Does Bigger Mean More of the Same?

There are dueling churches in our area. Not really but it sure seems like it. One mega-church is located in the largest city in our area. Another is located in the largest city in an adjacent county. Each church has launched a satellite campus in the other church's back yard. Both are offering great teaching, discipleship and worship at their respective "mother church" locations, but despite it, each apparently feels the need to pipe in their pastor's message via video in the same geographic area where the other mega-church is ministering and reaching people!

This is happening all over the country. I will resist the opportunity to challenge this approach based on the biblical model of local leadership and what I believe is the autonomy of the local church. Otherwise, I will just be dismissed as a disgruntled and jealous leader of a much smaller, okay, tiny church in comparison. This isn't about these churches and their shared approach to ministry. Again, let me say that both are great churches and both have touched more lives than our little church probably ever will for the cause of Christ. But what about a mega-church offering a different approach in an age of mega-church "sameness".

David Gibbons pastors a mega-church (NewSong) in Irvine, California. However, his missional story has given birth to indigenous ministries and churches in Dallas, Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, and Bangkok! This is more than the all too famliar and tiring story of a mega-church gone multi-location trying to recreate the culture and worship of the "mother" church/campus via video feeds. Keep in mind that Gibbons' missional approach was started long before missional became the latest buzzword in church leadership circles.

Gibbons was recently interviewed by Leadership Journal, a ministry trade publication produced by Christianity Today. Pastor Gibbons was already leading a church with four locations when God challenged his approach and multi-campus theology while he was in Bangkok. From the LJ interview:

(Gibbons) I saw four churches with 4,000 people versus 400 churches with the same number of people, and the question I felt God posing to me is, Who's stronger?

(LJ)So who is stronger?

(Gibbons) The four hundred churches. You could knock any one of them out, and the rest would keep going. So much of our default protocol is centralized and built around one leader.

You can read the full Leadership Journal interview here, just click on: LJ

Okay multi-location, mega-church types please don't get defensive and write an apologetic of multi-campus theology. Who would've thought going smaller means growth? It is the exact opposite of the Western mega-church model. Remember, this guy leads a mega-church too:

(Gibbons on the Bangkok approach) Smaller units. Decentralized. We ended up creating smaller units all over the city. People don't like to drive in Bangkok—it's too difficult to get across the city. So we created what we call undergrounds. They can meet in cafes, restaurants, academic buildings. They meet everywhere.

And to tell you the truth, if we had gone the megachurch direction, it would have required huge resources. Instead, now after two years, they're self-sustaining, meeting in cafes, clubs, restaurants, and homes.

(LJ)When you do church this way, it means handing off leadership into smaller groups. Do you worry about a loss of control and uneven quality?

(Gibbons) No. This is how real movements of God start. Bigness can slow you down. There's nothing wrong with bigness, by the way. I've seen beautiful whales in the ocean, man. I've seen them dance and splash in the water. Those are miraculous moments. They're magnificent creatures. But the truth is there aren't a lot of whales. But there are millions maybe billions of minnows. I like both big and small. But assuming big is better can hurt us, especially if we consider cultures, cities, and God's focus on the weak and the fringe of culture.

I don't think bigness is going to fit most people or most cultural contexts where the church needs to grow.

Local and indigenous leadership seems to be a biblical model. The New Testament Church centered around the mother church in Jerusalem, but notice how the Apostle Paul employed local leadership (elders, etc.) in the churches he started. Perhaps it's time we, like Paul, learned to trust and value indigenous leadership without feeling the need to control or manage it, or worse yet, produce church clones.