Sally Morgenthaler thinks she, and we, may have been.  The author of Worship Evangelism is now wondering if she was a part of something that was not as important as she thought.

At allelon.org, she wrote an article that is quite critical of the contemporary music as evangelism paradigm she helped to create.  Some of her powerful quotes include…

Too many times, I came away with an unnamed, uneasy feeling. Something was not quite right. The worship felt disconnected from real life. Then there were the services when the pathology my friend talked about came right over the platform and hit me in the face. It was unabashed self-absorption, a worship culture that screamed, "It’s all about us" so loudly that I wondered how any visitor could stand to endure the rest of the hour.

and…

Were these worship-driven churches really attracting the unchurched? Most of their pastors truly believed they were. And in a few cases, they were right. The worship in their congregations was inclusive, and their people were working hard to meet the needs of the neighborhood. Yet those churches whose emphasis was dual—celebrated worship inside, lived worship outside—were the minority. In 2001 a worship-driven congregation in my area finally did a survey as to who they were really reaching, and they were shocked. They’d thought their congregation was at least 50 percent unchurched. The real number was 3 percent.  (italics added)

Has the relevant music as a church growth strategy made a difference?

As influential as they are, megachurches aren’t the whole story of American religion. To get a complete picture of church growth in the 1990s and new millennium, we need to look at overall church attendance patterns. Traditional pollsters conduct telephone interviews and expect people to be honest about their religious practices. According to the numbers gathered this way, we’re still at a 40 percent attendance rate. But pollsters who actually do seat counts and take exit polls tell a different story. The average weekly church attendance when measured by actual "bodies present" was at 17.4 percent in 2006, down from 20.4 percent in 1990.6 David Olson of TheAmericanChurch.org remarks, "You’d have to find 80 million more people that churches forgot to count to get to 40 percent."

The bottom line…

…For all the money, time, and effort we’ve spent on cultural relevance—and that includes culturally relevant worship—it seems we came through the last 15 years with a significant net loss in churchgoers, proliferation of megachurches and all.  (Source article)

I am not citing this article to be critical of the mega church but rather to make us think again about how the latest church growth strategies may not be the best strategies for mission.  Many people have been blessed through the mega churches I am intimatly aware of, but very few have come to new life. 

I think it is arrogant and unrealistic to expect the unchurched to show up because of catchy titles and slick brochures.  We need to be going where they are and building relationships.  Reaching the unchurched happens one person at a time. 

The mega church has its place in the work God is doing in the world, but it may not be what we think it is.

This article may be one of the more important ones in the past few years.  Read it.

Thank you Letters from Kamp Krusty for the link. 

(Photo Source)