{"id":718,"date":"2006-09-13T07:27:28","date_gmt":"2006-09-13T15:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/archives\/2006\/09\/13\/life-church-down-the-road\/"},"modified":"2009-06-26T19:54:45","modified_gmt":"2009-06-27T03:54:45","slug":"life-church-down-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/09\/13\/life-church-down-the-road","title":{"rendered":"Life Church Down The Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been thinking about LifeChurch.tv<\/a> lately (check the Wikipedia article on them<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In case you\u2019re not familiar with the church, it\u2019s one of the best-known examples of the multi-site church movement. At present, Life Church uses live video feeds to simultaneously have the same service in Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, and Tennessee. They also stream the service over the internet.<\/p>\n

They both start new churches and acquire existing churches (that\u2019s their language, not mine. They are very clear that they are not proposing mergers \u2014 they are proposing acquisitions \u2014 listen to Kevin Penry<\/a>). If you\u2019d like to be acquired you can sign up online<\/a> ask the dust divx movie online<\/a><\/em> .<\/p>\n

One thing I want to praise them for: they make their resources available online for free<\/a>. They\u2019re clearly very Kingdom-minded.<\/p>\n

But something about LifeChurch\u2019s approach worries me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll explain what it is after some necessary disclaimers:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I have no fundamental theological problem with multi-site churches. If you think it\u2019s okay for a single-site church to have two services on a Sunday morning then you\u2019re inconsistent to oppose multiple-site churches. Once you cede the splitting of the congregation it\u2019s all just a matter of degree (if this is not clear to you then spend some time thinking through your problems with multi-site churches and how they are also applicable to a church that has an 8:00am service and an 11am service). <\/li>\n
  2. There are a lot of ways to do multi-site church and there is certainly diversity within the movement. My concerns about LifeChurch\u2019s approach don\u2019t apply to all the ways multi-site is done. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Here\u2019s my concern: if LifeChurch\u2019s philosophy becomes the norm (an excellent test of the soundness of a philosophy) then we lose something vital to the health of the church.<\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s say LifeChurch continues to grow and spreads into 10 or 15 states. They reach 100,000 in aggregate attendance. 200,000. 500,000. 1,000,000. These numbers are not unreasonable \u2014 multi-site churches seem to be scale-free networks<\/a> and thus will exhibit the winner-take-all phenomenon. The largest multi-site will be about twice as large as its next-greatest neighbor and so on down the line.<\/p>\n

    In effect, LifeChurch (or someone like it) will become the Wal-Mart of churches soon, and just like Wal-Mart the overwhelming nature of their dominance will be surprising and will take a while to sink in. And just like Wal-Mart, that will bring some good and some bad along with it.<\/p>\n

    What happens when the primary leader of the American gigachurch lapses into stupidity, heresy, or moral failure? How does that affect Christianity in America?<\/p>\n

    This isn\u2019t an unrealistic concern \u2014 evangelicalism has a history of each of these blunders. And the higher-profile a person is the more prone they seem to be to falling into one or more of these.<\/p>\n