This series looks at four techniques of the most successful United Methodist churches in America. While the techniques could benefit any church, they have serious dark sides. A dystopian future could await United Methodism if these techniques become widespread.
01: Vulture Churches | 02: Franchise Churches | 03: Production Churches | 04: Caste Churches
Introduction
In the United Methodist Church, there are churches and then there are vital churches, meaning churches who have been defined as having the necessary qualities to be strong and vibrant (there’s 16 drivers in all). Over and over again in seminars and books, we are encouraged to emulate these successful churches and use their techniques in our ministry contexts. However, when one looks at these vital churches and the megachurches in the United Methodist Church, they also have in common four other techniques which are, in my opinion, “playing with fire.”
- Multi-site: they worship in multiple locations throughout a community or region.
- Piped message: they export their sermons and sometimes entire worship services to multiple locations.
- Sermon series: they have 4-8 week sermon series, which in some cases become book deals or curriculum.
- One Magnetic Personality: these churches are run by one well-educated and charismatic clergy, who is often a man.
In this series, we will look at these four techniques and examine the dark sides of these techniques and the dystopian future that might emerge if these become more commonplace without serious reflection and persistent accountability.
From Piped Messages to Franchise Churches
The number one purveyer of piped messages (sermons preached in one space and delivered via Satellite or DVD to multiple locations) is LifeChurch.tv, a non-denominational church in many locations across Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, New York, and Tennessee. Pastor Craig Groeschel is a former Methodist, in fact, whose vision of a church in many locations was scoffed at by his professors and mentors (short-sighted, obviously).
The Methodist version of Lifechurch is Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City, headed by Rev. Adam Hamilton. It has multiple locations. Hamilton mostly preaches at one location and then pipes the messages to the others. It is highly successful and his sermons have been made into many curriculum resources that churches everywhere have benefitted from.
Three years ago, I wrote about Church of the Resurrection starting another campus by entering into partnership with a struggling UMC in Blue Springs. My fear at the time was that that the congregation would allow the entirety of their sermon message to be created by outsiders and not allow the local pastor to do theologizing in the sermon form. Many people brought up similar concerns in the comments.
Three years later, some of our fears have come true. The campus pastor of Resurrection Blue Springs has not preached at all in 2013 (while campus pastors from the other two church sites have preached at their campuses and even at Blue Springs via videocast). While that may not be in her job description, my personal fear was that the person with the most day-to-day conversations with the people of Blue Springs is not doing the theologizing with them in the context of the sermon.
Like a waterdrop seeking the path of least resistance, piped messages offer the most simple way for churches to go multi-site and outsource their messaging to a proven entity. This model is catching on: piped messages are proving to be an easy way to create new locations in an urban context. Why drive across town when you can go to the closer location to you and sit with people who you see at your favorite espresso stand?
In short, multi-site and piped messages make it easy to create a franchise within a denomination: a whole slew of Hamilton, Slaughter, or Acevedo-focused churches (though Acevedo doesn’t use piped messages in his multiple sites…yet). A franchise that no Annual Conference votes on, and that no Bishop can have full control over.
The Dystopian Future of Franchise Churches
I admit I can see the temptation to do piped messages. I’m a clergyperson who crafts worship, curriculum, and ministry every week and I wonder how I would respond if we did this. If we gave over our worship time to a corporate church (in whole or part), then look at the benefits:
- I could spend more time doing discipleship ministries (my primary interest) and less time preaching/leading worship. More time = more effective.
- The preaching would be less personal in message but more tightly crafted by fantastic worship leaders.
- People already watch TV all the time, they can clearly
be mezmorized byhandle a streamed message. - The parish can accept ministers with more gifts in discipleship/congregational growth (likely strengths of Blue Springs campus pastor) rather than simply great preachers/worship leaders.
So yes, I can see the temptation to do this. The benefits are clear. But the utopia is not my concern today. The dystopian future for me has the following difficulties:
- Outsourcing the message is the one thing that separates the church from the world: worship of Jesus Christ. Outsourcing the theological task just doesn’t seem right to me, no matter how great the product is you are buying. I think the people who are living out their life together should do the theologizing, not outsiders.
- I can see more denominational splintering as multiple churches align themselves with various charismatic preachers, so in one town you have the Adam Hamilton UM church and the Slaughter UM church and so on. These sort of alliances can only spell more schizmatic force and the temptation to influence the political process. John Meunier wrote yesterday about another local church that is leaving United Methodism over refusing the itinerant system–how much more will such franchises exacerbate it?
- Further marginalization of ethnic preachers and women. Why have the guy who talks funny or the woman who wears those earrings when you could have a white male preacher in a bottle? Let’s face it: the super-majority of megachurches have white male pastors! While Resurrection has female campus ministers to offer worship leadership, I could see this happen as congregations vote to marginalize their pastors’ leadership and ability to craft worship.
