Category: Christianity

Ten steps to planting a megachurch

I have no plans to plant a megachurch. Imagine the administration hassles. But I am an armchair megachurch planter. And here are my ten steps based on my observations. I have studied (some might say rigorously) five different megachurches at various stages of the developmental process – form megachurch megastar Joel Osteen to the New Calvinism’s Mark Driscoll. Lest you be concerned, the essential steps to growing your megachurch (based on my observations and my list), don’t seem to require any mention of Jesus.

  1. Be improbably good looking and well presented. Lets face it. If you’re not good looking there’s no chance the TV stations are going to want to interview you about anything. If you’re not blessed with natural good looks you can always get surgery. Self improvement is the first step down the road to success. You need to be good looking so that you can plaster your face all over the covers of your books and your church website. It doesn’t matter what doctrinal bent you come from. As the pictures below demonstrate (yes, they are all pastors – can you name them?).





  2. Marry an improbably good looking woman so that you can talk about your “hot wife” – This is also important because all the single guys will listen to you wondering how you managed to, to quote an Australian beer ad, punch above your weight. Here are the wives of the improbably good looking guys above. This is also really important when it comes to preaching the annual series on sex that all Megachurches must have in order to stay edgy, relevant and controversial.






    3. If you’re not a good looking guy with an equally (or slightly better looking) wife then you should resign yourself to just running an ordinary church. If you are good looking then here are the rest of the steps…

  3. Pick a suburb or sub culture – also known as an audience, target market or mission field. Contextualise like crazy. If your sub-culture is a group of inner-city gothic vegetarians then dress like they do – but eat meat to show that this is an issue of preference and conscience. To be a megachurch you either need to be in the subculture but not of the subculture, or you need to present that to which the subculture aspires to…
  4. Come up with a name for your church – Here you have three choices – you can choose an edgy buzzword, a relatively obscure Biblical reference, or a buzzword based on a relatively obscure Biblical reference. This choice should be made subject to the availability of the web domain. I would call mine “Buzzword Church”. Here are the names of our five case study churches.
    • Mars Hill Church
    • The Village Church
    • Elevation Church
    • Lakewood Church
    • Hillsong
  5. Come up with position titles – This one isn’t that hard. You’re either Pastor (your name) or some sort of edgy non-Biblical name that makes people feel comfortable. If you go down the pastor line you also need to distinguish yourself from your colleagues with a reference to your particular role.
  6. Pick some venues – Did someone say multisite? Your sites need to be far enough apart that there are clear suburban boundaries so that you can selectively allocate new families to the appropriate multisite location (or campus) just like the public schooling system – but close enough that there isn’t a change in demographic.
  7. Hire a marketing team – you’ll need a graphic designer (Image Pastor), a publicist (Media Pastor), a web developer (IT Pastor), a marketing manager (Evangelism Pastor) and a social media strategist (Community Pastor). Just to start with.
  8. Build a functional and edgy website – there are two design aesthetics you can choose from that cover every possible sub culture. Grungy or Minimalist with a feature image/sliding gallery (preferably featuring a picture of someone raising their hands). This choice is largely cosmetic – you can even combine them. What matters is your ability to “convert” in the web marketing sense – you need to turn casual visitors into podcast subscribers. Once you’ve built a substantial base of podcasters you can hit the lucrative conference circuit. There you get to hang out with a bunch of other improbably good looking “Lead Pastors” from your theological persuasion.





    9. You can gain megachurch style points by having your own personal website too. You get extra points if your own website outranks your church website when searching for your name, but lose points if the .com version of your name belongs to someone else (I’m looking at you Mark Driscoll, and you Brian Houston).


