Pastor Ed Young calls people who say megachurches are 'too big' hypocrites
Ed Young, the founding and senior pastor of the multi-site Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, recently suggested that people who complain that megachurches are "just too big" are hypocrites.
A megachurch, according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, is a church that consistently has an average weekly attendance of 2,000 or more worshipers. There were about 1,170 such churches in the United States in 2023, a report by Worship Leader shows, which is over 580 fewer than the roughly 1,750 megachurches reported by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in 2020.
In a statement on Facebook Friday, Young, whose church had a reported weekly attendance of more than 24,000 in 2020, noted that people have frequently told him that his church "is just too big" and suggested that it's not fair to complain about the size of a church if it's in a place where there's a lot of people.
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"'Your church is just too big.' I've heard people tell me that a lot. 'It's too big. It's a megachurch.'
"Well, that's got to be one of the most hypocritical statements someone can make because the person making the statement goes to massive concerts. They would go to a game, a football game. They would go to a massive mall, and they never really say that about those entities," Young opined.
"But they always say, 'the church is too big.' Hey, if you think the church is too big, then you're not going to like Heaven, because Heaven is going to be a big place. If a church is around a lot of people, it should be big in the context of being big," he added.
The average church in the U.S. seats approximately 200 people, but the median weekly attendance is 65. This means half of all churches in the U.S. have fewer than 65 people attending each week, a 2020 FACT study cited by Lifeway Research shows. Data cited by Worship Leader show that megachurches make up only 0.5% of churches nationwide, serving some 4 million attendees weekly.
As America continues to undergo a cultural shift away from organized religion, the phenomena of the megachurch with a long history in Protestantism is also taking a hit with growing competition for traditional churchgoers.
A Gallup analysis in March 2021 showed that while America remains a highly religious nation, with seven in 10 claiming affiliation with some kind of organized religion, for the first time in nearly 80 years, fewer than half claim any formal membership in a specific house of worship.
One of the biggest factors Gallup found strongly correlates with church membership is age. Some 66% of traditionalists — U.S. adults born before 1946 — have formal membership in a church, compared with 58% of baby boomers, 50% of those in Generation X and 36% of millennials. Current but limited data on Gen Zers who've already reached adulthood suggest their church membership rate is similar to millennials.
The analysis also pointed to the growing number of Americans who express no religious preference. The share of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998 to 2000 to 21% in the last three years of the study. Only 4% of people from this group said they held formal membership in a church, synagogue or mosque. Between 1998 and 2000, that figure was 10%.
In 2016, Pastor Andy Stanley, the senior leader of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia, one of the largest churches in the U.S., apologized on social media for suggesting that some people who attend small churches "are so stinkin' selfish."
Stanley contended in a sermon that large churches were better for a child's Christian development than smaller churches.
"This is one reason why we build big churches. People say, 'Why do you have to make them so big?' Let me tell you why," Stanley said.
"We want churches to be large enough so that there are enough middle schoolers and high schoolers that we don't have one youth group with middle school and high school together. We want there to be so many adults that there will be so many middle school and high school kids that we can have two separate environments."
Stanley criticized some adults who prefer to go to a congregation that only has a couple hundred members as "selfish."
"When I hear adults say, 'Well, I don't like a big church. I like about 200, I want to be able to know everybody,' I say, 'You are so stinking selfish,'" argued Stanley. "You care nothing about the next generation. All you care about is you and your five friends. You don't care about your kids, anybody else's kids."
Stanley later expressed remorse for his remarks, writing on X, "The negative reaction to the clip from last weekend's message is entirely justified. Heck, even I was offended by what I said! I apologize."
a 2020 FACT study cited by Lifeway Research shows. Data cited by Worship Leader show that megachurches make up only 0.5% of churches nationwide, serving some 4 million attendees weekly.
As America continues to undergo a cultural shift away from organized religion, the phenomena of the megachurch with a long history in Protestantism is also taking a hit with growing competition for traditional churchgoers.
A Gallup analysis in March 2021 showed that while America remains a highly religious nation, with seven in 10 claiming affiliation with some kind of organized religion, for the first time in nearly 80 years, fewer than half claim any formal membership in a specific house of worship.
One of the biggest factors Gallup found that strongly correlates with church membership is age. Some 66% of traditionalists — U.S. adults born before 1946 — have formal membership in a church, compared with 58% of baby boomers, 50% of those in Generation X and 36% of millennials. Current but limited data on Gen Zers who've already reached adulthood suggest their church membership rate is similar to millennials.
The analysis also pointed to the growing number of Americans who express no religious preference. The share of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998 to 2000 to 21% in the last three years of the study. Only 4% of people from this group said they held formal membership in a church, synagogue or mosque. Between 1998 and 2000 that figure was 10%.
In 2016, Pastor Andy Stanley, the senior leader of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia, one of the largest churches in the U.S., apologized on social media for saying people who attend small churches "are so stinkin' selfish."
Stanley contended in a sermon that large churches were better for a child's Christian development than smaller churches.
"This is one reason why we build big churches. People say, 'Why do you have to make them so big?' Let me tell you why," Stanley said.
"We want churches to be large enough so that there are enough middle schoolers and high schoolers, that we don't have one youth group with middle school and high school together. We want there to be so many adults that there will be so many middle school and high school kids that we can have two separate environments."
Stanley went on to criticize some adults who prefer to go to a congregation that only has a couple hundred members as "selfish."
"When I hear adults say, 'Well I don't like a big church. I like about 200, I want to be able to know everybody,' I say, 'You are so stinking selfish,'" argued Stanley. "You care nothing about the next generation. All you care about is you and your five friends. You don't care about your kids, anybody else's kids."
Stanley later expressed remorse for his remarks, writing on X, "The negative reaction to the clip from last weekend's message is entirely justified. Heck, even I was offended by what I said! I apologize."
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