Friday, September 19, 2008

Are megachurches impersonal?

A new study from Rodney Stark, at Baylor, finds that:

"Congregants find megachurches offer more personal worship and sense of community than smaller churches, a finding that challenges the conventional wisdom that some large churches are too big to offer a spiritual experience."

Guess they must be doing something right. Maybe those churches that offer the worship and community are those that grow?

Here's the article from the Washington Post.

Thanks for the link, Mark!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What would be interesting to understand is does this growth equate only to numbers or is there an equivalent spiritual growth that coincides?

Like the writer of Hebrews states: "let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity" Heb 6:1

Ben Byerly said...

Maybe the kind of people that tend to have lots of friends tend to go to mega churches, and people that go to small churches are less likely to have friends (period) ;-).

Brad Wright said...

Good point, Ben. I'm embarrassed to say that I hadn't thought about that.

Good question, Jim.

Ben Byerly said...

Some of us have learned a few things from your blog ;-).