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The Megachurches
The term
megachurch is the name given to a cluster of very large, mostly Protestant
congregations, that share several distinctive characteristics. A
megachurch is a congregation which has two thousand or more worship attenders in
a week. However, size alone is an insufficient characterization of this
distinctive religious reality. These
churches generally have similar
identifiable pattern and share a common set of organizational and leadership
dynamics including:
 A
conservative theological position
A charismatic,
authoritative senior minister
A very active 7 day a
week congregational community
A multitude of social
and outreach ministries,
and a complex
differentiated organizational structure
The megachurch
is a new structural and spiritual organization unlike any other and therefore
have been treated as a unified religion grouping in the Faith Communities Today
study. Taken together the
600-700 Protestant megachurches in the United States have approximately
2,500,000
weekly attenders to their services. If one included very large
congregations within the Catholic, Muslim, and other religious traditions, then
there are nearly 2300 megachurch congregations in the United States.
The study of megachurches for the
FACT project included a survey of 600 congregations known to exist in the United States. A total of 153 questionnaires
were returned for a 25.5% response rate. View
the version of the questionnaire used to survey the megachurches.
You can find further information about the
megachurch Faith Communities Today findings at the web pages
devoted to this project at the Hartford
Institute for Religious Research web site. Also, view our
Megachurch FACToids illustrating the US
distribution of Megachurches and the theological
orientation of Megachurches that accompanied the November 2001 press
release on the Megachurch findings.
To view the findings
of this survey, open this adobe pdf report.
If you are interested in obtaining specific
information about the results of the survey of megachurches, please get in
touch with the official contact person Scott Thumma at sthumma@hartsem.edu. Another
person contributed to the collection of the information about megachurches Dr.
John Vaughan of the Megachurch
Research Institute. Additionally, The Leadership Network and its
representative Dave Travis sponsored and supported the research project.
If you would like to know more about
megachurches, visit the informational page with a megachurch database at Hartford
Institute for Religious Research or these other web sites.
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