Chapter 14
Frontliners and Headliners
If the mainline Protestant denominations have moved to the sideline of American religion, the evangelicals have moved to the front lines and grabbed the headlines. In a 1990 survey of the nation's 500 fastest-growing Protestant churches, 89 percent were evangelical, non-mainline congregations.1
The broad umbrella group known as evangelicals includes fundamentalists as well as charismatics and Pentecostals, who believe in faith healing and speaking in tongues.
The Assemblies of God — the largest Pentecostal group in the United States, with 2.1 million members — has quadrupled in size since 1965. The Missouri-based church suffered a slight downturn in the late 1980s after Assemblies' TV preachers Jimmy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, who have since been expelled from the denomination, attracted worldwide press and fell from grace over sex and money scandals. But, with more than 11,300 congregations and a billion-dollar-plus annual budget, the Assemblies were on the grow again by the early 1990s.2
Meanwhile, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, the
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theologically conservative Southern Baptist Convention — despite more than ten years of acerbic internal wrangling between fundamentalists and "moderates" — has sustained a slow but steady and unbroken membership climb. Under 11 million in 1965, the Southern Baptists numbered nearly 15 million twenty years later.3
In general, as mainline losses have slowed, so have evangelical gains. But predominantly black and other ethnic evangelical Pentecostal churches are expected to display significant growth throughout the decade. No one I interviewed for this book challenged the assumption that evangelical churches will continue their upswing.
The "higher octane religions . . . the more sect-like," will be the growth leaders, according to religion-watcher Rod Stark. "As long as churches are relatively more evangelical or orthodox, ask a little more of members, prohibit a little more of members, they grow . . . If it doesn't cost something, it isn't worth much."4
Who's Hot and Who's Not
A good clue about frontline action can be gleaned from John Vaughan's 1990 list of 512 churches that reported at least 100 more people at weekend worship services than were attending the previous year: Southern Baptist, 117; Assemblies of God, 79; independent charismatic, 29; independent Baptist, 29; Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, 19; Evangelical Free, 18; Churches of Christ, 14; Presbyterian (USA), 14; Presbyterian Church in America, 14; and Foursquare Gospel, 10.
Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Nashville, and Seattle topped the cities with the most rapid-growth churches. Heading the states' list are California, 84; Texas, 54; Florida, 42; Georgia, 37; Tennessee, 27; Illinois, 21, and Washington, 20.5
A number of smaller, evangelical denominations also posted large membership gains between 1987 and 1988: Presbyterian Church in America, 9.1 percent; Christian and Missionary Alliance, 6.3 percent; International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, 3.3 percent. Others with net gains were the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), Church of the Nazarene,
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General Association of Regular Baptists, the Free Methodist Church of North America, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church.6
Smaller denominations that are willing to take risks and focus on church growth are likely to stay on the fast track as the clock ticks into the next century.
So Who Are the Evangelicals?
It's probably fair to say that no religious group has attracted more publicity — much of it unfavorable — in the past decade and a half than evangelicals, or born-again Christians.
In 1976 reporters and editors in the newsroom of The Los Angeles Times often asked me to interpret what Jimmy Carter meant when he talked about his evangelical Southern Baptist faith. "What is all this 'born-again' stuff?" my colleagues wanted to know.
About the same time, evangelicals — especially the fundamentalists and charismatics among them — were increasingly audible and visible on radio and television. And the media, which for the most part had ignored this segment of American Christianity, poised its pen and perked its antenna when evangelicals emerged in the arena of social activism, particularly against abortion and for school prayer.
Found in varying numbers in virtually every denomination, evangelicals are somewhat difficult to define, as Gallup and other pollsters have discovered. Since 1986, his poll has settled on accepting self-identification, asking: "Would you describe yourself as a born-again Christian?"
Gallup and Castelli concur that "it seems safe to say that the percentage of Americans who are born-again Christians has remained fairly stable since 1976." Thus, 31 percent of Americans are evangelicals, they concluded in 1989. Among Protestants, 44 percent say they are born-again. And 13 percent of Roman Catholics and 20 percent of Mormons so identify themselves in Gallup surveys.7
Estimates from other sources have placed the nation's total number of evangelical Christian adults in the 40- to 50-million range.