  9. Set up a publishing/recording company – You need to share your thoughts with the whole world. This sort of notoriety is good for your brand at home and abroad. A publishing arm will help get your initial tomes off the ground, and hopefully get money coming through the doors in the long term. If your writing is sensational enough it will generate a buzz.  A recording arm will encourage talented musicians to join your church – having the added bonus of improving the quality of service. This will also help to justify your outlay on the best AV equipment available. God hates bad sound. And podcast video needs to be as clear as possible if your missional agenda is to gain traction in the global market place.
  10. Stir up controversy – Part of being a successful Megachurch planter is creating the buzz that comes with being a megachurch. To achieve this you need to pick some touchy issues to be passionately outspoken about. You can recant about these later (or become more passionate). The point is to get your name blogged about lots. The ridiculously good looking people above have the following impressive results when you google them
    • “Mark Driscoll”: 313,000
    • “Joel Osteen”: 722,000
    • “Steven Furtick”: 45,300
    • “Brian Houston”: 121,000
    • “Matt Chandler”: 367,000

If at first you don’t succeed – Pull up stumps, blame God (or the Devil), reassess your marketing strategy and go back to step 3. Unless you decide that you aren’t actually really, really, ridiculously good looking. But even then there’s hope. You just have to wait until you’re old and austere.

January 25, 2010

What to give the Bible Geek who has everything

So you bought your family Bible geek the Proclaimer (audio Bible) last Christmas. Now what? What could possibly have more geek cred than a solar powered talking Bible?

Well, in the interest of providing you as many alternatives to just your run of the paper mill physical Bible, here is Bible Navigator X – the Bible for XBox.

The Bible is coming to Xbox 360 ... seriously photo

Here’s a blurb from the launch Media Release:

“This application will bring the Bible into people’s living rooms and onto their televisions in a completely new and innovative way,” said Aaron Linne, B&H Publishing Group’s executive producer of digital marketing. “The Xbox isn’t just secular entertainment anymore. We can use technology that other people developed to study Scriptures through a new medium. Some people are just more comfortable with a controller in their hands than a book.”

Not convinced that this is how you should be reading the Bible? This hilariously serious (and vaguely trinitarian review) from a gaming website will get you over the line.

The best lines are about the themes the program comes with:

“This one has green paint splattered all over it. You’d think that most people who’d be reading the Bible, or care enough to pay money for a version of the Bible on their XBox would probably be upset where there’s junk spilled all over the Bible, or maybe that’s just me.”

“This one is the oddest one of all. There’s a giant fake coffee stain down there. So, I mean, who’s going to set their coffee cup down on the Bible.”

January 23, 2010

Spiritual dinosaurs

Some people are worried that Avatar is promoting pantheism. Dinosaur Comics captured, in six frames, the reason I don’t think pantheism will ever catch on (past that odd new age spirituality movement)…

January 23, 2010

The Bible that doesn’t need a double adapter

Am I the only one who thought that the lyrics to “500 Miles” by the Proclaimers included “Double adapter, double adapter”… Perhaps.

Irrelevant though this tangent may be – it begs the question as to what this post is actually about. I will keep you in suspense no longer. If the camouflage Bible sounds good to you, except that you’re illiterate, then I have a solution.

A solar powered audio Bible. Bringing hope to the nations. It’s called the “Proclaimer”. And it looks like your grandpa’s wireless.


Here are some FAQs from the website… actually, I can’t imagine that anybody’s first question when confronted with this device is “how many times will it play before it dies?” My question is “why did you make a solar powered audio Bible in the first place?”

How does the Proclaimer work?

  • An installed microchip contains Scriptures in the heart language; the chip will not erase or wear out from frequent playing.
  • The battery will play for 15 hours and can be recharged enough times to play the entire New Testament more than 1,000 times.
  • The Proclaimer has a built-in generator and solar panel to charge the battery.
  • The solar panel, in addition to charging the battery, will run the Proclaimer even without battery power as long as there is sunlight.
  • The sound is digital quality and loud enough to be heard clearly by groups as large as 300.