Are multi-site churches the future and effective? I’m sure they will be. But like McDonalds and Wal-Mart ran out their smaller competition, I see no reason why franchised corporate churches could not do the same and drive out dissonant Methodist voices in any given city through the use of one well-preached voice…even within my own denomination. That dystopian future looks less and less like the connectional and highly varied United Methodist Church that I know and love.
Your Turn
- Are churches that pipe their message contributing to a franchise within the UMC? One that looks less like United Methodism and more like reflections of their leader?
- Is there another way to do multi-site that doesn’t involve outsourcing the theological task to an outside preaching head?
This is a four-part series, next is on the effect of relying on sermon series rather than lectionary preaching. See you then.
Thoughts? Thanks for your comments, both here and on Facebook.
(Photo credit: “Abandoned Church” by Ben Salter, Creative Commons share on Flickr)
I completely agree with you on the whole “franchise churches” thing. It’s been common in mega-churches for awhile now (which makes a lot of sense, when technology use is of fundamental importance and charismatic leaders are the guiding force behind the church as a whole), and I’ve been really concerned about what this might mean for the UMC for quite some time.
What I find interesting, though, is how this basic model is being used elsewhere around the UMC in rural-church, money-saving ways. I, for example, have just been appointed to a church in rural Wisconsin that identifies itself as “one church, three sites”–not quite a three-point charge, as there is one SPRC, etc, but three worship services on a Sunday morning. From talking to the congregation, the purpose behind the “partial-merger,” as they like to call it, is that now there is more time/resources for them to spend out in their communities, and combined they have more resources than any of them did previously. The difference, however, is that these three churches are in the same general area with the same pastor serving all three–which to me seems very connectional, and makes the combined ministries organic to the needs of the area.
Maybe there is something for us to glean from “franchise churches.” But I, like you, pray that we don’t depend so much on charismatic preachers that we cut off our congregation’s lay leadership in the process.
Hmmm … Part of me is bothered by this, and part of it not. I think a lot of this depends on how far the home church is trying to reach … I mean, if Resurrection decides to build a satellite campus in Ft. Worth, Texas there’s a lot more to worry about. But there are benefits, especially in a new church start situation to having the support of a mother church. If the mother church has a proven track record of reaching hearts for Christ, it can make a lot of sense to start that new campus (or adopt) on the back of the theology of that home church – sermons included. As you said, it gives the new church start pastor to focus on evangelism and discipleship. Sermon prep can eat a lot out of a Pastor’s work week. At least it should. It can be very effective, as long as the messages stay contextual to the people hearing them.
A worry might be for a church who decides they don’t like their pastors sermons, and they can simply say, “Well, the Pastor at Christ Church across knocks it out of the park, let’s just pipe him in!”
I resonate with you in some ways, definitely. I wonder about the dynamics of appointments and itineracy with this church model. Everyone talks like the CORs and others essentially hand-pick their clergy and practically have their own in-house call/ordination system, which freaks out my Methodism. People talk like their apportionments are so huge that it becomes a trade-off with conferences/Bishops for influence. We also have a very booming megachurch with satellites all over my Annual Conference, one of a different denominational persuasion, that I’ve had loose contact with since its beginning (while I was a student). A friend is closely tied to one of the satellites, so I’ve seen it grow from a few hundred in a school auditorium to a few thousand today. There are things that I think they’re doing very right.
But I’ll never forget attending worship even when the group was still small, and when the message came on-screen I looked around this room of maybe 125 people and said to myself, “SOMEone in here is probably called by God and truly gifted to proclaim the word today, to minister to the body today by preaching, and that someone isn’t getting the chance.” The idea that one or a very few individuals are so gifted/called to preaching that theirs is the only voice in the pulpit per every several thousand people, that doesn’t seem legit.
At the same time, I think there is room in our tradition for some of what you’re commenting on. John Wesley was just such a figure, whose preaching became circulations and curricula, who ministered to thousands. But, like in his case and like you point out, does that mean what we’re seeing is the “Hamiltonian/Slaughterian movement” within the tradition that will emerge as its own stream of faith-practice? Strange stuff.
This reminds me of those whippersnappers who wanted to start a contemporary service at my church. Those meddling kids just want to be like those thousands of people at that big church in town. I mean that big church has been doing that worship with all those guitars and drums since the early 90’s. Why did they want to mess with my traditional service? I mean those other young families who want that style left a few years ago. Me and the other 50 or so people left in our church don’t want to do all this stuff. No contemporary service. No multi-sites. No piped-in sermons. We won’t partner with those growing, healthy, effective churches! We just won’t do it! We ran out those people who wanted to start a contemporary service and we’ll run out these people too. We may die but we’ll die our own way!
