New Wine Fellowship Bible Study

We have all seen the latest trend among very large churches.  It is what some call church “franchising”.  The core concept is to take a very successful and well known church and open up additional venues or campuses located in outlying communities.  The church uses video technology to beam in the service from the main church and staffs the remote campus with some paid staff and many lay volunteers.  Most of the churches doing this have large congregations at the main campus, impressive facilities, and generous budgets.  So the question is, where do you stand on this idea?  Frankly, I am struggling a bit with it.  Here are some good things about it:

• Some people will not make the drive to the main campus from outlying communities but they will attend the church if it is right around the corner.  Getting more people into pews on Sunday is never a bad thing.
• Setting up remote campuses utilizing video technology and a scaled down staff allows a church to grow without incurring the cost of duplicating all the things the main campus has to offer.

Now for some concerns:

• I worry about the idea that people are following a “brand” and the personality and popularity of a pastor instead of attending church to serve God.  As these slickly marketed franchises continue to pop up in outlying communities it begins to look less like church and more like a chain restaurant.
• While there are some cost savings, it is definitely not cheap to open a sattelite campus.  The cost of video technology alone can be staggering - $250,000 or more.  Only the wealthiest churches can fund such a project.
• What happens to the smaller, less well-known churches that are already in the community when the big franchise hits town?  Think of the effect Walmart has on the smaller grocery stores and retails establishments when they show up in a community.  Local merchants cannot compete with all it has to offer and they go out of business or barely survive.  The same is true of community churches trying to compete with the mega-church.  Attendance drops off as membership is enticed away to the flashy, trendy, well known franchise.  The small church - likely operating on a shoestring budget already - sees offerings plummet and they find themselves in financial straights.  You can guess the rest.

These are my thoughts, and I honestly don’t know what is right.  On the one hand I can see the good that can come from a church taking a successful formula outside their current physical footprint and into communities that could benefoit from their presence.  If it results in people becoming involved and engaged in church and in the saving of souls, then who am I to question that?  On the other hand, can’t the big church take the same budget and from a partnership with a church already established within the community it wishes to reach?  If the goal tryly is reaching more people with the Gospel, then that seems like a positive way to do it.  But, if the goal is to gain additional recognition, fame and influence for a pastor or a church, then the motives are all wrong and absolutely not Biblical.

I found the attached article addressing this very issue on Slate Magazine of all places.  It is worth ready.  And it is worth forming your own opinions through honest reflection and prayer.  Either way, I would love to know your thoughts.  So, add your comments below.  Let’s see how we feel about this issue.