50 Most Influential Churches
Once again, the Christian community ventures into a weird area with the annual rankings of the “50 Most Influential Churches” list, which recently came out from The Church Report. I am not sure what rankings do for the church and its leaders (given that the message is the centrality and life-changing message of the Gospel) and I don’t know what influential means — I think God works in the local church and the local church responds to the people that God has entrusted to their particular care. Maybe influence has more to do with “relevancy,” marketing, “innovation,” “buzz” and size than Biblical preaching. This sort of list appears to be an outward look at a church’s size— hard to tell whether these congregations are influencing their local neighborhoods, communities and cities. How are they doing with local issues, especially justice and mercy ministries? How are they impacting the world? How do they do in overseas missions? Not easy to tell.
It is also clear to me and others that there are a good number of very small churches in smaller communities making a disproportionate impact in their communities and cities that will never see the light of day on this type of “big churches″ list. This list is a result ofsurveying the leaders of more than 2,000 of the largest non-catholic congregations as well as a few smaller churches in the United States in March and April. Participants were asked to name the ten churches that they consider to be the most influential. The top ten are listed below:
- Willow Creek Community Church (South Barrington, IL)
Bill Hybels - Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA)
Rick Warren - North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA)
Andy Stanley - Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX)
Ed Young Jr. - Lakewood Church (Houston, TX)
Joel Osteen - Southeast Christian Church (Louisville, KY)
Bob Russell - LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK)
Craig Groeschel - The Potter’s House (Dallas, TX)
T.D. Jakes - Brooklyn Tabernacle (Brooklyn, NY)
Jim Cymbala - North Coast Church (Vista, CA)
Larry W. Osborne
click here for Heading the list are five mega-churches that currently average more than 16,000 weekend attenders and that are consistently found among America’s fastest growing churches each year. Willow Creek Community Church (Bill Hybels; South Barrington, IL); Saddleback Church (Rick Warren; Lake Forest, CA); North Point Community Church (Andy Stanley; Alpharetta, GA); Fellowship Church (Ed Young, Jr.; Grapevine, TX); and Lakewood Church (Joel Osteen; Houston, TX) lead the list.
More than 57% of the pastors surveyed included these five churches among the ten they were asked to identify as the most influential. In all, pastors recommended 83 different churches. Rounding out the top ten were Southeast Christian Church (Louisville, KY), Life Church (Edmond, OK), T.D. Jakes’ Potter’s House in Dallas, Brooklyn Tabernacle (Brooklyn, NY), and North Coast Church of Vista, CA. Other well-known churches on the list include Mosaic Church in Los Angeles, Mars Hill Bible Church, Frazer United Methodist Church, Without Walls Church, Harvest Christian Fellowship, and Fellowship of the Woodlands. Pastors noted on the list include Ted Haggard, Jerry Falwell, David Jeremiah, John MacArthur, John Piper, Tony Evans, John Ortberg, Max Lucado, and Kirbyjon Caldwell. One interesting observation included in the list– almost half of the top 50 churches, and seven of the top 10, are still led by the founding pastor.
In addition, 19 churches were new to this year’s list — among them Community Christian Church of Naperville, IL; Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa (CA); First Baptist Church of Hammond, IN; Fellowship Bible Church (Little Rock, AR); and Menlo Park (CA) Presbyterian Church. Thirteen of the top 50 are found in the Bible Belt (southeast and south-central portions of the country), and 11 in the north-central region. And the list included both old and new churches, with some dating back to the late 1950s. Two of the top five are relatively young churches, beginning in the 1990s.
Take a look — then drop me a comment….
