Small Town Religion
By Bart Hinkle

On Super Bowl Sunday, shortly after eight in the morning, a couple thousand people found their way to a Richmond auditorium and sat down in front of a large stage with two huge flat-screen TVs built into the walls at either side. A live band was warming up on risers at the back of the stage. In a few minutes it got down to business as a blonde in fetching attire appeared. She started belting out an upbeat tune, and in no time the assembled were on their feet—clapping, swaying, singing along. There was a palpable sense that something—something exciting, something fun—was about to happen.

 

Not long after that, the crowd did The Wave—not once, but twice. Two stationary cameras and a third on a 20-foot boom recorded the proceedings, which would be broadcast across the area and beyond. But the people in the seats had not gathered for pre-game festivities attendant upon the Steelers-Seahawks game. Nor had they come for a rock concert—though it seemed, at times, that’s what they were about to get. They had come to listen to Pastor Randy Gilbert.

 

Gilbert is the leader of Faith Landmarks Ministries, one of the largest churches in Virginia, with a membership of more than 6,500. He and his wife, Cherie (she’s the blonde), have been in the business of saving souls for a quarter-century, and now operate out of a sprawling, immaculate complex just off Cham­berlayne Avenue covering several acres. This morning, after a musical interlude, Gilbert delivered the day’s main message, built around Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world.” God lights us when we get saved, Gilbert explained. And after he lights us, he puts us in a prominent position. Then, “it’s testimony time,” time to “walk in the spirit.”

 

More traditional churchgoers may find FLM’s approach to worship a trifle off-putting, and wonder why the sanctuary con­tains no Christian iconography. If you couldn’t hear, you might think you were watching, say, a motivational speaker. In a way, you are. As at most megachurches, the experience at FLM is designed to be uplifting. As she warms up the crowd, Cherie Gilbert tells parishioners, “If you’re feeling heavy, throw it off…. Put your hands together. It’s gonna be all right.” At the end of another song she tells the crowd, “Tell Him how much you love Him. Cast your cares away.”

 

The music is loud enough to make the seats vibrate, yet the experience is designed to be manageable. The comfortable chairs and the large-screen TVs that display Pastor Gilbert as he delivers his message mimic the feel of a living room. And four times within a half-hour, Gilbert asks people to stand and shake hands with those around them. You might be in a great big church with hundreds of other people, but they’re all friends and neighbors.

 

Love clinic to life skills

Starting in a small, run-down building in Richmond’s old Church Hill neighborhood 25 years ago, Faith Landmarks Minis­tries has grown into a full-blown megachurch. Its sanctuary can seat 4,300, and it broadcasts to a large audience on television. The church runs a Christian school that educates roughly 500 students. It conducts ministries on four continents and runs orphanages in India and Africa. Church members regularly visit prisons and nursing homes, and pass out religious literature in inner-city Richmond. A “Love Clinic” offers hot lunches and free haircuts to the homeless.

 

FLM conducts classes to assimilate new members. A small army of volunteers keeps the church operation running smoothly by manning the parking lots and information desk, acting as ushers and pastors’ aides, and greeting parishioners at the door. The church runs a coffee shop (Java Jireh), and a bookstore (Zoe) that soon will move into new quarters of 10,000 square feet. The Life Skills department offers practical counseling. Specialized career counseling is available as well. The church even offers workshops on such unlikely subjects as “How to Eat Like a King or Queen on a Shoestring Budget” and “Maintaining a Clean and Pristine Cruisin’ Machine.” There is also a host of charitable out­reaches, including a food pantry, a clothing pantry, and a donated school supplies center.

 

Like most other megachurches, FLM has numerous “small groups” for children (Kingdom Kids), youth (Solid Rock), and adults (the Yahweh Sisterhood for women, a Men of Purpose group, Xtreme Life for singles, New Dimensions for seniors, and a “Classic Car” social group). It holds classes such as Firm Founda­tions, meant to provide basic understanding of the Word, and the Kids Bible Institute, designed to prepare children for ministry. It offers recreational activities—basketball, football, volleyball, soft­ball, and soccer, for example. The Pastoral Care and Prayer departments lend spiritual support to those in crisis or in need.

