that, ‘if we only grew and had some more ‘new’ families then the cycle would break..’ or comments like ‘when God grows us past this stage then we will care about outsiders like Briarwood does…’

In your case and in theirs the problem is NOT church size, but rather faulty presuppositions about church size.

Additionally, to assume that a small church pastor could do diagnostics and/or spiritual assessment more easily in a small church is also erroneous. Pastoral assessment has less to do with the church size and more to do with the instincts and giftedness of the pastor. Additionally, in both churches that type of pastoral diagnostic work should/could and would be best done by the elders over the flock.

The only numerical goal that I have hung my hat on is the ratio of 1 to 50 for ruling elders to congregants. Truth be known, somewhere closer to 40 would likely be more manageable. Using that metric we are 24 ruling elders short as I type. That to me is much more disconcerting than any amount of growth. We are working toward that goal, not the goal of a specific target growth number. My plan is to begin training for officers in the very near future.

So how do we measure success? I would say that success is measured in both churches the EXACT SAME WAY—- individual lives being transformed one person at a time. If people are experiencing grace and concurrently expressing grace then the Spirit is at work. Truth be known, when that happens the church grows. When the church ceases to be transformed, it ceases to be a transformational agent in the culture and then it becomes ingrown, irrelevant and it begins to adopt fortress-type policies to ‘protect what we have’ rather than to share what we have been given.

I hope it will encourage you to know that I get regular input from our elders, staff, deacons and congregation about the work that God is indeed doing in transforming their lives. It is a great encouragement and I would consider that ‘success’. I would share just a word of that with you from an email I received today:
“Reading the article you wrote provided a real “ah-ha” moment for me, and for my wife, when I read parts of it over the phone to her. “Oh, so that’s what he is talking about!” After reading that, I was driving around listening to a sermon by another pastor on the Holy Spirit’s work in sactification, and he made this comment, that was so rich, after reading your article: Thinking that we can add our righteousness to Christ’s righteousness in order to be made right with the Father is like stealing a car, and then expecting to be patted on the back for using the turn signals in the stolen car properly…everything you do…even obeying the speed limit…is illegal in a stolen car.

Your article, perhaps for the first time convinced me that I am a traitor, not just a liar, so that comment by Voddie was powerful. So: your article was immensely helpful.”

I would suggest that comments like this indicate ‘success’ not for me, my writing ability or preaching but for the Gospel! We see ‘sloppy Gospel, extra grace’ going forth, people wrestling and people growing. This would be ‘success’ whether we had 45 or 4,500 members.

One last thought: isn’t it interesting that because Southwood has always been a church who has lifted high the cross of Christ and preached the Gospel of grace that we are now ‘wrestling’ with this issue of size? In a sense we’ve become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have created the issue before us, by doing the very thing which precipitates growth: preaching the Gospel!

-Jean F. Larroux, III

Anonymous | April 05 2011 at 10:24 pm

Seems to me if we are growing, then we plan to handle the growth instead of centralizing ministries. Spread out, let areas develop.

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