I was reminded of this while reading a recent issue of The Christian Century a few weeks ago. In "Synchronized Worship" (Jan. 26, 2010), Jason Byassee writes about LifeChurch.tv, which is a thirteen-year-old ministry begun in Oklahoma that has expanded to include thirteen "campuses" in five states, plus an extensive online ministry that includes multiple online services. This is perhaps the most progressive example of a trend over the past generation in which large churches are not simply adding more service times to accommodate more people, but building entire sanctuaries in other locations.
In general, there are some basic benefits, especially in leadership. Instead of multiple congregations having to figure plan and organize for outreach, a central committee does so. A unified team handles church finances. A unified team leads audio-visual technology preparation, meaning that all aspects of that are handled better. I could go on, but you can imagine the list. It is based on the model of increased efficiency that has flourished throughout American society over all of the 20th Century, from the Sears and Montgomery Ward mail-order catalogs to the rise of Wal-Mart, from the growth of industrial farming to the merging of countless smaller business ventures in countless fields.
LifeChurch.tv takes this even further by developing a franchise model of church, in which each worship service is carefully coordinated, ensuring a similar experience in all of the various locations. It's the church's version of McDonald's; wherever you worship, you know what to expect -- including the promise that the service will last exactly one hour. The precision of the service is necessary because it combines live video elements with local in-house elements. At certain times, everyone sees the same things on the video screens, including the sermon; at other times, there is music or prayer led by one of the onsite pastors or worship leaders. But there's also a distinct technical precision to these services that goes beyond the issue of live video feeds -- the leadership of this church clearly intends for the church to be production savvy. All of the video (which I believe is prepared by their own teams), including the slick announcements video (shot and edited to feel like a hip, cable newscast), is of a very high quality -- better than a lot of local news programming. And the various local elements are evidently evaluated to make sure that they meet the goals of the worship service, which in MBA terms is about protecting your brand.
Byassee has a very simple question in his profile: Is this the church of the future? On the one hand, the gut answer is "No." There are simply too many people who like congregations of a certain size that meet in certain places. Certainly there will be other churches who follow the multiple-location model, there are even Disciples churches that are pursuing this, like Geist Christian Church in Indianapolis, and not also just outside of Indianapolis. There may even be several more who aggressively add an "Internet-campus," just like LifeChurch.tv's Internet church. But what many people love about their churches are their sizes and their personal relationships with each other and with their own pastor. Once a church grows to a certain size, your relationship with the senior pastor will be limited, and some people don't want that.
On the other hand, I worry that the answer to Byassee's question will be "Yes" far more often than I'd like to think. Not because of the growing economic challenges of churches, which may force many of them to either merge or share the services of one pastor, if they are to avoid simply disbanding. There are several cultural movements that a multiple location church like LifeChurch.tv taps into. A desire for a known product of a certain quality, regardless of where you are (the McDonald's or Applebee's or Cracker Barrel approach to church -- you pretty much know what you'll be getting before you walk through the doors). A desire for a certain amount of anonymity -- it would be wrong to suggest that all of the people who attend don't want to meet other people, but you can bet that they're happy they won't immediately be approached become a church officer after they join. The rise of "church as event" worship -- where the pastor is such a superstar, you watch him on a giant TV screen, with hundreds of other people; and if you've been to a concert in a large venue, you know that you're usually watching the performance on one of the jumbo TV screens because the performers are so small from your vantage point -- this attitude makes a video-fed sermon seem normal or even better, because you can see the preacher's face so much more clearly on the screen.
I'm sure there are others, but these are the basic ones. Mind you, I'm not criticizing LifeChurch.tv for their individual ministry, which taps into these trends -- clearly they're reaching out to lots of people in a way that seems to make sense. I'm all for more people taking their faith lives more seriously. But I am criticizing LifeChurch.tv as a model for the future of the church as a whole. I think it's an awful trap, just as many enormous churches are, to go overboard on efficiency in ministry and leadership.
I'm convinced that the church was never meant to be efficient, ultimately because worship is not an efficient act. God does not want us to worship from a prescribed checklist on a schedule. If God wanted that, he would have hard-wired such worship into us and we would do it naturally. Kind of like the opening of The Lion King, all of creation would gather together (lion next to lamb, naturally) singing or praying to God at a certain time before we go about our other business; unlike The Lion King we wouldn't need an occasion, and we'd just worship. But God created us with a freedom so that we have to want to worship, we have to want to reach out to God. And human desire does not work on a schedule.
More than this, though, there's another aspect of the overly efficient church that bothers me. It can seem ideal for leadership to be drawn from vast numbers of people, so that the cream rises into positions of leadership. But the history of the church demonstrates a different model of leadership, in which people rise to the challenges of the gospel despite their official educational and work experiences. We know that God has given us many gifts, including some that we don't always tap into unless we're given the opportunity. A church that only looks to certain types of people for certain types of ministry and leadership misses out on those times when someone unexpectedly discovers a gift for doing something. There are so few places in our society that encourage people to try things outside of their comfort zone or outside of their obvious field(s) of expertise; it would be a shame if congregations stopped being such places. And efficiency is a significant impediment to this type of spiritual gift discovery and development.
Regardless of my misgivings, this trend of larger, multiple location congregations will only become more pronounced in the upcoming years. I'm sure that such churches will offer new opportunities and ministries that will benefit the church. I just hope it doesn't come at too high of a price.
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