The Church Answers Podcast

How the Boomers Killed Many American Churches, Part 2: Here Comes the Megachurch

While much has been written on this large generation born between 1946 and 1964, Thom argues that we have not explained why this generation hurt many congregations, some to the point of death. In these second of three episodes, he looks at the relationship between the Boomers and the growth of megachurches.

Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 28 May 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney & Associates. Chaney & Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here is the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. Welcome to the Church Answers podcast. My name is Tom Rayner. You are viewing us on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcasting out. Thank you for both. Hey, those of you who are watching us viewing us on YouTube, would love for you to subscribe to the Church Answers channel. Love for you to get the word out by subscribing and give us a thumbs up and a rating. And those of you who are listening, whatever podcast app is your choice, give us a rating and review there. And as you heard in the introduction, the Church Answers podcast is brought to you by Chaney & Associates, the accounting firm for the church. They're serving over 1,100 churches now. It's an unbelievable story how they have become this just dominant, yet effective organization for churches in all areas of finance, bookkeeping, taxes, payroll, you name it, giving they are the firm for the church. So go to Chaney & Associates. You can look them up at chaneyassociates.com as chaneyassociates.com or you can see the link in our show notes and just click on there. Start the previous episode. You may want to go back and listen to it because it gave a history of boomerism in the church. I don't want to repeat everything I said the first time around. You can go back and pick up those pieces of information about this 76 million large generation that was born between 1946 and 1964. And you can hear more about them. You can hear more about us because I'm part of this generation. I was born in the middle of the baby boom in 1955. So in 1946 to 54, older than I am, 1956 to 1964 are younger than I am. It's a large generation. It was a self-centered. It is a self-centered generation with exceptions. Anytime you talk about a generation, you're making comments that are generalization. So don't say that I'm not getting any one person down because I'm one of them. It's an entitled generation. It's a selfish generation. It's a generation that asks what have you done for me lately. And when they started coming into the church, it was not an help to local congregations. And particularly when much of the boomer literature at the time, or most of the church growth literature at the time said, hey, in order to reach the boomers, you need to do the following for them, which is just quite opposite of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ. Part of the body of Christ, 1 Corinthians 12, we're to function for God, for others. We are there for the good of others. Yes, God will bless us and the fellowship of other believers will bless us. But we're there to serve, to give, to minister, to evangelize. The boomers were taught in many churches, relax, take it easy. We're not going to ask you to give. We're not going to ask you to serve. We're here just to, in many cases, entertain you. I want to be clear that when I start talking about mega churches, I fully acknowledge that there aren't many healthy mega churches, just like I fully acknowledge that there are many boomers who are very self less who are big givers. So don't think that I'm attacking any particular church or any particular boomer of what, which I am one, but I do want you to hear about the mega church movement and how the boomers really contributed to this movement. I want to give props to Sam Rainer. He's done as much research on the mega church, particularly from this demographic perspective as anyone I know. And I get a lot of my information from him and the research he's done. You can always look at that churchanswers.com and Ryan Burge has contributed a lot at churchanswers.com in the area of who does what in churches. But this whole thing about the boomers and how they affected mega churches is a phenomenal story. Prior to the boomers, and again, the births started in 1946 and went all the way to 1964, huge number of live births during this time. Prior to the boomers, the mega church was an unknown. There were a few exceptions. Moody in Chicago would be one of the classic exceptions. First Dallas would end up being an exception before even the boomers came along. But for the most part, mega churches were outliers that you rarely heard of. But then along come the boomers. Now, where did the mega churches form? A general statement is this, they formed in more populated, fast growing areas that you look at the history of mega churches. They were in areas that were fast growth. Now, does that mean that every church in that area grew? No, it means that that particular church did. And they did a lot of things right. They being the mega churches. But the boomers were the primary contributor to the first waves of growth of the mega church. And frankly, for many mega churches today, that influence largely negative, which if you go back and listen to my previous episode is a