January 20, 2010

YouTube Tuesday: TV Pranks

I pressed post on this last night – I thought…

I hadn’t seen this before – Bill O’Reilly gets Rick Roll’d (and swears in response). Apparently the Christian Right is ok with that…

But this is perhaps my favourite. A Christian TV program that reads out and answers emails without appearing to vet them. Check it out.

January 20, 2010

More on Christian games

After exploring the topic of Christianity in gaming a couple of weeks ago two things happened.

Firstly, Mika told me about this flash fighting game where you pick a Bible Character and fight other Bible characters.

Secondly, I read this other article on the matter that came with this quote from James Wyatt, a game designer (Dungeons and Dragons) who is also a Methodist minister. Because games are the new literature he appears to be talking about classic pieces of fantasy:

“Games aren’t a place where you are expected to cling to a belief in something that can’t be seen or proven,” Wyatt explains. “It’s a world where the power of gods is demonstrated daily. [The Lord of the Rings’] Gandalf was — almost literally — Jesus walking around with the adventuring party.” I’ll admit to being somewhat shocked when Wyatt, in a calm and fatherly tone, explains how awesome it was to cast aside the preconceptions of our shared faith: “Fantasy has this ability to open our eyes to the enchantment of our world, and to view real things with more wonder.”

To illustrate his point, Wyatt invokes Chronicles of Narnia author (and notable Christian scholar) C.S. Lewis:

“[A child] does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted. This is a special kind of longing.” — C.S. Lewis, On Three Ways of Writing for Children

January 17, 2010

Bible Stories for Boys: Say Shibboleth

The Brick Testament made another appearance at church this morning. Last week’s story about Ehud the Ninja was always going to be hard to top. I went with another story from Judges (the one just after my least favourite story in the Bible).

Jephthah did something silly – but then he kind of redeemed himself a little, teaching a rogue tribe of Israel a lesson in the process. Jephthah was like a secret agent. Because all secret agents have passwords. It’s how they identify themselves to their helpers and friends in foreign countries.

As an aside – has anybody else noticed that the story of Jephthah and his daughter is exactly the same storyline as the Beauty and the Beast, and that he’s essentially Robin Hood.

Here’s the talk.

Today we’re going to learn about a guy who was a bit like a spy. A secret agent. Who here wants to be a spy when they grow up? Does anybody know about any spies?

Today we’re going to learn a story about a man named Jephthah. He was the leader of Israel a little while after Ehud.

Jephthah went off to fight some of the enemies of Israel – called the Ammonites – but one group of Israelites – didn’t help with the battle. And then they got angry at Jephthah and decided to fight him…

So Jepthath and the army of Israel fought against the Ephraimites.

And they drove them all the way to a river. The Ephraimites couldn’t beat Israel so some of them ran away.

Later, some of the survivors came back to the battlefield and tried to cross the river. But Jephthah, being a clever secret agent, came up with a plan to stop any of the Ephraimites escaping.

Ephraimites had different accents to the people from Israel. They were a bit like people from New Zealand and us. Have you ever heard a New Zealander say “fish and chips”. It sounds a bit different to how we say it. Well, there was a word that the Israelites said differently to the Ephraimites. Shibboleth. So Jephthah made that word the password. And he told his men at the river to check how people wanting to get past said the word.

And the Ephraimites couldn’t do it.

And when they couldn’t do it the Israelite “secret agents” judged them, and killed them.

We’re a bit like the Israelites. And Jesus is a bit like a secret agent. See, one day, God is going to judge the whole world. A bit like Jephthah judged the Ephraimites. And we have a password – a bit like Shibboleth – a password that God uses to sort people out.

Our password is Jesus. The Bible says that anybody who calls on the name of Jesus will be saved. Anybody who calls Jesus Lord. And only God’s people can do that. People who aren’t God’s people will be like the Ephraimites – they’ll be in trouble.

And do you know – that if you like people, and you want them to be part of God’s family – all they need is the password. They need to know that Jesus died for us, and them too. And because he died for us – we know the secret password.

The End.

