Four Unintended Consequences of the Megachurch Movement - And How To Solve Them

When I was a seventeen-year-old high school senior, I had to write a senior paper. My family had left our Assemblies of God Church a few years prior, and found ourselves at the up-and-coming local megachurch. I fell in love with it, so much so that my paper's thesis statement was the following: 

“Without the seeker-sensitive movement, the American church will fail and become irrelevant to modern culture. The seeker model is the hope of the American Church.” 

Man, was I wrong. 

Twenty years later, all but one of which were spent in full-time ministry, I can see the error of my ways and the immediate need to redirect the American Church from the squishy, seeker-sensitive center-right. 

You can make the case that there were positives to the seeker movement, at least at that point. It really did a lot of good in my life, and had a significant impact on young, future pastors like myself. I was personally inspired by a church that seemed to have figured out how to help people enjoy being at church each Sunday (which I hadn’t experienced before), reach the lost (I knew those I would invite would heard the gospel), and they had also figured out how to run things with excellence. 

For a few decades it seemed like everyone from Baptists to seat-belt-wearing Charismatics were moving to some version of the seeker model. With it came large churches, celebrity pastors, conferences, and church planting networks. 

But the hype wasn’t worth the long-term damage. My realization of this came in a management team meeting in the early 2010s. I, in my mid-twenties, was pastoring and preaching in a church of well over 8,000 people. We were having a meeting about the kids ministry and I asked a simple question: “We’ve had some of these kids for 18 years now, what do they know?” 

The answer was that they knew very little. Sure, they knew our mission statement and where the pop fountain was, but little else. It dawned on me that we had failed them miserably. 

Such an answer to this simple question is a snapshot into what was happening in the American Church across the country at that time. Since then, the unintended consequences of the megachurch have started to be revealed.

Here are four of them. 

Unintended Consequence #1: Church as a product. 

A me-centered church was ripe to fall to self-serving humanistic thinking. We were setting ourselves up for failure without really knowing the impending doom our nation would face as it struggled to figure out its identity apart from God.  

The seeker sensitive church built self-service into its very foundations. How could we challenge people to repent of their feelings when we had spent the last two decades telling them how much they mattered and how special they were? 

Unintended Consequence #2: Doctrine as secondary. 

We replaced solid Biblical teaching with self-help Ted-talks. Sure they often referenced the Bible, but there is a big difference between using Bible verses and preaching the text. 

The seeker movement managed to stay somewhat theologically sound for a decade or two, not because it grew former unbelievers into well-instructed, mature disciples, but because it inherited a group of mature believers who had been previously well-instructed. 

But after twenty years of self-help sermons, even those formerly mature believers were now sufficiently doctrinally-emaciated that they were ripe for the progressive infiltration of the church. 

Unintended Consequence #3: Social club instead of family. 

It feels good to be embraced by a club and to feel a part of something bigger than yourself. In some cases this meant WAY bigger, with tens of thousands in attendance and campuses across the state.

Like any club, there are rules. And if you don’t follow the rules, “You can’t sit with us.” So in the club, you learn to follow the rules, and in the megachurch the rules are pretty clear. 

They are worth unpacking more fully elsewhere, but they include things like: You must pledge full allegiance to the brand and nothing else, and when you leave, we will either ruin you or forget you ever existed. Or: You must never ask if our methods are biblical, because who are you to ask such questions, when we heroes have built this massive “church”. Or: Your greatest endeavor as a believer is to lay down your life for the brand - so don’t ask us to open up during Covid, or question masks in church, or unbelievers will consider us unloving. Or: If the stage says it, it must be true. 

These rules are unwritten and unstated, but very much enforced. 

Unintended Consequence #4: Creating cogs in the wheel. 

Discipleship moved from being formed in Christ to being formed into a good part of the church machine. If someone attended on Sundays, joined a small group, served on a team, and paid their tithes, they were the model church member. Little else was asked. 

This kind of training makes really good church attendees but really weak disciples of Christ. 

What next? 

All of these unintended consequences set the church up to fail. Such failure took place during Covid, when the culture and the government forced them in a more liberal direction, and most haven’t recovered. In fact, many of these churches are doubling-down on their leftward drift and becoming weaker and weaker. 

Meanwhile, the future of the church, and our country, depends on us employing a different model and equipping the saints while also reaching the lost. There are practicalities that we can take from the megachurch movement, but the next era of church in this nation must correct the errors above. 

With that in mind, here are my suggested counters. 

#1: Instead of seeing the church as a product, embrace church as simple but meaningful. 

Instead of creating the most complicated system imaginable, make your church as simple as possible while still being able to reach people. 

Say no to some lights, camera, and action and say yes to reflective prayer, corporate reading, and expository preaching. These are simple steps that return health to the body. 

#2: Instead of viewing doctrine as secondary, unify around core doctrine

Many people in your church are more than likely doctrinally-emaciated. Think over your core doctrines, and let them filter through everything you do. More than delving into niche topics that fly over everyone’s heads, the average believer desperately needs to deepen their convictions around core doctrine, and doing so will go a long way in strengthening the church. 

#3: Instead of viewing church as a social club, view it as a family

This of course seems like a cheap line, but I assure you it is not. The Scriptures describe our relationship to each other most frequently using familial terms. The church is a family. 

So why not: Create a family fund to make sure every legitimate need in your church is met? Or build a ministry that allows your attendees to build a life rhythm around the body of Christ instead of the baseball diamond and travel soccer fields? And maybe show humility as a leader that lets people know you are a part of the church family, and not just the celebrity on stage? 

#4: Instead of creating cogs in the wheel, develop rounded disciples

Imagine teaching a football player only how to run. That’s a necessary skill, sure, but not even close to all the abilities they will need to perform well. Similarly, discipleship needs to go well beyond simple “give, serve” and invite” model, and instead teach people to obey everything that Christ commanded. 

Encouraging people to be deeper rooted in their faith, living it out in every part of life, rather than simply teaching them how to apply it within the four walls of the church, will cultivate deep roots. As such, they will be much less liable to sway with every changing wind of false doctrine that blows their way.