While relatively few American megachurches come from mainline denominations, some do — and that includes Presbyterian congregations from Florida to Washington state.
Leaders from some of those congregations say people do tote around a wheelbarrow of misconceptions about big churches. They also say some of what works for them could work for congregations of any size — and that they can learn valuable lessons from smaller, more intimate churches too.
Here’s a glimpse inside a few Presbyterian megachurches — all big, but all different.
Rancho Bernardo
Tim Beal is executive pastor of Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church www.transformedlives.com/ in San Diego, a 40-year-old congregation that lists 2,500 members. It holds six worship services each weekend, ranging from coffeehouse style to contemporary to traditional worship with a choir and organ — but each with the same sermon. It also is home to an Arabic-speaking fellowship of about 100.
And Rancho Bernardo is about to embark on another step that’s becoming increasingly common among megachurches: building a second campus, this one called The Porch and located a few miles south. It will be “a community service center at which people will also find a church,” Beal said — meaning the facility will be built without a sanctuary, but worship will be held in a gym or theatre or other space. The rest of the week, the emphasis will be on a preschool, on recreation ministry and a performing and musical arts program for children.
Rancho Bernardo follows a program based on Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Church model. “We are not primarily seekers, but we organize ourselves so things make sense to a seeker,” Beal said. “We see our job as not just to get them to make an initial commitment to Christ,” but to develop mature Christians.
The congregation does use the word “Presbyterian” in its name, unlike some megachurches, which avoid explicit mention of denominational affiliation. But Beal acknowledges, “the denomination is not high-profile in the life and ministry of the church.”
The membership at Rancho Bernardo has held solid in the 2,000 to 2,500 range for the past 20 years, he said. But over the last eight years, since Bruce Humphrey came as senior pastor, weekly attendance has grown from about 1,000 to 1,800, a sign, Beal said, of deepening discipleship.
That’s another finding of the megachurch research. Megachurches typically have a charismatic leader — most of the time, a white male who’s a strong preacher. And because of their size, “there is an expectation that things are done well,” Beal said. People expect excellence in everything from the music to the parking.
While that leads some critics to accuse megachurches of being too much about glitz and not enough about substance, Beal said Rancho Bernardo has developed a sense of purpose he thinks could work for any Presbyterian church of any size. Its website states that: “We believe encounters with Jesus Christ transform lives.”
Instead of saying, “we’re a mainline church and when people come to their senses, they’ll rejoin us,” the emphasis is on helping people grow as followers of Jesus Christ, Beal said.
“The church has changed its focus from surviving and thriving as an institution to equipping people to become disciples of Christ.”
Second Presbyterian, Indianapolis
Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis www.secondchurch.org/ is strongly planted in the Reformed tradition, and “one of the most highly valued features of our church is our traditional character,” said senior pastor Lewis Galloway. Three of the five worship services are traditional; one is designed for families with young children, and the last features Communion every week and a range of music from jazz to vocal ensembles.
The congregation, with about 1,900 members, is one of the oldest in Indianapolis and in 1959 moved to its current location on a wide street, where the French Gothic cathedral “was actually planted there to be a very imposing statement of faith,” Galloway said. And some people are definitely intimidated by a big church.
But the intent at Second is to be large but welcoming, evangelically-minded within the Presbyterian tradition.
One myth about megachurches is “there’s total anonymity,” Galloway said. “In fact people are vitally connected through worship and small groups.”
When people visit the church, Welcome Ministry teams visit their homes to deliver a loaf of fresh-baked bread and a packet of information about Second. Before they go out, those volunteers meet to pray and study the Psalms together. Galloway said the goal is to get every member involved in a small group in the church and to have them involved in ministry outside their normal circle of family and friends.
“Small churches have a lot to teach big churches about how to live out the faith in community with each other,” he said. And in a megachurch, the small groups “in effect become like small congregations.”
First Presbyterian, Colorado Springs
With more than 5,000 members, First Presbyterian Church of Colorado Springs, Colo., www.first-pres.org/ , has been a big church for decades, said Nancy Maffett, the congregation’s director of outreach. But it’s a big church in a very secular city, she said — so the congregation has had to work hard at being welcoming to people who may not have had much experience with church.
“Some people want a big church so they can be anonymous and not have to do anything,” Maffett said. “You have to be very intentional about offering a warm welcome and it has to be a structured thing.”
For example, First Church has a lot of entrances — a lot of doors to walk through, a lot of hallways in which to get lost. So greeters are stationed at each — and they don’t just give directions, they walk the newcomers to the nursery or the sanctuary or the Sunday school classroom. Often those volunteers are fairly new to the church themselves — it’s a concrete way to get involved, and they remember what it felt like to be new and maybe a little hesitant about being there at all.
With those who register as visitors, the congregation follows up with personal phone calls and letters. They don’t want to pester people, Maffett said, but whether a church is big or small, “it is important to call you by name.”
In terms of programs, First Church also offers a lot of doorways into the congregation — from grief workshops and divorce recovery groups to an extensive adult Sunday school program. One of the adult Sunday school classes has an average attendance of 150 — some are as big as a small church. So all of the strategies for inviting people in to the fellowship need to apply there too, Maffett said — meaning “you notice, you welcome, you miss them if they stop coming.”
She’s also aware that, in a consumer culture, first impressions matter. “We know that people will give our nursery only one look,” Maffett said. If they don’t think it’s clean enough or secure enough, they won’t come back.
So she thinks churches have to study the culture and respond to it, not that “we’re going to be everything for everybody. We are very evangelical.”
Another challenge for a megachurch is to find a way for the smaller groups to feel a part of the whole. So Maffett said First Church tries to provide opportunities in addition to worship — such as short-term mission trips — to gather people together across age groups and stages of life.
And Maffett said the senior pastor, Jim Singleton, encourages people to commit to “worship plus two” — to go to worship regularly; to find a commitment to nurture one’s own spiritual life; and to find some way “to give yourself away in service.”