January 17, 2010

Eutychus in the Brick Testament

Pop quiz. You know that a figure has reached sainthood when a) they complete two miracles, or b) they are featured in the Brick Testament…

I’m going with b.

January 16, 2010

If Nickleback was Creed

Some people can’t get enough of Christian music (or bands that are publicly Christian). Here’s a song highlighting the problem with the Christian music industry.

January 16, 2010

Hell’s bells

My friend Mike is a minister in Rockhampton. He made the local news today for being generally awesome. You can read the story here.

Hell, the pizza chain, created a stir in Brisbane this week which led to a story in the Rockhampton paper, which Mike commented on online, this comment led to an interview, and a great story. Featuring this little gospel presentation that simultaneously showed that Christians are a bit normal.

This is a great example of how churches should be using the media. I thought I had written a post on that before, but I can’t find it. So I’ll write it today.

Ordained eight years ago, Reverend O’Connor said he did not find Hell Pizza offensive, irreligious or blasphemous.

“I find it amusing and would probably use it for sermon illustration,” he said.

“Christianity is not about rules and regulations, it’s about having a relationship with Jesus.”

Reverend O’Connor said St Andrews was a growing church with a number of young adults among the congregation.

“It’s important to interact with cultures that surround us, not standing back and labelling everything as evil.

“I’m just a normal bloke who likes having a beer, watching the footy and who loves Jesus,” he said.

“Hell is a real place, but it’s unhelpful for Christians to be jumping up and down about a pizza shop. We’re on about Jesus, not about being anti-everything,” he said.

January 15, 2010

In praise of hot wives

Dear person who writes their online profiles mindful that your wife reads it,

We get it. You love your wife. You think she’s hot. That’s why you got married.

The rest of us may be inclined to disagree. We may believe that our own wife is hotter.

The fact that you need to reassure yourself that your wife is hot is great. But it comes across as, umm, a bit overstated.

Regards,
Nathan.

You might be wondering why I’m posting this. Well, I was trawling the archives of the Stuff Christian Culture Likes and came across this post. It’s one of my favourites.

Here’s Stephy’s take:

Fortunately, Christian hotness standards are not quite the same as conventional (secular) hotness standards. Value is supposed to be placed on the person rather than on appearance. Even so, hotness is still a valuable commodity even in Christian culture. The public declaration of a spouse’s hotness is a lovely gesture, but can become disquieting when expressed so frequently and fervently. It can begin to sound as if they are trying to convince themselves of something. Could thou protest too much?

My absolute favourite part though, and the part that makes this utterly postworthy, is if you do a bit of a phrase search on Twitter (I can’t guarantee that the results you get will be the same and/or safe for work/your holiness) you get a bunch of people talking about their hot wives. And a startling percentage are Christians. From my quick profile check of the people at this link I would say that close to 80% of the people using the phrase on Twitter either define themselves as Christians in their little description or tweet regularly about the Bible.

How odd.

For the record, I think my wife is hot – but seriously – I don’t need to tell you that.

January 14, 2010

Warranted Belief

Mikey keeps posting quotes from this philosopher guy Al Plantinga (wiki). It turns out the book he’s quoting from – Warranted Christian Belief – is available in its entirety online. And free.

Might be worth a read if, like me, you keep getting in over your head in philosophical arguments with atheists. It’ll save you reaching out for the succor offered by a quick Google. And it’ll give you an intelligent “scholar” to quote…

Here’s a (long) quote on historical criticism – particularly on why it’s hard to argue with people who presuppose that the miraculous accounts in the Bible are mythical because they are miraculous, and why this shouldn’t be convincing:

