I have just returned from a three week trip to New Zealand and Australia. I will continue my reflections on the nature of the church in a future blog but want to share a question that was raised by my trip. Throughout New Zealand and Australia we saw churches in two forms. First there were a number of small, chapel like churches that we saw as we traveled. It is just a guess but I would estimate that the sanctuary of these churches could not hold more than 50 people at a time. It is difficult to understand how any such congregation could sustain itself. They were beautiful to look at but not an effective structure for a congregation.
The second form were very large church buildings in the few big cities in each of these countries. They were obviously built in an earlier period and retained great historical value. However, the vitality of the congregations had not been sustained and therefore the maintenance of the structures would have been difficult to finance.
In neither case were these churches adaptible to a continuing ministry. It is like you were seeing the shell of Christianity that was no longer a vital part of the country’s life. It makes you wonder what happened that a numerically large congregation could decline to a mere shell that reflects history rather than the future. I saw a similar picture when I was in Quebec, Canada. There some huge Catholic churches were being sold to the city and converted to government office space or museums. They were considered historic structures that it was important to preserve but they could no longer afford to be an active ministry. When I think about some of the “mega churches” in our country, I wonder if we might be creating expensive structures that will drain the resources from effective ministry.
The recent Willow Creek report that suggests that there are real problems with their seeker church style raises the question as to whether the mega-church phenomenon is the direction of the future. Perhaps we need to reexamine what it means to be a faithful church in our world. I will continue to address that in future blogs.