 

A megachurch such as FLM is not merely a house of wor­ship, but potentially a mega-experience that extends far beyond Sunday morning services. It addresses human needs at nearly every stage of life between womb and tomb. Why, though, do members seek out services such as career advice or soccer games from a church, when secular society provides these things in abundance? Clearly, FLM and the nation’s other megachurches—which are only 10 per­cent of the country’s congregations but contain roughly half of all regular churchgoers—are supplying people with something they want.

 

Fellowship of the King

What is it that draws people to their pews? Most megachurches offer an upbeat, nonjudg­mental version of Christianity. Jonathan Edwards’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” would not go over well—but then it didn’t go over that well in Edwards’s time, either. Critics of megachurches like Alan Wolfe lament that “rarely is the congregation challenged to do anything other than give itself over to Christ, and even the pursuit of that objective is not accompa­nied by any sense of complexity or difficulty…. Worship in evangelical America may serve many needs, but otherworldly reverence is unlikely to be one of them.”

 

There is, however, intimacy and fellowship—something mega­churches take great pains to cultivate. The use of modern media technology is sometimes criticized as a lazy way of capturing people accustomed to staring at screens (or praised as a contem­porary version of the storytelling stained-glass window), but what the vivid sound and visuals do more than anything else is make the presence of the pastor more immediate. A pastor in a mega­church who uses media well can become better known to parishioners than some ministers in traditional churches with only a hundred attendees—where those in the back pew can barely see or hear him.

 

Megachurches also work hard to be solicitous and inviting. FLM assigns members and great staff effort to “assist our congre­gation in being a warm, open, friendly, and loving family.” The Contact Support department connects the church’s “television family with our FLM family.” Church publications teem with hortatory expressions of fellowship: “join,” “gather,” “take part,” “share together,” “get together,” “be a part of this strong bond.”

 

The media and the message, however, are comparatively minor means of creating intimacy for members of a megachurch. Of much greater importance are the church’s small groups—which might seem peripheral to an outsider, but in fact are central. Take McLean Bible Church just outside Washington, D.C., which boasts more than 10,000 parishioners. It recently completed a new, $90 million sanctuary at Tyson’s Corner, and plans further expansion to satellite campuses soon. With so much attention devoted to growth, one might think MBC has little time left for more intimate concerns. But just the opposite holds true.

 

McLean staffer Ron Johnson insists that “the larger the church is, the smaller it needs to become.” So MBC has more than 700 small-group units that meet in parishioners’ homes throughout the week. They cater to a wide range of concerns, from motherhood (Mothering Matters) to divorce recovery (Beginning Again) to over­coming cancer (Hope Cancer Ministry) to the need for male bonding (The Frontline). McLean also has its own “university,” offering courses on subjects from Christianity 101—“Can I know God in a personal way?”—to financial stewardship. Johnson says that in a big city such as Washington, life “gets pretty lonely pretty fast. We want to provide a place of care where people are standing with our members, caring for them, for their kids…. We’ve paid tremen­dous attention to developing small groups throughout the church where people can be in relationship together.”

 

This emphasis on community is a salient aspect of mega­churches, many of which go so far as to feature the word in their name: Coast Hills Community, Journey Community, Saddle­back Valley Community, Victoria Community, Big Valley Grace Community, Rancho Bernardo Community, Family Commu­nity, South Hills Community, Grace Community, Sunridge Community, Faith Community—and those are just churches in California. “Community” now features more frequently in the names of America’s big churches than any other word except “Christian,” “Christ,” and “Baptist.”

