Christ First Forum

http://www.christianexaminer.com/Articl ... 12_06.html


Nearly 60 million people worship at a Protestant church each weekend in the U.S. — according to a new survey from Leadership Network and Hartford Institute for Religion Research — and more than 10 percent of them attend a congregation of 2,000 or more. While the mega-church is not a recent development in American culture, its vitality and robustness has surprised many.

The survey — titled “A New Decade of Mega-churches” — found that mega-churches averaged eight percent growth each year during the last half decade. In 2005, the average attendance at mega-churches was slightly more than 2,600; today that number is nearly 3,600.

In addition, mega-churches tend to be “wired,” meaning they use social media to distribute their messages and communicate with their audiences. Eighty-eight percent responded that their church leadership or pastor uses Facebook or other social media, while more than half blog and three-fourths utilize podcasts.

While more mega-churches currently describe themselves as nondenominational (54 percent) than in previous years, more than 70 percent “described the theological outlook of the membership as evangelical.” The descriptor “Pentecostal” was a distant second at eight percent, and “Seeker” followed at five percent.

Some have argued that once the Baby Boomer generation becomes older, the mega-church phenomena would decline, arguing that it was this generation who created the mega-church model. However, findings from “A New Decade of Mega-churches” dispute some of these claims.

Seventy percent of those who attend mega-churches are under the age of 50, with those 65 and older accounting for just 11 percent.

Mega-churches also have a closer representation of women to men than the larger church, with the ratio being 55 percent women to 45 percent men.

Finally, while attendance at mega-churches has become more diverse ethnically, more than 80 percent of attendees are white. The study’s authors said, “Mega-churches are underrepresented among other racial groups compared to national race distributions, but this does seem to be changing gradually.”

This present report describes the overall results of the 2011 study of 336 megachurches (out of 1,611 or a 21% response rate).

I don't subscribe to such polls because they are usually slanted!

Yes, their will always be Mega churches but from what I see and experience the true church is getting smaller and the Remnant are fewer then in recent years.

What does the bible say will happen?

Yep, I totally agree with you, Frank. The true church is definaely getting smaller and smaller. . . just as Scripture says. Narrow is the way that leads to life and FEW there be that find it. That's really scary and sad.

does that include the churches that have multi-sites, and are video cast?

are the "multi-site, video cast" churches included in the "mega church" survey?