The Troeltschian scripture scholar accepts Troeltsch’s principles for historical research, under an interpretation according to which they rule out the occurrence of miracles and the divine inspiration of the Bible (along with the corollary that the latter enjoys the sort of unity accruing to a book that has one principal author). But then it is not at all surprising that the Troeltschian tends to come up with conclusions wildly at variance with those accepted by the traditional Christian. As Gilkey says, “Suddenly a vast panoply of divine deeds and events recorded in scripture are no longer regarded as having actually happened.” Now if (instead of tendentious claims about our inability to do otherwise) the Troeltschian offered some good reasons to think that, in fact, these Troeltschian principles are true, then traditional Christians would have to pay attention; then they might be obliged to take the skeptical claims of historical critics seriously. Troeltschians, however, apparently don’t offer any such good reasons. They simply declare that nowadays we can’t think in any other way, or (following Harvey) that it is immoral to believe in, for example, Christ’s resurrection on other than historical grounds.

Neither of these is remotely persuasive as a reason for modifying traditional Christian belief in the light of Troeltschian results. As for the first, of course, the traditional Christian knows that it is quite false: she herself and many of her friends nowadays (and hundreds of millions of others) do think in precisely that proscribed way. And as far as the implicit claims for the superiority of these Troeltschian ways of thinking go, she won’t be impressed by them unless some decent arguments of one sort or another are forthcoming, or some other good reason for adopting that opinion is presented. The mere claim that this is what many contemporary experts think will not and should not intimidate her.

January 14, 2010

Pat Robertson is an idiot who needs to read the Bible

It takes a natural disaster to bring out the best and worst in Christianity. Pat Robertson is one of those insidious televangelists who will jump on any bandwagon in order to promote his gospel – not the gospel – his gospel.

So it doesn’t surprise me to see him trying to capitalise on a terrible tragedy (the horrific earthquake in Haiti).

Here’s what Jesus says about this sort of situation in Luke (12 and 13)…

54 He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. 55 And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. 56 Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?

57 “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? 58 As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled to him on the way, or he may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. 59 I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.[c]”

Luke 13

1 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

January 14, 2010

Apocalypse Now? Or not yet

Six days later debate still rages (though slower now) on the Friendly Atheist thread (I even scored a second post about my comments that was actually quite flattering… check it out)… here’s a testimonial from the author of the original post – it probably gives a more balanced view than the quotes I mined here.

First of all, I want to thank Nathan for his continued patience and politeness in comments. Yes, we disagree with him – vehemently on some issues – but I’m impressed that the comments have stayed mostly productive and substantive.

Fellow commenter, Wayne, has raised an interesting interpretation of the mission of Jesus and the kingdom he proclaimed. His comments alone make that thread worth reading. He is singularly the most interesting commenter I’ve ever come across there. He is prepared, it seems, to not completely dismiss the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ teaching. He just interprets them in an interesting way.

He introduced his views like this:

You comment that you follow the teachings of Jesus. I assume that, like most Christians, you consider him the Son of God. I submit to you that, on the contrary, he was a human being who was an apocalypticist who was preaching that God was about to arrive in his kingdom and that the people must prepare themselves. In Mark 9:1, Jesus states “Truly I tell you, some of you standing here will not taste death before they have seen the Kingdom of God having come in power. And Mark 13:30 Truly I tell you, this generation (i.e., presumably, the one he was addressing) will not pass away before all these things take place. In Mark 14:62 Truly I tell you, You will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven. In Mathew 16:27-28 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels: and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
…
I am a former Christian who had questions that religion could not answer, such as why Jesus would be preaching fervently for the people to prepare themselves for the coming Kingdom when it wasn’t supposed to happen for millenniums later. It simply made no sense. I’ve since realize the problem after much research from non religious sources, that it was actually supposed to happen back then, but it didn’t, which blew Christianity out of the water for me.

Then he brought up this theory on the promise to David…

Here is something to cogitate over. Yahweh made a covenant with the House of David that David’s descendants would hold the reigns of power over Israel for ever. Let me remind you that this is from a god who is all knowing. Well, the leader of a nation, I forget which, removed the ruling Davidian and replaced him with a nonDavidian. So much for an all knowing god.

Like most Christians I think Jesus was talking about his kingdom coming at the crucifixion (and resurrection). I’m a 2 Corinthians 1:20 man myself…

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.

