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“Why are there no megachurches in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC)?” Her face betrayed a hint of
frustration. She loved the Reformed
expression of Christianity, and she had found few other places that had the
stomach for proclaiming the whole counsel of God, and striving to live by
its truth in a culture that recoils at the notion of absolutes.
It just didn’t
seem right to her that enormous auditoriums were being filled to hear
“sermons” on Alcohol Anonymous’s
Twelve Steps to Recovery, that
these huge gatherings were “program heavy” and
“content light,” and that so many of them had embraced
theological liberalism at worst, or the watered down gospel of Arminianism at best.
A megachurch is defined by
American ecclesiastical social science as a church of more than 1,000
members or attenders on a Sunday morning. The number of megachurches
in the United
States has doubled over the last ten years, reaching about 700 in the U.S. at the turn of the millennium.
What should we think of the megachurch
phenomenon? Certainly, all
Christians should desire the numerical growth of the Church. But why are there no megachurches
in the OPC? Is it because
we’re doing something wrong?
Or is it because we’re doing something right?
I will not rule out the
possibility that God could raise up a faithful megachurch,
but the Scriptures themselves indicate that the likelihood is not
great.
Proponents of the
megachurch phenomenon will invariably appeal to
Acts 2, and maintain that when Peter preached, a megachurch
sprang up: “Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about
three thousand were added to their number that day” (Acts 2:41). Such an
assertion ignores the context of that passage.
It was the Day of
Pentecost (50 days after the Passover), and there were gathered in
Jerusalem “Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to
Judaism); Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:8-11).
These people did
not join the Church at Jerusalem. They each departed and went
back to their own regions, if not all willingly, later by necessity (Acts
8:1). The 3,000 added to the number
represented the whole church – the “denomination”
if you will, not a single body. Some
of the regions mentioned in Acts 2 are quite geographically expansive. On the average, there were about 200
converts from each region. Two-hundred does not a megachurch
make.
It also should
not escape our notice that Jesus told us that narrow is the gate that leads
to life, and there will be relatively few who find it (Matt. 7:14).
Whenever Jesus preached, his winnowing fork was in his hand, and he
was clearing the threshing floor (Matt. 3:12). He did
his level best to separate the wheat from the chaff by the preaching of
the Word.
In John 6, many
of Jesus’ disciples began to complain that the things he was teaching
were difficult to accept.
Jesus’ response was to ratchet up the proclamation of the
truth. Their response? “From this time many of his
disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (John 6:66). His Word did not return void, but had
accomplished the purpose for which he sent it (Is. 55:11).
How inimical this
can be to the sustaining of a megachurch was
driven home to me by an experience I had a few months ago. A friend of mine, who is a member of and
leader in a megachurch, asked me if I would like to preach there some
time. Before I could answer, he said
words to the effect of, “But you’d have to tone your message
down. Don’t get me wrong
– I like your preaching. But the gospel presented that bluntly
would be offensive to many people, and after all, the goal is to have them
come back next week.”
The faithful
minister of the Word will not have as his purpose pandering to the local
population, but rather will take up his Master’s winnowing fork. Such a practice did not tend in
Jesus’ day to the building of a megachurch. I doesn’t in ours either.
There may be
legitimate reasons why people are drawn to a megachurch,
but there are two predominantly bad ones.
The first is anonymity. They
can slip in and slip out unnoticed.
If they don’t come for weeks on end, often no one may observe
it. They can get lost in a crowd,
and live in their sin indefinitely without being directly shepherded
and challenged to change. This
attitude is not consonant with the mindset commended in Hebrews 13:17 in
which God’s people are told to submit themselves to the leaders of
the Church, and to behave in such a way that their work of shepherding is a
joy for them, and not a burden.
The second reason
is entertainment and “opportunities.” Megachurches
can have programs and pageants going on that rival those of the Parks &
Recreation departments of the counties they are housed in. This is not necessarily bad in itself,
but when the content of sound doctrine is sacrificed on the altar of an
increasing stimulation, the salt has lost its savor.
Some seventy
years ago now, R.B. Kuiper wrote, “By and
large people do not go to church to learn about God from his infallible
Word, but rather to be tranquilized.
And that the glory of God is both the beginning and end of common
worship does not seem to occur to them.”
Steve Simmons in
the March 2002 issue of Tabletalk wrote,
“The modern passion for program-heavy churches with little sound
teaching is an indictment both against pastors and church members. Sheep that choose anything over the sound
teaching of the Bible choose it over Christ himself.”
We have some
larger churches in the OPC, but 600-800 is about the limit. This is not only by providence, but I
believe it occurs by design based upon the teaching of the Word. For my part, it has been my observation
that a church of more than 120 people needs an associate pastor. And though the number chosen is somewhat
arbitrary, if God ever blessed Bethel with growth beyond 300, it would be
my desire to look to plant another church.
GCH
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