Evangelicals tend to be a tad older and slightly less educated than Americans as a whole, and a disproportionate share live in the South.
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There are signs this is changing in the 1990s, however, as evangelicals achieve upward social, educational, and economic mobility.
Evangelicals are decidedly more conservative about matters of sexual morality and lifestyle than non-evangelicals. But, refuting a popular stereotype, they are no more conservative on many domestic and foreign policy issues. In fact, they are slightly more liberal on some economic issues, according to Gallup findings.8
The fundamentalists among them get the most media attention. Fundamentalism's most visible strength, say Naisbitt and Aburdene, is its effective use of the media, "an outlandish, incongruous, perfect balance: the hard edge of technology in service to the high touch of religion."9
Because of this prominent profile, the so-called "religious right" organizations are thought to represent all evangelicals and fundamentalists. Of course this is far from the truth. The National Association of Evangelicals, with forty-eight member denominations, loosely represents a constituency of about 5 million members and has a theological and political diversity that makes it difficult to reach a consensus on many issues. Therefore, they seek agreement only on questions perceived to have a clear biblical mandate.10
Martin Marty, for one, thinks the "fundevangecostalists" will remain an important political caucus during the 1990s and that their tribe is not endangered.
"I say unto you," he wrote in his newsletter, "there are not fewer fundamentalists than there were before the Pentecostal scandals, the folding of Moral Majority tents, and the signs of corruption that came with power. They believe roughly what they always did but have slunk away from some of the frontal attacks."
This decade, he continued, look for organizations such as James Dobson's Focus on the Family, Donald Wildmon's Clear-TV, Operation Rescue, "and many sometimes durable and often ephemeral efforts" to drive the wedge into the frontline issues of the 1990s. The venues will be school, library, zoning and hospital boards, and church councils. The action will be "diffuse, widespread, protean, blurry."11
But amid the social activism of some, many evangelical congregations are quietly staying out of political involvement and simply adding members.
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In sync with marketing surveys showing showing that upscale congregants spurn denominational tags, many denominationally affiliated churches are dropping the labels. For instance, Community Church of Joy in Phoenix is the fastest-growing congregation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, but you wouldn't know it from it's name. Nor would you associate newly named Shepherd of the Hills Church in Chatsworth, California, with the Southern Baptists. Pastor Jess Moody decided to change the old name, Van Nuys First Baptist Church, after surveying people in movie lines, ball parks, and shopping malls. Shepherd of the Hills, like other churches not wanting to limit their drawing power to one community, has omitted any geographical reference in its new name.
Also, more groups in the coming years may shun even the word church in their title. Capital Christian Center (in Sacramento) and Crossroads Cathedral (Oklahoma City), for example, are both large Assembly of God churches.
The name "New Life Christian Fellowship" says "it's not some place where you'll be bored out of your gourd," explains the Rev. Scott Linscott, associate pastor of the nondenominational church, er, fellowship, by that name in Biddeford, Maine.12
Marty, parish consultant Lyle Schaller, and church-growth specialist Vaughan caution, however that what's in a name can either help or hinder would-be-attenders in deciding whether it's "their kind of place."
Downright Humongous Churches
On the 1990's inside track to fast growth are the megachurches and "metachurches." Vaughan defines megachurches as those with membership above 2,000 and metachurches as those with 10,000 or more. About thirty Protestant churches move into the megachurch ranks each year.13
Vaughan, who is also director of the International Megachurch Research Center in Bolivar, Missouri, has these tips for a church that wants supergrowth: (1) a new location, (2) a new auditorium, (3) a new pastor, (4) more services, and (5) a growing community.14 In other words, just jack up the windshield wipers and slip a new car underneath!
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Many growing churches are mainly taking in members who transfer from existing smaller congregations. But some, like Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago (see chapter 25), are reaching hundreds each year who make first-time professions of faith. And more than a few megachurches are spinning off "daughter" churches and "satellite" congregations.
