TruthBook Religious News Blog

July 26, 2009
by Daniel Terdiman

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.--If you're in charge of what is thought to be one of the most powerful, influential and important megachurches in the United States, if not the world, how do you make sure that your message is reaching the largest possible audience?

To Brady Boyd, the lead pastor at the New Life Church here, the famous, 10,000-plus member nondenominational church that's directly across Interstate 25 from the Air Force Academy, the answer is technology.

It's not that the New Life Church is light years ahead of anyone else--in fact, it may well even be slightly behind some other churches--but to Boyd the key is that he and his large support team are philosophically open to technology.

As part of Road Trip 2009, I stopped in at the New Life Church for an interview with Boyd. I wanted to know how this megachurch uses technology, and just how important tech is considered. The short answer? A lot.

"Churches have to stay current. We're in the communications business," Boyd told me. "The whole purpose of a church is to communicate a message of truth....We have to stay informed and we have to realize that most of the world is rapidly advancing in their ability to communicate."

In particular, Boyd pointed to Web 2.0 technologies like Facebook and Twitter. He said, in fact, that he Twitters constantly and recently maxed out his number of friends on Facebook.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: Brady Boyd, church, communications, Daniel Terdiman, megachurches, New Life Church, technology

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Saturday, June 13, 2009

Survey Examines America's Megachurchgoers

By Lillian Kwon
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jun. 09 2009

Compared to attendees of a typical Protestant church, people who attend megachurches are more likely to be young, single, more educated and wealthier, a new survey reveals.

The majority of megachurch attendees (62 percent) are under the age of 45 whereas less than half (35 percent) of those in a typical congregation fall in the 18-44 age group, according to a megachurch report by Scott Thumma of Hartford Institute for Religion Research and Warren Bird of Leadership Network.

The report – "Not Who You Think They Are: The Real Story of People Who Attend America's Megachurches" – is based on data from a national survey that drew 24,900 responses from 12 carefully selected megachurches across the country. It is claimed to be the largest national representative study of megachurch attendees conducted by any researchers to date.

With more than 5 million people worshipping at megachurches – Protestant churches of 2,000 or more weekly attendees – in a typical week, Thumma and Bird sought to provide a look at who these worshippers are, why they come and why some stay.

"[U]ntil now, very little was known about those who attend these churches,'" the researchers state in their report, released Tuesday.

For comparison, the researchers used findings from the U.S. Congregational Life Study (USCLS), a study of Protestant churches of all sizes that was completed in April 2001.

Please click on "external source" for the complete, 2-page article.

Labels: Lillian Kwon, megachurches, protestants, Scott Thumma, Warren Bird

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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Megachurches push for greater spirituality

CATHY LYNN GROSSMAN
September 27, 2008

After decades of soaring growth, the phenomenon of Protestant megachurches — behemoths of belief where 2,000 to 20,000 or more people attend weekend worship — may be stalled.

And Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., the granddaddy of "seeker-sensitive" megachurches geared to attract the spiritually curious, is on a mission to rev the engines.

On paper, megachurches look like a trend still on the rise. Their total number rose from 600 in 2000 to more than 1,250 in 2005, says sociologist Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Hartford, Conn.

On Outreach magazine's 2008 list of the largest 100, even the smallest says more than 7,000 people attend. But some of the biggest, including Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston, with 43,500, showed slight declines.

Experts see more troubling concerns than slowing growth: no measurable inroads on overall church attendance and signs that many churchgoers are spectators, not driving toward a deeper faith.

"You can create a church that's big, but is still not transforming people. Without transformation, the Christian message is not advanced," says Ed Stetzer, head of Lifeway Research in Nashville, Tenn., which did the Outreach study.

The unchurched remain untouched. While the number of people who say they attend at least once a week hovers around 30 percent year after year, the number who say they "never" go to church climbs.

The tally of "nevers" varies from 16 percent in Gallup surveys to 22 percent in the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, to 32 percent in an Ellison Research survey this year. The new "nevers" come from the pool of people who once attended monthly or a few times a year.

Many slide away from church to find other answers to their spiritual quest or another church where the preaching or music or family programs better suit their style.

The study, now being marketed to churches nationwide as a self-assessment tool, found many who attend church are not progressing from beginner believers to become "fully centered in Christ" — deep in Bible study, prayer and service.

In response, founder and senior pastor Bill Hybels has changed his sermons to more directly challenge worshipers at every level. Willow has launched a slate of dozens of Wednesday mini-classes focusing on spiritual growth, coached and mentored by the church.

Willow is still "seeker-obsessed," says Hybels. "But today's seekers are different" than years ago.

Today, he says, "I don't think anyone is wandering around looking for a mild dose of God. They want to know: 'What would a life centered on Christ look like in my life? What would that feel like? How do I go about it?' "

Labels: Cathy Lynn Grossman, church, faith, Hartford Institute for Religion Research, megachurches, Scott Thumma, spirituality, unchurched

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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Survey: Megachurches more intimate, believers less gullible than stereotypes

Friday, 19 September 2008

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A new survey by Baylor University researchers suggests that megachurches are more intimate, believers less gullible and atheism less prevalent than popular stereotypes would suggest.

The survey found that members of such churches tended to have more friends within their congregations, hold more conservative or evangelical Christian beliefs, share their faith with friends and strangers more often, and be involved in volunteer work more frequently than their counterparts in churches with less than 100 in average attendance.

An additional factor suggested by the survey: Megachurches are far more likely than small churches to be conservative evangelical congregations. Meanwhile, smaller churches had a higher rate of affiliation with what the survey called a “liberal Protestant denomination,” or with mainline church bodies such as the United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church.

The survey also found that active religious believers -- and particularly conservative Christians -- were less likely than the general public to believe in the occult and paranormal.

“The Baylor Survey found that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases credulity, as measured by beliefs in such things as dreams, Bigfoot, UFOs, haunted houses and astrology, with education having hardly any effect,” the survey’s authors said.

For instance, as measured against an index of belief in occult and paranormal beliefs researchers constructed, only 14 percent of respondents who described themselves as “evangelical” rated high on the index. Meanwhile, 30 percent of those who rejected the “evangelical” label scored high on the same index.

Those who described themselves as “theologically liberal” were actually more likely than evangelicals -- and than the public at large -- to believe in such things as the ability to communicate with the dead, the existence of mythical creatures such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, and alien encounters with Earth.

The survey, of 1,648 English-speaking American adults, used detailed questionnaires mailed in the fall of 2007. Collected by the Gallup Organization and analyzed by Baylor researchers, it has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

It was funded by the Templeton Foundation, and is the second wave of a three-part survey project. The first set of results was released in 2006. The final set, researchers said, will be released next year.

Labels: Baylor Religion Survey, evangelicals, John Templeton Foundation, megachurches, paranormal