Megachurches and Business Models

Business Week Online has an interesting article about megachurches which will provide ammunition for both those who are in favor of and those who are opposed to them. Since I attend one you can put me in the former group, but I know others who are vigorously opposed to them. Hey, it's a free country.

Of course megachurches come in for a fair amount of criticism, often from those who don't have megachurches, but I found this comment in the article particularly stupid:

As they thrive, though, there are growing tensions, with some mainline Protestants offended by their conservative politics and brazen marketing. "Jesus was not a capitalist; check out what [He] says about how hard it is to get into heaven if you're a rich man," says the Reverend Robert W. Edgar, general secretary of the liberal National Council of Churches. (HolyCoast-I didn't put the word "liberal" in there - it was in the original article.)

Did Jesus ever say that if you were rich you could not get to heaven? Of course not. He was referring to an attitude and not actual dollars. Jesus was more concerned with a person's attitude toward money and what they did with it than how much they had. Jesus never called his followers to poverty, and I'm sure Rev. Edgar makes a nice living and probably hasn't sold everything and given it to the poor.

This comment by Rev. Edgar shows an appalling lack of knowledge about the way Jesus taught his disciples, but of course, Edgar is toeing the liberal line that is so loved by the National Council of Churches. As you know if you've been reading this site for awhile, I'm no big fan of theirs.

Are all megachurches pure as the wind-driven snow? Of course not. There are likely some very large churches out there that have motives other than reaching people for Christ, and that's clearly wrong. But the idea that Big Church = Bad Church is equally wrong and I have a real problem with critics who have applied that standard to all megachurches.

By the way, I wrote a piece on Big Church vs. Small Church a few months ago that might be worth another look.