Featured List of Megachurches

thanks for the warning

 

Yay, we are number 2 on the list.

 

Nope, we are a strategic partner, thus part of the Ministry. We are about 4 hours away from Atlanta

http://northpointministries.org/

 

Can you explain what that means? Do you have your own pastor or is it Stanley on a giant screen? Do you have your own programs or do they tell you what to do? Is it just another association like the SBC?

 

I wonder how they collected these figures? From the churches themselves, or some other way?

I wonder this because the church I am currently attending is on the list, but between the five services each weekend, I'm pretty sure there's more than the roughly 7000 the list indicates.

 

Every site (campus) and every Strategic Partner has its own staff.....Pastor an others. We simply adopt the "model" of North Point....and we do use the Video Messages of Andy and other Atlanta area site pastors for our messages.

We are completely financially independent

We use the general model, we are not "forced" to use any particular literature. We use various literature, publishers and authors for our small group activities and meetings.
I personally lead a small group known as Starting Point. This literature is written and developed at North Point. I am preparing for another small group (short term) dealing with Creation, Evolution and Intelligent Design. I will be using the book: Origins: A Christian Perspective on Creation, Evolution and Intelligent Design, by Harrsma

 

A multi-site church. We are about to become one as well.

 

Are you becoming a Strategic Partner of North Point?

 

Nope. No offense to Andy, as I like him, but we wouldn't want to be part of another church, or a "strategic partner" of one. We are our own multi-site church. The list surprised me, as there are churches on there that have fewer members than we do, but we're not on it. We'd be toward the bottom, anyway, but it doesn't matter. We're not trying to be a "megachurch."

 

Criteria besides attendance, such as an authoritative dominant pastor, factor into the study's determination of 'megachurch' status:

http://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/definition.html

 

That's disingenuous on their part. They haven't heard every pastor. Are they going to try to convince people that large churches grow in front of any type of pastor other than "authoritative" and "dominant"? And how do they define that, anyway? And if those are the criteria, how did Olsteen wind up on there? He's a milquetoast! Brady Boyd at New Life in Colorado Springs? Hardly "authoritative" though I will admit he is dominant -- extremely charismatic. Adam Hamilton at Church of the Resurrection? He's a heretic, preaching the Bible is neither literally interpreted nor necessarily inspired.

That's pure garbage.

 

The only thing I can think of worse than sitting with 30,000 people listening to Andy Stanley is sitting in a basketball arena with 40,000 listening to Joel Osteen! Osteen inherited his congregation, how did Stanley get his?

 

Because he is blessed, called and good.

 

Salty, do you know the "story" of how North Point got started?

 

OR, please provide me with the name of some Old Regular preacher so that I may bash him.