Fred Smith of the Leadership Network, a resource group for large churches, says only 100 U.S. congregations were at the megachurch status in 1984, but by the beginning of the 1990s there were twice as many.15 Schaller estimates that well over 1,000 churches draw an average weekly worship attendance of at least 1,000 — and counting.16
Jim Dethmer, one of the teacher-pastors at Willow Creek Church, even predicts that by 2001 many major U.S. cities will support evangelical metachurches with 100,000 to 300,000 members! But, he says, "they will be incredibly personal [with] deep, personal connectedness at the small-group level."17
Leadership Network's Robert Buford believes the superchurch is the coming successor to both the neighborhood church and the parachurch organization. The large church, he told Fortune magazine reporter Thomas Stewart, is "like a shopping mall. It contains all the specialized ministries of parachurch groups under one roof."18
Already, Schaller noted in 1989, a "slew" of downtown churches, especially on the West Coast, were moving out to much larger sites to build one-stop complexes with bigger buildings and more parking. "Not just to follow their members but to be able to become regional or metropolitan churches," he added.19
The emergence of the megachurch, he proclaims, "is one of the four or five most significant developments in contemporary American church history."
Schaller says the central secrets of success are relevance, motivational preaching, and quality and multifaceted programming.20 Yet he, among others, has some misgivings about humongous churches. The children of today's megachurch members may want something "new and different," he suggests: small, intimate congregations that average between 150 and 700 at worship.
He predicts that sometime during the 1990s the U.S. Supreme Court will be asked to rule on the constitutionality of restrictions that
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an increasing number of municipal officials are now adopting and enforcing. These pertain to land-use, parking, zoning, size, noise, and other criteria for places of public worship and assembly. "That decision, rather than the marketplace, may decide the fate of future megachurches," he attests.21
Evangelicals in the Pre-and Post-Millennium
For all the hype and stereotype, the evangelicals have "produced a great yield out of those committed from childhood to what they stand for. They devised institutions that attract loyalties. They have overcome negative imagery (such as 'redneck,' 'hillbilly,' and 'fundie') and became respectable from the White House to the Miss America Pageant to the National Football League to good graduate schools,"22 says Martin Marty.
Evangelical groups are generally savvy in marketing and communications skills, which are, at their best, turned into instruments for evangelism. At their worst, they become the tools for consumer-oriented superchurches that twist the faith into a gospel of individual acquisitiveness.
Quips Tom Sine: "The Evangelical church is being co-opted slowly by the American dream — do it all and have it all — with a little Jesus overlay."23
Sociologist James D. Hunter, author of Evangelicalism, the Coming Generation, warns that the next generation of evangelicals may be moving toward accommodating "the world" while edging away from the key beliefs that once defined the "historic faith" of evangelicalism.24
A disconcerting study by the Roper Organization lends credence to Hunter's fears. Conducted in 1990, it tested the behavior of born-again Christians before and after their conversion experiences. The shocking result: conversion made little difference. In fact, the use of illegal drugs, driving while intoxicated, and marital infidelity all increased after the born-again experience!
The study was made "because we believed the results would show that born-again Christians are significantly different and pose fewer problems in these crucial moral and societal issues," commented Don Otis, vice-president of High Adventure Ministries, the organization
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that commissioned the survey. But the findings revealed the opposite.
We've reached a point, Otis lamented, where there is little correlation between what evangelicals say and do. "Accountability is lacking, confrontation is lacking, and we are 'marketing' salvation in such a way that discipleship is simply not occurring."25
During a roundtable discussion about strategies for evangelicals in the 1990s, Eddie Gibbs, president of the American Society for Church Growth, ventured the opinion that secularization "in a virulent form" was sapping America's spiritual vitality. "We are seeing a polarization" and the evangelical growth is "not sufficient to turn the tide," he said.
Another panelist, Joe Webb of Global Village Communications, a Southern California organization emphasizing evangelical values among baby boomers, sees evangelicals carrying their "image problem" of the late 1980s well into the 1990s. The legacy of the sex and money scandals that tarnished the televangelism superstars will remain a credibility blot, hardest to erase with the present under-forty-five crowd, he declared.
Recalling the climactic scene in the motion picture "High Noon," Webb commented, "It's high noon for evangelicals. Right now, we control the stage. But there's going to be a gunfight."26
When the smoke clears, we will see what kind of faith this generation of evangelicals handed off to the next.
