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TruthBook Religious News Blog



Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Rise of megachurches may be dangerous, top cleric warns

THE megachurch is a modern trend in religious life, but its vision to make religion more relevant has come under fresh fire for being light on theology and heavy on corporate logic.

The head of the World Council of Churches, meeting in Brazil this week, said megachurches could lead to a Christianity that is "two miles long and one inch deep".

The Kenyan Methodist and general secretary of the council, Samuel Kobia, said the populist appeal of megachurches lacked theological depth and held no "appeal for any commitment".

"It's a church being organised on corporate logic," he told Reuters. "That can be quite dangerous if we are not very careful." His comments came near the close of the ninth assembly of the council, a fellowship of 347 churches drawn from more than 120 countries including Australia.

Australia's largest churches include Sydney's Hillsong and Christian City churches. They are part of the rapidly growing pentecostal movement bringing in thousands of worshippers.

The megachurch phenomenon is so significant that for the first time this year it is to be looked at in the National Church Life Survey, a longitudinal study into the health of Australia's religious life.

The survey aims to update research dating back more than a decade which found that larger congregations were better able to retain youth and could provide a "bigger supermarket of choices" in worship and missional activities.

The research found, however, that size ultimately made little difference to the health or vitality of a church, and some small congregations might do better nurturing a sense of family.

Gary Bouma, an Anglican priest and professor of sociology at Monash University, said yesterday that Mr Kobia's criticism ignored a growing cultural shift away from traditional forms of worship to a more experiential form of religious expression.

Megachurches addressed the needs of those who were uninterested in traditional church yet wanted a deeper sense of meaning in their lives, he said.

"They are where Christianity is growing, full stop," Professor Bouma said. "The mainline churches are declining in numbers, so essentially in Australia they have lost two generations and can barely reproduce themselves - whereas these groups have have the capacity to carry forward an engaged and vital form of Christianity."

Brian Houston, the senior pastor of Hillsong Church, Sydney's largest, said: "It's wonderful that around the world there are churches springing up that are attracting people back to church in their thousands. The message is sacred but the method must become more relevant."

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