Posted on 5/15/2012 by Warren Bird in the Learnings Blog
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If you do an internet search for “biggest churches” or similar, you will find lots of websites listed. The vast majority deal with facilities, not people. They track the most square footage, the most acreage, the tallest buildings, the highest steeples, the costliest construction, the longest times from groundbreaking to final completion, and the like. Some record seating or standing capacity.
I’m most interested in the way churches serve people’s spiritual needs, so my curiosities about “biggest buildings” mostly surround
how the facilities are actually used today. Among U.S. Protestant churches today, the trend is definitely away from constructing giant sanctuaries. In fact, average seating in a typical megachurch is surprisingly small, according to a national survey of megachurches (“A New Decade of Megachurches,” page 5) that I conducted through Leadership Network along with co-researcher Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research:
While megachurches have very large attendance figures, they often do not have massive sanctuaries. The average seating capacity of the largest sanctuary a church has was 1,778, with a median of 1,500. As in our previous surveys, it is apparent that megachurches make excellent use of multiple services to increase their capacity, and many also are multisite (one church in two or more locations). While virtually all have multiple Sunday morning services, 48% have one or more Saturday night services, and 41% have one or more Sunday night services. Megachurches held on average 5.5 services from Friday through Sunday.
Since really big worship areas continue to make the news, I’ve compiled a list of all known Protestant sanctuaries in the United States with seating capacities over 5,000. Out of 1,800 megachurches – congregations with weekly attendances of 2,000 or more adults and children, only about 2% – fewer than three dozen – exceed 5,000 in seating capacity. Click here for an illustrated list of all churches that seat 5,000 or more, and kindly report any corrections or oversights to me at research@leadnet.org.
Additional Fun Facts about Megachurches
For more blogs in this “megachurch” series, see also “World’s First Megachurch?”, "Youngest Megachurch Pastor?" , “Megachurch Languages?”, "Megachurch Books?", and "How Many Megachurches?"
By Warren Bird
Warren Bird, Ph.D., research director at Leadership Network, with background as pastor and seminary professor, is author or co-author of 24 books for ministry leaders including Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work with Jim Tomberlin. His most recent title is Wisdom from Lyle E. Schaller. Some of Warren’s recent online reports include “The Heartbeat of Rising Influence Churches,” “Pastors Who Are Shaping the Future” and “A New Decade of Megachurches.” Follow him on Twitter @warrenbird
Comments
, it is important to plant new diffnreet churches in these rural towns. These churches must be full of new ideas, simple in intellect as the potential people are most likely people who have already given up on failed traditional theology and liberal American religion. These towns are also filled with new non-Christian immigrants such as the Indians who run the hotels and the middle easterners who run the gas stations so they need to be brushed up on the five major world religions if they hope to make a strong case for Christ with these people. Remember they will be comparing Jesus to Muhammad or Buddha or whatever it is that they already believe. The people planting the church must be willing to have people over to their houses to eat that are non-white middle class. Rural politics and cultures today in America are toxic and depressing. This is where some of the saddest stories of post modern America have taken place. Addictions to meth-amphetamines are highest in rural areas like AR and MO. These rural areas are also least likely to have the human social services (counseling, Psychiatry, etcetera) available to deal with these things. Just some food for thought.