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Empire Building 101
What Does God Think of the Mega Church Movement?
Disclaimer: Lest you think this article is someone interested in small churches running off at the mouth, I am pretty certain that God is not nearly as enamored with the mega church movement as are the typical Americans. Be advised the article that follows contains Scripture to back my premise. We are Americans and you are free to disagree with me if you so choose, but if you do so, find some Scripture to back your position if you choose to let me know why you disagree. If not I will take the word of God over your opinion every day of the week.
About 7 years ago I was well over 1,000 miles from home for a couple of weeks in meetings and the rest of my family was back home. The closer the time came to head home the more ready to go I became. I was wrapping up my last engagement on Super Bowl Sunday and I called Carmen and told her, “I am going to take a nap in the afternoon and head home after the evening service” which is exactly what I did. After I was on the road for a while, I was nearing a town and came upon a bus. As I went around the bus I was surprised to see that it was from a pretty well known church in the town I just left. I was more surprised to see at 11:00 PM on Sunday night, it was headed away from town and it was full of kids (that had school the next morning). As I passed the bus I wondered several things: why would a church run busses to pick up kids several hours in each direction, keeping the kids all day and returning them late at night, when there are a number of doctrinally sound Independent Baptist Churches in the pick up town? I then wondered, why would they not send some of their College students to said towns, rent them a building and start a chapel with the goal of becoming a self governing Independent Baptist Church? For the longest time I had no answer. As time went on I also noticed several other church doing the same type of thing, and I would ask myself the same questions I asked when I passed that first church bus. Yet a few years later I engaged in a detailed study of the first half of the book of Acts and I realized that God’s view of the mega church was different than many folks today. So again I asked myself the same questions. Recently a pastor friend of mine sent me a tape from another church with many of the same philosophies. The tape was from a Sunday evening service right about the beginning of 2006. Instead of a message from the Bible, the pastor gave a bunch of stats from the previous years, talked about some goals for the upcoming year and shared some of his vision. As I listened to this tape I summarized all of my questions into one realization: some folks are interested not in church building but in empire building.
Let me say this at the outset: I am not against the bus ministry, in fact quite the contrary, I am in favor of using any means possible to get folks to church and get them saved and serving the Lord. I am not against chapel ministries; I think they are a great idea as well. In fact we have been involved in both of these ministries in various places. I am however opposed to some folks fascination with empire building and their quest to build the largest church in America. You would have a hard time convincing me that God has ever called or led anyone to attempt this. In fact I think it is clearly opposite to what God has told us to do.
Let’s think for a minute about the church in Jerusalem in the early part of the book of Acts. Jesus himself gave this church (and every church since) a clear set of instructions in Acts 1:8 “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” This is not what we would call a difficult passage, it is not to hard to grasp what the Bible is saying here. As you read this verse where do you find “Stay in Jerusalem and build the world’s largest church?” The reality is this; it is not there in English, Greek or any other language you want to study. But just as we often don’t let the Scriptures get in the way of what we want, the folks in Jerusalem didn’t either because they decided to do exactly that. Notice a couple of things about the Jerusalem church in its heyday:
1) They had money-Read Acts 2:44-45 and 4:34-37 and you will see that the Jerusalem church didn’t
have a cash flow problem. In fact you will find in chapter 6 that they had so much money they
began to fight over how it was being spent.
2) They had miracles-Read acts 3:1-10 4:5-22 and 5:17-20 and you will see that God was working in
Some interesting was and doing some incredible things.
3) They had multitudes-One of the things most everyone can agree on is that the Jerusalem church was
growing by leaps and bounds. Notice a couple markers about their growth- Acts 1:15 “And in those
days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about
an hundred and twenty)” Then notice 2:41 “Then they that gladly received his word were baptized:
and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.” So at this point the
Jerusalem had a minimum of 3120 members. Then Acts 4:4 “Howbeit many of them which heard the
word believed; and the number of the men was about five thousand.” So at this point whoever is
responsible for the counting has decided to only count men and there are 5,000. Then notice one last
point of reference Acts 6:2 “Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said,
It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables.” Then the twelve called the
multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God,
and serve tables.” So at this point they have given up on counting heads, and have just resorted to
calling them a multitude.
So we see that the Jerusalem church had what you might call all the trappings of success. They had more money than they knew what to do with God was blessing in mighty ways, people were getting saved and baptized and they were growing faster than they could count. This seems to be what we strive for today, so what could be wrong with that? The problem with this is that God never told them to do what they were doing. Remember the command was take the gospel to the whole world not build the world’s largest church. This is why problems began to happen. In chapter 6 you have the disturbance over the distribution. Chapter 7 recounts the death of Stephen and the havoc brought on by Saul. Then Chapter 8 the church believers were scattered, and if you read ahead you find that when they were scattered they took the word and preached wherever they went (which is what God wanted in the first place). What can we learn from all of this? God is not interested in empire building but rather he is interested in NT church planting and missions.
Let me give you just a few other thoughts on Empire building. Back to the tape I was listening to. There are far too many troubling things on the tape for me to mention them all but let me point out just 2. One of the more troubling things I found was their long rage goal of starting 25 chapels. Now let me remind you again. The chapel ministry is a good thing and a great way to start new churches. The concept (as I understand it) is pretty simple, if your church is thriving and doing well, target an area or areas that need good churches, rent a building and cut one of your young preachers loose. The church (not the chapel) finances the operation and oversees all aspects of the chapel. When and if the chapel can support itself then you cut it loose and you have established another independent Baptist Church. So the problem I see here is not that they have a goal to start 25 Chapels, which is wonderful, but the goal was to have 25 chapels with 500 members in each one. 500 people is not a chapel it is a Church, and in all honesty it is a church that is considerably larger than the average Independent Baptist Church. 6,000 people in 25 chapels is not church planting or New Testament Missions it is Empire Building and it is Biblically wrong.
Another long range goal that was laid out was sending teams to different continents buying land and sending in teams and setting up exactly what they have in the sending church. If I am not mistaken it was said (by way of example) that on the land they were working on in Africa, they would build ________Baptist Church, Africa, _______College, Africa and ____________Christian schools, Africa. This example was repeated in several other continents with exactly the same plan. The best NT example of missions and church planting is Paul. Paul was sent out of the church in Antioch and traveled the then known world and started and helped churches. A simple study of Paul’s epistles reveals that I and II Corinthians were written to the church at Corinth, not Antioch Baptist Church, Corinth Branch. You will notice similar wording in all the rest of Paul’s letters as well. We see from this that Paul was interested in missions and church planting not empire building.
A few final questions if I could. Why would someone (or a group of some ones) be running busses 100 miles each way when they could be starting churches? Why would someone want 25 - 500 member chapels instead of starting 25 self sufficient Independent Baptist Churches? And lastly why would you start branches of your church all over the world instead of indigenous Churches?
The only answer I can come up with is this: So they can stand and view their vast empire and admire what they have done, or so they can travel the country and write in their publications about all that they have done and perhaps more importantly so that all of their chapel and branch attendance, conversion and baptism numbers can be added to the Grand Total. In short, so that they can build an empire. The problem is this, God is not interested in Empire building. The church at Jerusalem learned this the hard way.