 

Help for the hurting

Like other evangelical megachurches, McLean Bible also engages in a host of community-building pursuits that reach way beyond its own congregation. Under its City Impact outreach umbrella, MBC provides voter registration, food and clothing pantries, filmmakers’ and firefighters’ fellowships, a group through which participants can learn “the art of Gospel clown­ing,” Skiers for Christ, a motorcycle ministry, and a “community for sports car and racing enthusiasts who desire fellowship with others who are passionate about Christ, sports cars, and racing.” Members also do a great deal of more traditional outreach and ministry work. The racing group, for instance, teaches single mothers how to maintain their vehicles. MBC’s career-network ministry aims to help those who are unemployed or under-employed—because, says Johnson, “It’s a lot easier when you’re not by yourself.”

 

Faith Landmarks and McLean Bible Church follow the pattern of megachurches across the country. Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research has surveyed mega­churches extensively and finds that most conduct wide-ranging non-worship activities: More than three fourths have Bible studies, youth and teen activities, ministries for men and women, activities for young adults, and programs for senior adults. At least half run parenting and mar­riage classes, self-help groups, sports and fitness teams, community service activities, and “para­church” groups (such as Promise Keepers and addiction recovery programs).

 

Even more extensive than the churches’ activ­ities within their own walls are the activities they pursue to benefit the community beyond. Fully 99 percent of megachurches offer food assistance to the poor. Nine out of ten offer prison minis­try, counseling, and support. Eight out of ten offer substance abuse programs, programs for seniors, thrift goods, and housing assistance.

 

And when catastrophe strikes a community, houses of worship rush to render aid. As the storm waters of Hurricane Katrina receded, more than 10,000 religious folk poured into the area—often ahead of official disaster recovery agencies. A member of the Biloxi, Mississippi city council told the Washington Post recently that rebuilding has “fallen squarely on the shoulders of faith-based groups” and other non-governmental organizations. “The government basically has not done a whole lot.” Volunteers from groups like Samaritan’s Purse, an evangeli­cal Christian relief group headed by Franklin Graham, have helped mightily.

 

Religious groups have fanned across the Gulf Coast. The Southern Baptist Convention set up 16 relief sites in south Florida, manned by 1,500 workers. Presbyterian Disaster Assis­tance sent 2,000 to the region. Catholic Charities, the United Methodist Committee on Relief, and another evangelical organi­zation, Convoy of Hope, also have pitched in.

 

So have many megachurches, such as NorthRidge Church from the Detroit suburb of Plymouth Township. With an average weekend attendance of 9,000, NorthRidge is one of the fastest-growing churches in the country. By early October, it had orga­nized a group of 180 parishioners to join up with Samaritan’s Purse in Mississippi. The Potter’s House in southwest Dallas—with a membership of 30,000—quickly raised hundreds of thou­sands of dollars for hurricane relief efforts, and set up 80 phone lines to receive calls from those either needing or offering help. (See TAE’s profiles of The Potter’s House in BIRD’S EYE and “Land of Big Religion” in our October/November 2000 issue on Dallas.) Saddleback Church in California, one of the nation’s largest houses of worship—led by Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life—raised $1 million for relief efforts the week­end after Katrina made landfall. Many other megachurches offered shelter, conducted food and clothing drives, raised funds, or sent members to help rebuild the communities hit hardest.

 

Culture change
 

Large churches often reshape communities the way glaciers reshape landscapes: imperceptibly but inexorably. Twelve years ago, Robert Wuthnow, director of the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton, wrote that the small-group move­ment so prevalent among megachurches “is beginning to alter American society.” George Gallup, Jr., reported at about the same time that “the small-group movement appears to be bringing us back together, answering what seems to be one of the central needs of our era—the need for an intimate and healing community.”

 

Such groups make it possible for parishioners to find their niche inside what might otherwise seem an overwhelming edifice. Roughly a quarter of all Americans now belong to a church-initiated small group. Some small groups stay constant for years, and their participants form deep friend­ships. Yet even acquaintances struck up through more transitory participation can last long beyond the life of the group.

