Methodists Teach Large Churches to be Responsive to the Denomination
Mega Churches have been on the rise, especially in the last decade. According to a ministry of the United Methodist Church, these mega churches have a responsibility to be responsive and helpful to the rest of the denomination and be accountable to one another.
"We are an organization of churches helping each other," said the Rev. Robert Pierson, chairman of the Large Church Initiative and pastor of Christ United Methodist Church in Tulsa, Okla told the United Methodist News Service. "People who know best about large church work are those doing it," he said. "We are in partnership with the Board of Discipleship but run by pastors of large churches. All of us have the responsibility to help each other."
The Larch Church Initiative is an association of large congregations working together to strengthen the UMC.
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"Our basic method of operation is peer ministry, helping each other," he said. "Our goals are diverse, depending upon what the needs of the church are at the time. Our future emphasis will be to provide means and methods where the larger churches can be more supportive of the many smaller churches in our denomination.”
Every year, the members from large churches gather for a national conference where they network, share ideas and give and receive encouragement for ministry. Sponsored by the Larch Church initiative steering committee and the United Methodist Board of Discipleship, the gathering lands this year in Denver, Co., from April 26-29.
Under the context of the gathering, a church with 1,000 members or more and an average attendance of 250 or more is considered “large.”
There are about 3,000 UMC-related churches that fit the latter description; about 6,500 have more than 200 members and 100 have more than 3,000 members.
Overall in the United States, megachurches – defined as a church with more than 2,000 weekly attendance members – have been rapidly growing; many of them are United Methodist congregations.
According to Pierson, these large Methodist Churches need to be more responsive to the rest of the church and at the same time be inspired from within.
"We pay a big part of the apportionments in the church, but we have not always taken responsibility for leadership and service to the denomination. Through the initiative, we want to be responsive and helpful to the rest of the church,” said Pierson.
