Megachurch 'Come and See' Movement Fizzling?

The number of megachurches may have exploded in the U.S. over the last few decades but the landscape is changing and people are seemingly less attracted to the big box churches or the "come and see" experience, two pastors observed.

"The megachurch is kind of like the great shopping malls of America," said Dr. R. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, during a forum Tuesday. "They emerged at the same time and for the same reason and with the same mentality. And the malls haven't disappeared but there are a lot of them being shuttered and not a new mall has been built in America of any size in the last eight years and none are now planned because the retail activity shifted to different kinds of centers.

"We're not getting our ecclesiology by watching that but it does tell us that the 'Field of Dreams' vision is gone – if you build it, they don't necessarily come and they shouldn't."

What Mohler is seeing is a different missiological context in which people today are visiting churches by invitation more than anything else. Read more