self-serving influence, has hurt mega churches and has hurt the culture of Christianity in America. So simply to say, when you get a lot of people coming into a large church and they're all about me, myself and I, that church begins to get weaker and its impact on culture is much less. That is a large history of the mega church. Many smaller churches would lose members to these mega churches. They'd want to go to the place where they could send their kids to the latest youth or children's ministry. That's understandable. They would want to go to the latest event that this mega church had that is understandable. But two things were going on. You were building these large congregations of self-centered members, again, just a general statement. And at the same time, you were taking members away from these small churches, smaller, that were, I'm not going to say they were all healthy pain and stretch of the imagination. But they did have that close connection that is often not afforded in the largest churches. So what happened to the mega churches? Many people don't know this. And again, I defer to the research of Sam Rayner. But the number of mega churches has been essentially plateaued and now declining in America. It's no longer a movement. It's beginning to be a movement that is reversing, if not unraveling. And I would love to see a study if we could ever get the information that we know would be precise and accurate. I would love to see a study of how many mega churches really exist today. What is a mega church? A mega church has an average attendance every week of 2000 or more. Simple as that. That's all children, adults, 2000 or more. However, I have seen some publications say we're now going to define the mega churches 1600 or more. Well, basically the goal post is moving to use the metaphor in order to capture more of these large churches. We know that the number of mega churches is decreasing. We know that people are leaving the mega churches just like they are leaving other churches. This particular trend was exacerbated in 2020 during the peak of COVID, which was also the peak of the quarantine. And what happened during the quarantine? What happened during COVID was a lot of people, most people were not in an in person church. They may, they may have been in a church where they were watching it online. They were seeing it via video, but they were not in person. And you know what? During that time, a lot of church members decided that they did not need the in person church proportionately. They were deciding that more from mega churches than they were the smaller churches. Now, the smaller churches got hit is what art is well too. The large churches generally got hit the hardest, whereas the smaller churches were losing 20 and 30% of their attendance. A number of mega churches were losing 30 and 40% of their attendance. Why was that? Who was falling out? It was during the pandemic that this whole sense of, do I really need church? Does it serve my purpose? Came to the forefront because they weren't attending church. I don't need this anymore. And because they weren't connected to the church through their service, through their altruistic motives, through their commitment to Christ, because they weren't connected to the church that way, they began to leave. Now, to be clear, the pandemic, COVID, the quarantine, that's not the reason that the mega churches are fewer in number and declining as well. But it exacerbated a trend that was already taking place. The mega churches were largely the outgrowth of the baby boomer generation. Now, as the baby boomer generation fades away through death, but even more so right now through just simply saying, I don't need the church anymore, mega churches are feeling the pain, probably more than any group. And that is why we don't anticipate that there's going to be a significant growth in the number of mega churches moving forward. Well, this is just one of the many conversations that we could have about this baby boomer generation. I want to get to another issue in episode three. I gave you a history of boomerism in episode one. I talked about the mega church in episode two, but now I want to go to this whole thing about rewarding transfer growth. You may not have a clue what I'm talking about, but I hope you'll come back in the third episode of this three part series, how the boomers kill many American churches and find out. Thank you, Steve Cheney. Thank you, Cheney and associates. Don't forget we had this incredible everything church resource directory. I said it right that time that you can download and it's just just what it says. Any type of church resource you need. Our goal is to make that available where you can look it up with just one simple glance. So download that. It's free. Go to Cheney associates.com and find out why they are the accounting firm for the church. And thank you listeners on podcasting apps viewers on YouTube for being a part of the church answers podcast. Hope to see you in the third of three episodes on this whole thing of boomers in the church. See you later. You have been listening to the church answers podcast presented by Cheney and associates. Cheney and associates are the accounting firm for the church. You need to focus on ministry. Cheney will focus on finances. Also, please subscribe and give a review to the church answers podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)