 

Experienced church leaders advise not to let small groups become big groups, lest they lose their sense of community and intimacy: “Once a group reaches 16-20 people in attendance, it tends to lose both its ability and desire to reproduce. The chemistry of the group changes, and the group becomes leader-focused, curriculum-content bound, and the members passive consumers of information.”

 

Christian author Neil Anderson, whose book Victory Over the Darkness is used in many small-group classes, concurs: “If your church doesn’t provide opportunities for legitimate Christian fellowship for its members, they will seek it someplace else…. The spiritual union of Christian fellowship—called koinonia in the New Testament—is not just a nice thing the church ought to provide; it is a necessary thing the church must provide.”

 

For many Americans, “God is now less of an external authority and more of an internal presence,” Wuthnow has written. “There is often a close connection between how people understand their relationships with each other and how they approach God.”

 

An example of a small faith group creating a consequential fellowship is NorthStar Community (that word again), a minis­try of Bon Air Baptist Church on Richmond’s south side, 20 minutes from Faith Landmarks Ministries. Bon Air Baptist has 3,000 parishioners, and a community-college-sized catalogue of courses and activities—from sign language and cooking classes to a music camp for children. But its NorthStar Community project is anything but impersonal. With 200 parishioners on an average Sunday morning, it offers a non-denominational approach to those who are “unchurched, or de-churched, or who were once wounded by a church experience,” says Pastor Teresa McBean.

 

NorthStar focuses heavily on helping people address their “hurts, habits, and hang-ups,” which often are related to alcohol and drug addiction. It conducts support groups addressing addiction, codependency, and divorce. Many of those who come to NorthStar also belong to 12-step recovery groups such as A.A., and place value on anonymity. There is, therefore, a “bit of a tension,” McBean says, between the desire for community and the desire for anonymity.

 

NorthStar provides a case study of how a church can develop community almost organi­cally. Originally intended as merely an eight-week class for fewer than two dozen participants, it has attracted a devoted permanent following. “We never sat down and said, ‘How are we going to be organized?’” reports McBean. “We didn’t ask the question, ‘What if this succeeds?’” But it has succeeded—which she explains as simply “a God thing.” Plans are in the works to begin a second NorthStar Community, which will meet on Saturday nights, beginning in September, so needy souls who belong to other churches can maintain those associations and still obtain healing help from NorthStar.

 

The atmosphere of community at NorthStar services is palpable: People address McBean by her first name, and she responds the same way. She will sometimes pause during a homily to ask if anyone has a question. When a hand goes up, she calls on the questioner by name. At a recent service, she singled out a parishioner for recognition—he was celebrating the twelfth anniversary of the day he got sober—and everyone applauded. NorthStar has become a family to many people, where they build and rebuild lives.

 

The risk of worldliness

There is, of course, the potential pitfall that too much emphasis on worldly concerns might detract from a church’s raison d’etre—Wolfe’s “otherworldy reverence.” A couple of years ago the Bergen County Record quoted a parishioner of Christ Church (one of the largest houses of worship in New Jersey) enthusing that after its small-group course on business leadership, “You actually received a professional, printed assement of your leadership skills.” How that relates to the Gospel is an open question.

 

There is always the risk of losing focus—and holiness. Mike Basta, the executive pastor of Prestonwood Baptist in Plano, Texas says, “We’re not a large church. We’re a small town.” An assistant at the 20,000-member World Changers Church Inter­national in Georgia says their pastor is “like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.” Thumma, of the Hartford Institute, quotes a pastor who said that upon taking over a megachurch he felt he was “acting more like a mayor or governor than a pastor.”

 

Large churches can have as many as 20 assistant ministers and 250 full-time employees—more than the membership of many mainline churches. “We are a church but we are also a business,” concedes an administrator at Chapel Hill Harvester church in Atlanta, Georgia. Sometimes the transactions in a giant church—like soliciting contributions—can seem to over­shadow more spiritual endeavors.