Chris, that was completely unhelpful and unnecessary. Also, I think you’re missing the point of what Jeremy is raising concern about.
Good series so far Jeremy. Just a quick comment – I wonder how it is that Campus Pastors consider themselves living into their ordination? When an elder serves a normal Methodist Church there are distinct and critical engagements with all four (Word,Sacrament,Order,Service – just in case anyone doesn’t know), even associates at larger churches normally touch on each of these.
However when one serves as a Pastor of Congregational Care at a megachurch or as the campus pastor of a franchise site it seems like you’d really have to push the definitions to get anywhere near Word or Order. This isn’t a condemnation of the ministry these pastors perform, but how does it help to develop vital clergy to limit their experience with 1/2 of their ordained charges?
I don’t think its fair to assume that all theologizing happens in the sermon, or that “campus pastors” Like Penny Ellwood at Blue Springs never have a chance to offer theological reflection to their congregations. I feel certain she gives devotions at meetings, she might have the opportunity to teach small groups, she offers pastoral care, she prays in worship, and in short interacts with church members all the time in ways that provide opportunity for theological reflection. (and FYI I believe Penny is scheduled to preach before August comes.) If we can’t have multiple theological voices then I shouldn’t let classes at my church use Adam Hamilton’s curriculum. Instead they should just talk about my sermons.
My sense is that folks who attend satellite congregations make a distinction between their “pastor” and their “preacher” and comfortably have a place for each in their lives. One only needs to preach to more than about 350 to have very limited interaction with most people who attend on Sundays. As to context, I can’t speak for a place like Lifechurch with campuses far flung but at least at COR I believe they have developed a very common culture among the sites, the campus pastors are a part of worship planning and thematic development. It’s a big stretch to call Adam Hamilton an “outsider” to those who show up at Blue Springs every week.
It’s also little odd to see you attacking the use of technology to create new delivery methods for the gospel. My belief overall is that both the use of “piped” sermons and multi-site churches are enabling ministry for the UMC where otherwise it would not be. There are still a lot of little congregations around who can no longer afford trained/credentialed/experienced clergy and who are struggling to pay their electric bills let alone mobilize for community action, if that’s the setting that people prefer. (I don’t mean that as snarky as it sounds but I see a lot of congregations circling the drain and a real strain to find qualified and innovative leaders.)
My church uses a “piped in” sermon weekly – we pipe it in from the sanctuary into our fellowship hall. We have a service on a 5 minute delay in our fellowship hall that we call our “coffee house” service. It has a live worship band and worship leader in that room, and then shows the sermon and consecration of communion elements on the screen (the elements are brought down from the sanctuary after they’re consecrated).
I think this technology can be used in a way that still allows for a preaching to be in the same context, but allows their sermon to have a wider reach than just the people seated in front of them at any one time.
We’ve often considered how to utilize this technology to allow us to expand to a second “campus” in another part of our county that would meet at a school (not take-over a dying church). In our hopes we would have the two elders rotate locations, but only one preacher each week so that the sermon message is unified across all services.
Our current barrier is the need to have more musicians for the second site since we already have two groups playing at the same time on our church property.
Who knows if that idea will come to fruition…but it is something we’re looking to see happen if it is where we’re being led.
Hey Jeremy,
I appreciate the attention you’re giving to these issues. I’d wondered what you’d make of the instance you referred to in the first part of the series–certainly a bizarre case. With regard to satellite church (did they ditch that name on purpose for the obvious connotations to the notion that the “campus church” “is stuck in the gravitational pull” of one dynamic preacher instead of being part of the constellation of the connection?) I remember meeting Molly Simpson (CORW campus pastor) at the New Church Leadership Institute before she took on that assignment. She was considering the ramifications of all of these issues even then. I would assume that she continues to approach the appointment there with an eye attuned to combatting some of these “pitfalls.”
As a solo pastor of a church in the 110-140 worshipping every Sunday range, I certainly feel the weekly pang of “not enough time in a day” to attend to all the duties of the ordained–I can see why this is such an attractive option, especially for an existing congregation who can no longer support a pastor’s salary despite being in an attractive location, etc. The church isn’t and never has been “above” the influence of finances. Would I consider helping my church become “adopted” by a larger, more vital congregation if it became clear they were no longer able to support my salary as their pastor on their own? i’d miss preaching quite dearly, but it would enable the continuation of ministry in my context, so I’d think it would be an attractive option (especially considering the alternatives.) Yes, it opens the door for particular dystopias, but so does continuing on in the same mode we have been. Of course, that “daydream” involves the “adoptee” seeking an adoption, something a little more grass-roots and “feel good” than what I understand has happened in some of the “vulture church” cases.
