Mega Church Blunders

[Pulvis]

Depends how you define success. Is this church building in leaps and bounds? Is it heavily in debt in order to build physical locations? How about salvation?
Is it aiming for the short term, but forgetting the long term?

Look, relative to Catholicism and even the Diocese of LA or even a normal parish in the LA area, an-8000 weekly attendance church is hardly mega anything. It’s mega in protestant circles, an average medium sized parish relative to Catholicism.

Which begs the question - why? Manny isn’t a theologian, he isn’t well versed in the Scriptures, and doesn’t bring much to the Spiritual table. His talk does attract audiences, and $$ prior to a well-advertised fight. This seems to be the drive. Audience. $. And an ex-Cath turned protestant, in a ultra-Catholic city. No, they aren’t anti-Catholic

There are about 5M Roman and thousands of Eastern Catholics, not to mention Orthodox Churches in the LA area. The LA Diocese runs schools, hospitals, charities, and more. You are comparing one apple to the entire forest.

Sure, it is rapid changing to try and adapt to the popular culture however. Dying and not being relevant are pretty much the same thing all churches are fighting against.

An example - this church has a few pastors, few satellites, and lots of activities… good. It has 8,000 weekly attendance.

St. Mathew Catholic parish in Charlotte, North Carolina reported 30,000 individual members in 2012. That isn’t completely an anomaly in areas that never had Catholics prior to the last 25yrs.

Actually Charlotte has had a stable Catholic Presence for much longer than 25 years. It is the seat of one of the two dioceses in NC. Now the influx of northerners has greatly expanded the Catholic population, but the Catholic church has been there a long time.

 

[Pulvis]

As a convert from the Southern Baptist Church, i pay attention to the trends in the evangelical churches. These mega churches go back tonthe early tv personality types like Swaggert, Humbard, Roberts and lest we forget, dear old Jim Baker. The first Baptist mega churches were Jerry Falwell and Charles Stanley. But whe Saddleback started, it took it to a whole new level. Many newly ordained Baptist preachers studied the Saddleback model and have started theit own. Therevis one not far from me in NC called Elevation Church. Huge following with satellite campuse and live streaming. I have listened to the pastor, and read their church belief page. Scary. What i see in this, and many of these type of churches is a personality cult. Some what frightening, but predictable. I live in the upstate of South Carolina and watched the entire rise and fall of Jim Baker, and i see the same sort cult worship going on in many of these mega churches. Sad to see gullible, truth seeking people led along this way.

FYI, Jim Baker is back on tv and building his empire again! So is Swaggert. You just can’t make this stuff up.

 

[JustaServant]

My reply to his email :

From:“J*****” j****@yahoo.com
Date:Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 7:55 PM
Subject:Re: RE: Sermon on 4/26/2015

"Hello Dr. Moore,

Thank you for your quick response.
I can’t help notice as I review your sermon that this seems intentional. I realize that mistakes do happen even to a person that taught 22 years of New Testament scripture at a Bible College. But let’s say it was intentional why would it have been said? Is it to avoid something? Why would you make a big theology mistake in front of, maybe thousands of people? Sorry if it seems I am not buying the “oops, I made a boo boo” excuse because many many people go to that church to learn scripture and when someone make a “mistake” like that it doesn’t seem like a mistake at all.

Don’t mean to be rude, I just don’t appreciate being told obvious falsehoods about scripture. It just seems like it was a tactic to avoid a topic.

Thank you"

As of July 5, 2015, no reply

To be fair, this pretty minor IMO. I’ve heard FAR bigger errors than this.