Saturday, June 23, 2007

Fox River looks to join megachurch ranks

Scott Williams reports in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on plans by Fox River Christian Church to expand its facility in the Town of Waukesha, west of Milwaukee, from 70,000 to 170,000 square feet. Fox River currently draws about 1,800 people to Sunday worship. With the expansion, it expects to increase this to over 2,000, the threshold for a "mega-church".

The story includes this sidebar table of Wisconsin Megachurches. There's more to a megachurch than size.

No Catholic churches are listed. Large as St. Al's is, I have never heard that it is the largest parish in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. And I assume there are some large parishes in the four other dioceses in Wisconsin. St. Al's Status Animarum Report (1993-2005) [pdf] shows Sunday Mass attendance declining, but at 2,344 it is greater than sixth-ranked Blackhawk Church on the megachurch league table. While Archbishop Dolan has said our Archdiocese is "buying into the mega-church model", outside observers aren't convinced.

The Megachurch Definition used by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research deals with the question "Very Large Catholic Churches - why aren't they megachurches?" In fact, it says that if only the 2,000 weekly attendance were considered, five out of seven megachurches would be Catholic.
Our studies and readings of worship and the congregational life of Catholic Churches has not convinced us that most very large catholic churches really function like the Protestant megachurches. There are a few that we have come across that do, but most don't have strong charismatic senior ministers, many associate pastors, large staff, robust congregational identity that empowers 100's to 1000's of weekly volunteers, an identity that draws people from a very large area (sometimes an hour or more) and across parish boundaries, a multitude of programs and ministries organized and maintained by members, high levels of commitment and giving by members, seven-day-a-week activities at the church, contemporary worship, state of the art sound and projection systems, auxiliary support systems such as bookstores, coffee shops, etc. huge campuses of 30-100 acres, and other common megachurch characteristics.

Even using attendance figures would run into a problem
Second, when we did try to get lists of churches with attendance figures from many dioceses to confirm attendance numbers, we met with no success.

That might just indicate megachurches have a policy in favor of communication.

1 comment:

  1. There is a lack of parish life everywhere it seems...

    I liked the King of the Hill episode where they join a big Megachurch and at first liked it, but then it got to be too much.

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