On the other hand, vultures get a really bad rap–they are actually quite an indispensable organism in the ecosphere. Here are some (yet to occur as far as I know) tests to the model thus far established in “multi site churches”: A new appointment of senior pastor at the “mothership” at one of these “multi sites,” a “campus church” deciding to unplug and come up with all their worship life organically–would “campus churches” even be encouraged to bring up something like this while still desiring to remain “part of the family?” There are probably other critical “tests,” but I’ve said enough.
I’d argue that having a piped in sermon is a good thing….with a caveat. You’re right to bring up the idea that it’d be hard for a piped-in-preacher (typing that made me giggle) to understand local issues for the congregation. However, I don’t think that’s as big a problem for COR and Blue Springs. They share similar contexts. However, it would be an issue if I were to pipe Adam Hamilton, or Michael Slaughter, into either one of my rural churches every Sunday. But, if there were other rural preachers that could be piped in on a more regular basis….that might be interesting.
Some of the new models of church organization I think are very beneficial. The multi-site approach should be taken in more of our multi-point charges, and even churches that aren’t “yoked” (and can I say how much I dislike that term) but are in the same areas should do a much better job of networking and sharing resources.
But, the goal of these things should be that church members and clergy are able to spend more time out in their community. They shouldn’t ever be used as a wholesale replacement of the work of the church.
I read all the comments thus far, so hopefully I don’t reiterate anything already said. I think it’s helpful to look at how the early church operated during its first few hundred years. In a large urban area, a bishop would be appointed to serve indefinitely as the primary “theologizer” of that area. Other elders in the church would follow his lead. The concern was not so much for a local theology as a shared identity in Christ. I see this being replicated and even enhanced by our current system. You point to some risks, and I think those are real, but I don’t think they’re inevitable.
Regarding itinerancy, if we do a better job training clergy to be dynamic and vital in their worship leadership, we will have a larger pool of people to draw on for leadership in larger churches. If we equalize the pay across the board regardless of church size, then a lot of people who are in it for the wrong reasons will drop out. And if bishops and DSs exercise their authority more strongly, we can see more exchange of pastors. I think these measures would also address the concerns you share about racial and gender-based variety in megachurch pulpits.
On the whole I don’t see locally-based preaching to be very effective or helpful. In general I see it adding to clannish behavior and egocentricity. We need pastors who can take people out of their small contexts and connect them to a worldwide movement. Very few local pastors can do that. Adam Hamilton and Michael Slaughter both do this very well. Anecdote: A woman from COR was in Boston and visited St. John’s UMC in Watertown while I was there. She said Mr. Hamilton had made clear to all of his people that when they travel they were to attend a church and offer to serve, so she asked the pastor and served at our food pantry while visiting family. We were humbled by just how personally this woman had been affected and influenced. It sorta puts local pastors like me to shame. I don’t think many of my people would behave that way while traveling. I’m not sure the local concern really answers needs for discipleship or personal engagement.
I am concerned about the “white male syndrome” in mega-church leadership and also wonder what will happen to places like COR and Ginghamsburg when their front-and-center leaders must change. On the other hand, these multi-site churches are reaching new people, and the preaching and worship are done with excellence. I wish I could say the same about the local theologizing in many small congregations I’ve visited! Many multi-site churches do not “take over” existing congregations but do, indeed, create “new places for new people.” If a large church with a healthy DNA can multiply its ministry in this way, more power to them!
Some may say that a “piped” message is not ideal, others like myself would ask “how effective is getting a sermon/message from a pastor who IS NOT GIFTED IN PREACHING? There are many church congregations, especially in the UMC that are “stuck” with mediocrity in the pulpit. The pastor may be dynamite when it comes to visitation, outreach, program ideas, management, etc. But finishing seminary doesn’t automatically make preaching your gift. And, in today’s world, it is very easy to sort of know what you’re missing. Everyone can go on line and find top notch sermons from the best pastors on planet earth. Then, when you find yourself at your church listening to YOUR pastor, it’s even more obvious how weak that pastor may be at preaching given what you’ve seen/heard elsewhere. So again, what’s worse? A church with a piped in sermon or a church with a LIVE sermon nobody wants to listen to?
I am intrigued to find this comment online. I am from South Africa and have become increasingly concerned about (what I thought only I defined as) franchise churches.
As I see it, the dark side is quite extensive: 1. Franchises are replacing ordinary, old style evangelism. 2. Because franchises are brand-competitive, they not only “steal sheep,” but also preah an easy, happy gospel (seeker sensitive) that ignores the wider Biblical perspective. 3. Franchises are real-estate-based businesses, seeking expansion as a means of property acquirement rather than soul-saving. 4. Franchises are leader-based, looking for followers to serve their purposes rather than to serve and build up the body. 5. Franchises are agenda and performance driven, rather than Holy Spirit driven. 6. Franchises eventually burn followers out with multiple demands and conferences, ignoring the real and practical needs of congregants.
Am I only dreaming, or is this what is happening?