Megachurch Pastor Claps Back at Critics of Large Churches
Texas-based Pastor Ed Young believes those who think megachurches are “just too big” are hypocrites.
The founder and senior pastor of the multi-site Fellowship Church in Grapevine issued the bold statement in a video shared to his Facebook page. Young’s church, for context, reported a weekly attendance of 24,000 in 2020. The preacher noted in his video many have told him his congregation “is just too big,” but asserted it’s unfair to criticize the sizes of churches in places with large populations.
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“‘Your church is just too big,’” Young said, quoting what he’s heard from critics of Fellowship Church. “I’ve heard people tell me that a lot: ‘It’s too big. It’s a megachurch.’ Well, that’s got to be one of the most hypocritical statements someone can make, because the person making the statement goes to massive concerts. They would go to a game — a football game. They would go to a massive mall, and they never really say that about those entities.”
According to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, a megachurch is a church averaging 2,000 or more weekly attenders. There were roughly 1,170 megachurches in the U.S. in 2023, a decrease from the 1,750 megachurches reported by the Hartford Institute in 2020.
Young went on to boldly assert, “Hey, if you think the church is too big, then you’re not going to like Heaven, because Heaven is going to be a big place. If a church is around a lot of people, it should be big in the context of being big.”
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In 2020, a Lifeway Research study found the average church in the U.S. seats roughly 200 people, but the median weekly attendance is 65 worshipers. Megachurches, it should be noted, only make up about 0.5% of churches across the country, serving about 4 million weekly congregants.
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Reprinted with permission from faithwire.com. Copyright © 2024 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.
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