One thing I hate in these arguments – and it’s similar to Ben’s disdain for experts – is when people quote “scholars” as though an issue is decided. Like this quote from Wayne (who really did have an interesting hermeneutic, and one I hadn’t really encountered before. I knew it existed, I’d just never met anybody who bought it):

“How can we look at the Old Testament and take it seriously? Scholars have determined that Abraham was simply a legend and didn’t exist. Also, the book of Joshua tells a powerful tale of conquest, supported by a God who showed no respect for most of the Holy Land’s existing inhabitants, however scholars have determined it is not history and it never was.”

Oh yeah, and anything in the Bible that contradicts his interpretations of other bits of the Bible is invalid…

Unfortunately, scholars are convinced that Paul did not write the books of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus (called the “Pastoral” epistles, because they deal with how these pastors should oversee their churches.) So this passage you quoted has no validity.

When I objected to his “scholars”, I got this response:

When it comes to religion, I will pick the majority of scholars over the majority of Christians anytime, especially when their interpretation makes more sense.

I decided that Wayne had been pretty heavily influenced by the previously featured Bart Erhman… I found, and posted, this quote from a scholar about Ehrman’s “scholarship”…

A criticism of Erhman from an NT lecturer:

It is mystifying however why he would attempt to write a book like Jesus, Interrupted which frankly reflect no in-depth interaction at all with exegetes, theologians, and even most historians of the NT period of whatever faith or no faith at all. A quick perusal of the footnotes to this book, reveal mostly cross-references to Ehrman’s earlier popular works, with a few exceptions sprinkled in—for example Raymond Brown and E.P Sanders, the former long dead, the latter long retired. What is especially telling and odd about this is Bart does not much reflect a knowledge of the exegetical or historical study of the text in the last thirty years. It’s as if he is basing his judgments on things he read whilst in Princeton Seminary. And that was a long time ago frankly.

Then another commenter took me to task for bringing Ehrman into the discussion. How dare I be so presumptuous. And Wayne linked me to this friend of his, where he’d commented with similar views (almost word for word) in the past… and credited Erhman. Priceless.

“I was originally Christian, but had too many questions like why did Jesus preach back then that you must prepare yourself for the coming Kingdom if it wasn’t going to happen until millenniums later. Or why did Jesus tell his disciples that some of them would still be standing when his Father would arrive in glory in his kingdom, if it wasn’t supposed to happen then? Ministers could never give me an answer, but Bart Erhman did.”

Perhaps this post will be enough to bring Wayne here to continue this discussion. Lets see. It’s certainly the rambliest thing I’ve posted for a while.

January 13, 2010

Can’t find your Bible – now you have an excuse

Finding time to read the Bible just for reading the Bible’s sake can be tough. Especially with so much good stuff on TV. But if you’ve ever wanted an excuse not to read the Bible… I’ve got your back. Get one of these camouflage outdoor Bibles. Throw out all your others. Then leave it sitting somewhere in the great outdoors – and you’ll never find it again.

The blurb:

We carry the most popular camouflage Bibles on the market today. Ever been on a tree stand, or a mountain top or stream and wished you had you Bible along for meditation? Makes a perfect gift for the Christian Outdoorsman.

Need proof that this is an essential item to add to your Bear Grylls (who really is just that travel writer from Black Books) inspired adventures. Here’s video of someone reading one in the Amazon (the world famous rainforest not the online bookstore).

The Outdoor Bible in the Amazon from Bardin & Marsee on Vimeo.

If you haven’t clicked the link – you should – it’s to a site called “The Christian Outdoorsman“. It sells quality “Jesus Junk” for the nature lover/hunter.

You can even get this shirt that uses a proof text about Deers panting for water to somehow justify hunting…

Alternatively, if you do want to read the Bible – get it on your iPhone. Nobody in their right mind loses an iPhone.

January 13, 2010