The First Mega-Multisite Church
Nov 24, 2007 Uncategorized
.:mood:. Great, Actually
.:itunes:. We Know Too Much by Michael Been
I have often pointed to Jerusalem Community Church as the first Mega Church, but I have never thought of it as Multi-site. JD Greear does a great job detailing this out. Here is a snippet.
Consider the church in Jerusalem. Here’s a few salient points to let marinate:
They had a massive growth problem: The 2nd chapter of Acts tell us that within a few weeks well over 10,000 people had come to Christ (5000 men…) and people were being added “every day.” Acts 2 records the crowd’s response to Peter’s sermon as, “What should we do?” Peter tells them and 3000 souls respond, and in Acts 3 5000 responded, and they are only counting the men. That created a “Holy cow, what should we do?” question for the 120-person core group also! They were dealing with going from 120 to over 10,000 in one week. No conscientious Christian ever says “we’re growing too fast” any more than a cancer patient says “I’m healing too fast.” The Jerusalem church scrambled to do what it could to accommodate that growth.
What was their answer to solving the growth? Staying one church and going multisite.
November 25th, 2007 at 1:17 am
ah… nothing better that the hermeneutic of using our contemporary context as the rubric for our reading of the ancient church… nice work greear…
November 25th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Ken Buck uses big words.
November 27th, 2007 at 4:45 am
Could this mark the birth of a homegrown monarchical episcopate for evangelical community churches? All you’d have to do is assign ministry jurisdictions to those sites, and you’d have the parish system!
November 27th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Hang on…I gotta go get a dictionary…I’ll be right back…
November 27th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
my Anglican friends tell me that is how church government is supposed to be…. yeah, and sorry to use “big words”…. oh… wait… I’m not and I know that you know what they mean, Mr. “Hide Your Education to Relate to the Proletariat” Heikkinen
November 27th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
November 27th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
This Anglican friend offers a wink and a nod. :0)