The Church Growth Movement led to a surge of megachurchesโcongregations of 2,000 and moreโbuilt on the principle of updating Christian worship and church practices to make them more attractive to people today.* But now a number of megachurchesโincluding some of the most trend-settingโare offering liturgical services and are bringing back elements of traditional Christianity, such as creeds, the church year, and other historic practices.
So reports Anna Keating in her article for America, a Jesuit publication, entitledย Why Evangelical megachurches are embracing (some) Catholic traditions.
She doesnโt quite grasp all of the issues she writes about.ย Roman Catholics do not have a monopoly on liturgical worship, creeds, the church year, or historic Christianityโas Lutherans and Anglicans (two of the largest Protestant movements), among others, would demonstrateโso what she describes as โCatholicโ applies only in the โuniversalโ sense of the Apostlesโ Creed.ย Interestingly, she seems rather taken with the casual โseeker-friendlyโ style of megachurches and is sympathetic with the charismatic movement.
But what she reports is fascinating and important for Christians on all sides of the church growth controversiesโincluding veterans of the โworship warsโ that tore many conservative denominationsโto understand.
The pioneering New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with over 10,000 members, now incorporates โmore traditional liturgies,โ uses the Nicene Creed as its confession of faith, offers Communion every Sunday, and follows the historical church year.
Willow Creek in suburban Chicago, perhaps the most influential megachurch with over 24,000 members, now offers a โtraditional liturgical-styleโ worship service.
The Village Church in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex with 14,000 members, is a Southern Baptist congregation that follows the liturgical calendar, recites the Apostlesโ Creed, and fasts during Lent.
Epiphany Church in Lower Greenville, Texas, employs incense in its worship services, uses the historical lectionary, and historical prayers.
Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, Michigan, not only uses the Nicene Creed, the church year, and weekly communion, but it has also scrapped the multi-media screens and concert-hall design that characterize most megachurches in favor of an altar and a cross.
[Readers, if you know of similar examples, or attend such a church, please tell us about it in the comments.]
Why this reversion away from โnew ways of doing churchโ to historical Christianity?
โFor some megachurch pastors,โ says Keating, โthe move toward liturgy and tradition is about a desire to go deeper in forming their congregations in faith.โย She interviewed the pastor of New Life Church, who has become a serious student of historic Christianity and who implemented the changes after the previous celebrity-pastor was brought down in a sex scandal.ย In its trauma, the congregation recognized its need for a deeper, richer faith.ย I suspect something similar happened at Willow Creek, which has also struggled with a sex scandal.
Another reason cited in the article is that much of the public has become burned out with contemporary evangelicalism, which has lost much of its former allure.ย Traditional Christianity and traditional churches, ironically, are โdifferentโ and have become an attractive alternative.
Another reason Keating says is simply an extension of the Church Growth Movementโs emphasis on marketing.ย โMegachurches are big businesses with lots of people on payroll, and part of the change is about marketing, rebranding, consumer choice and retention,โ she says. โYou want a contemporary service? We offer that. You want traditional? We have that too.โ
While we traditional Christians should applaud these developmentsโespecially those of us in traditional churches that, in some cases, threw out their historic liturgy and practices in hopes of becoming a megachurchโwe can also see the limits of some of these changes.ย The Church Growth Movement has always taught that style is separate from substance, that the style doesnโt really matter, so that orthodox teaching can be communicated in any style that โworksโ in connecting with people.ย The problem, as artists and media experts know, is that โthe medium is the message,โ that style shapes and even determines what substance is being conveyed.ย Style and substance has to work together; more to the point, to convey a particular message, the substance has to determine the style.
If the liturgy, creeds, and other traditional practices are nothing more than trappings, apart from or even in contrast to the churchโs theology and teachings, the style/substance problem will not have changed.ย On the other hand, just as a contemporary style works against orthodox substance, a more orthodox style will work to communicate a more orthodox substance, whether that is the intent or not.ย And often, to give credit where credit is due, this is the intent.
At any rate, traditional, orthodox churches can take heart from these developments that liturgy, creeds, and historical practices are not necessarily โobstaclesโ to growth, as they have been told.ย Indeed, they can be profoundly compelling for casualties of contemporary Christianity.
*Note:ย There is no reason why very large congregations, including those with more than 2000 members, cannot be orthodox and liturgical.ย I have attended many of those both as a visitor and as a member.ย By โmegachurch,โ I do not mean such large congregations.ย Just those that have become large by following church growth innovations.ย That some of those are returning to traditional practices is a commentary on those innovations.
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Photo:ย New Life Church, Colorado Springs, aerial photo byย Adammeliski [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)] via Wikimedia Commons
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