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The Kind of
Mega-Church That Makes God Smile
Editorial by Warren
Smith - Charlotte World
reprinted with
permission from here -
http://www.worldnewspaperpublishing.com/news/FullStory.asp?loc=TCW&ID=1515
COMMENTARY--- A
couple of days after I got home from a recent trip to India I
received a copy of “Outreach” magazine’s annual list
of the 100 largest churches in the United States. The entire issue
was devoted to these churches and their pastors. I couldn’t help
but notice that the largest church was feel-good preacher Joel
Osteen’s Lakewood Church. I also noticed that recently disgraced
Ted Haggard’s New Life Church was number 37 on the list.
As I read through
that issue, I also couldn’t help but think about another kind of
church – one whose pastors don’t fly around the country in
private planes or who pay for their vacation retreats with book royalties.
These were the
churches I saw and the pastors I met on a recent trip to India with
the Christian ministry Gospel For Asia {www.GFA.org}.
One of them, in particular, sticks in my mind:
About 20
kilometers outside the emerging high-tech city of Hyderabad, you are
fully into the Indian countryside. The road turned to dirt in places.
Ox drawn carts – or foot travel -- were primary modes of
transportation. It took almost 2 hours to cover the short 20 km
distance from the city, but we eventually came to a small village,
where we stopped in front of a small Believers Church, which is what
Gospel For Asia calls all of the nearly 30,000 churches it has
planted over the past 30 years. It is a small but sturdy building
with a cross prominently reaching skyward from the peak of the
church. The pastor of the church came out to greet us and invite us
in. We sat in plastic chairs as he told us, with the help of a
translator, a remarkable story.
When he first came
to this village to plant a church, he slept some nights out in the
open as he went from house to house, distributing Gospel literature
provided by the Believers Church. He met with much resistance, and
once was beaten severely by anti-Christian radicals in the town.
During that beating he had teeth knocked out, and his ear was nearly
ripped off.
But the pastor
persisted. And when the village began to experience a water shortage,
the pastor prayed and drilled a well next to the road in front of the church.
“Everyone
told us the well would not bring water,” he said. “But we
prayed, and by God’s grace and for His glory the water
came.” The pastor let it be known that it was Jesus who had
brought the water, as it is God who brings all good gifts. He called
the well the Jesus Well. He also let it be known that everyone in the
village, even those who had beaten him, or who had been happy when he
was beaten, could freely use the well.
“Seeing the
water from the well changed the hearts of many people,” the
pastor said. Soon, a few were coming to the Believers Church for
services, and before long 30 and then 40 and then 50 people were
coming. The pastor explained to these new church-goers that attending
church does not save them. Only by turning from their sins and
accepting Jesus, becoming “born again,” can they be saved.
Eventually, 10 people make that decision, but because it was soon
after the pastor had been beaten, the pastor -- and others in the
leadership of the Believers Church -- decided that it would be safer
if they were baptized at the Bible college in Hyderabad, so they made
the trip in that we had made out that day, and were baptized.
Today, the pastor
is all but healed. Only a scar remains to show where his ear was
nearly ripped off his head during the brutal beating. The first 10
who were baptized were followed by more who made the decision to
follow Jesus, and now, every Sunday, 65 people crowd into this small
Believer’s Church for worship.
No, this is not a
“mega-church” in the sense that we think of them in
America. In fact, this is a typical Believer’s Church. On
average, a Believers Church planted by Gospel for Asia has only about
60 members. But when you consider that each of these 60 members are
newly born-again and baptized believers, and when you remember that
there are 30,000 such churches, and that Gospel For Asia is planting
churches at the rate of more than 1000 per year, you begin to realize
that the 1.7-million members in these churches represent more real
growth in the Kingdom of God than every mega-church (a church with
more than 2000 members) in America combined.
It sort of makes
you wonder if this method of church growth is not more biblical than
the mega-church model touted in "Outreach" magazine and by
so many others in American evangelicalism.
At least I hope it
makes you wonder. As for me, I’m through wondering. After seeing
Ted Haggard on television this week, and comparing that image to my
memory of those pastors in the remote villages in India, I no longer
wonder. My mind’s made up.
Warren Smith is
the publisher of EP News. He can be reached at warren.smith@thecharlotteworld.com
(11/9/2006)
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