According to a good and informative 2013 year-end status report by Leadership Network providing statistics on the state of mega-churches in this country, almost 10 percent of Protestant churchgoers attend a mega-church.
According to a Pew Forum report in December 2009, (if there is a more recent report, I am not aware of it), 9 percent of Protestants “attend religious services in homes.”
Just saying…
I actually think that the numbers of people seeing a small gathering in the home as their main spiritual family is much larger (Felicity notes that the stat is four years old). Even many mega-churches today are working diligently to make sure that missional commuities in homes are people's primary source of spiritual relationships.
The public platform of the mega-church is viewed as a much bigger stage because of obvious marketing reasons, but I do suspect that the organic church movement is having more influence than is noted by some.
Scott McKnight has interesting observations about the marketing platform of the mega-church pastor on his blog that closely relates to some of my own thoughts that same week.
2 comments:
From what I remember about that one study, wasn't that meaning that referring to that 9% do attend house meetings, but wasn't meaning the only attend house meetings and not also a Sunday gathering at a larger church. The question wasn't "do you only attend a house meeting?", but do you attend a house meeting. Those taking the survey could be attending an established church and the 9% were that as part of their church experience they do attend some sort of mid-week small group or house community group meeting in addition to their Sunday gathering. I remember that got some attention when it was claimed to be saying that 9% didn't also attend larger gathering too in addition to their small group meeting in a home.
Yes, the study (you can hit the link)does reveal that people attend more than one form or venue of religious service. I think the idea behind my words is not lessened by that fact. If as many are in homes as are also in mega-church worship services, that is important.
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