 

If megachurches sometimes seem like small towns, one reason might be because they have taken on these functions as other forms of community have withered. In a society in which many civic institutions seem to be declining, the church provides a rock for many urban Americans to cling to. As James Twitchell writes in his book on this phenomenon, “A mega­church mimics the Norman Rockwell town center, complete with the town square…. By taking on roles as various as those of the Welcome Wagon, the USO, the Rotary, the quilting bee, the coffee shop, and the country club mixer—and, of course, the traditional family and school—these ‘next churches’ have become the traditional villages that many Americans think they grew up in and now can find only on television. In this context, the mall and megachurch look alike for a reason: they are insti­tutionalized communities, growing outward, not upward.”

 

But megachurches are more than synthetic villages. For many people they are the real thing. In an interview with The Christian Century two years ago, Harvard’s Robert Putnam spoke of their ability to create important kinds of closeness. He noted that they are very focused on “a consistent, theologically conservative set of views.” And he concluded that their “most important” influence “is their very thoughtful approach to building community.”

 

McLean Bible Church’s Johnson says the various ways his church reaches out, while addressing “felt needs,” are ultimately “just a stepping stone” to a stronger bond with God. “All of us have needs…. We’re so busy, proud, and running through life that a relationship with God has been on the back burner.” People might come to the church looking for fellowship, but Johnson says they stay at a church “because they sense that they are growing spiritually.”

 

Asked whether parishioners at megachurches come to belong, and stay to believe—or vice versa—Wuthnow says the two probably cannot be separated. Most parishioners are “seekers” who are looking for both worship and fellowship. The obvious implication is that groups of believers looking to increase worship must offer community too. In the process, they change the society around them.

 

Building both faith and society 

In some cases, the relationship between fellowship and worship, between cell and celebration, is easy to see and build on. As a prime example of the way in which small-group minis­tries can strengthen both personal faith and wider society, Ron Johnson of the McLean Bible Church points to their Access Ministry, created for families with disabled children. “The greatest need of the parents of children with a disability is to have a break,” Johnson says. “They’re exhausted. They end up losing relationships with other people because they don’t have time.” Access provides volunteers who care for disabled children so their parents can attend worship services. Over time it has grown into Breakaway, a program enabling parents to leave their disabled children with child-care volunteers for eight hours on a Saturday. Such programs, Johnson says, “have allowed us to reach out to a community of people who were not being cared for.” In giving such parents the gift of time, Access fosters community not only with the church, but also with fam­ily members, neighbors, and other non-church social groups.

 

Access began with a single individual, and has grown sub­stantially over time. Along with Breakaway, it now requires a large number of volunteers to provide the one-on-one care that disabled children need. Such volunteer opportunities provide parishioners with a means to step out from the anonymous crowd in the big sanctuary and become active participants in the Christian life.

 

Often, the church subgroups develop subgroups, as in any authentic community. Richmond’s NorthStar Community, which began as an offshoot of Bon Air Baptist, has developed offshoots of its own: home-study groups, a partnership with Habitat for Humanity, guest-speaking conferences, even a kickboxing class.

 

Princeton’s Wuthnow concludes that “the small-group movement has been effecting a quiet revolution in American society. Its success has astounded even many of its leaders. Few of them were trying to unleash a revolution at all. Rather, they were responding to some need in their own lives or in the lives of people they knew.” Yet while pursuing their religious impulses in this way they changed lives. “The communities they create are seldom frail. People feel cared for. They help one another,” summarizes Wuthnow.

 

And so these big churches, and the many small groups they foster, recapitulate the early church itself. Christianity, after all, began with just one man and 12 disciples, and ended up as a mighty edifice that utterly transformed not only communities but also world history. So touching individual lives, creating community, and shifting the wider society is an old formula, one that still works powerfully in ways big and small and far too numerous to count—even on Super Bowl Sunday.

 

 

Bart Hinkle is an editorial writer and columnist with the Richmond Times-Dispatch.