On a recent Sunday worship service at 12Stone, one of Georgia’s largest churches, attendees packed the sanctuary to sing energetic worship music, and pastors celebrated the end of a weeklong camp hosting more than 1,500 students. It was one sign of growth many US megachurches are seeing now.
A new survey from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research shows megachurches have bounced back stronger than ever after the attendance dips of the COVID-19 pandemic. Smaller churches, however, have not fully recovered.
The megachurch growth continues a trend in favor of larger churches that began well before the pandemic.
One in three US Protestants now attend a church with more than 1,000 congregants, according to the report, and the vast majority attend a church larger than 250.
“The top 10 percent of churches have about 70 to 75 percent of all the people,” said Scott Thumma, a coauthor of the new report and a retired sociology of religion professor at Hartford International University. “Most people’s experience is of a larger church.”
Megachurches, defined as 2,000 or more weekly worshipers, make up less than 1 percent of the nation’s total Protestant churches, yet they see 17 percent of the nation’s total churchgoers every week. Most megachurches in the survey describe themselves as evangelical.
The pandemic forced many megachurches to cancel in-person meetings and take out Paycheck Protection Program loans—federal pandemic aid to help pay their staff. Thumma thinks one reason the pandemic had such a “profound” effect on megachurches is that as a church grows, its hold on its people lessens.
“If you’re in a 5,000-person congregation, your impact is so much less important in a sense because you’re one in 5,000,” he said. “Consequently, when you have something like the pandemic that radically disrupts reality, it’s much easier for you to disconnect from a large organization than it is from a small organization.”
Despite the advantage of intimacy, smaller churches have not seen the same rebound as larger ones, with many still reporting declining attendance, forcing them to close.
This may be because large churches adapt better than smaller ones do.
“Large congregations, much like large corporations and businesses, are adept at reading how society changes,” said Thumma. “They’re not afraid to risk shifting how they do things to adapt to where society is moving.”
On the other hand, many smaller churches don’t have extra resources to pour into experiments that may or may not work, making them less adaptable and resilient, he said.
Transitioning to a multisite model is one way megachurches have adapted. Instead of just building larger church buildings, the report shows, 67 percent of megachurches have multiple locations, sometimes across several states. Spreading out allows them to increase their attendance, total income, and number of weekly services.
12Stone Church adopted this model when it opened another campus in 2007. In 2010, Outreach magazine named it the fastest-growing church in America, and by 2011, it surpassed 10,000 in weekly attendance.
Trey Collins, who has attended 12Stone’s different campuses for 10 years, says he loves the uniqueness of each campus.
“Each campus is kind of like a micro picture of the macro church,” he said. They all function under the larger 12Stone name, but each reflects and serves its unique community. For example, the Jackson County campus has become home to many families with special needs children, Collins said.
To combat the loss of intimacy that comes with size, most megachurches adopt a small group model, which cultivates the same intimacy found in many smaller congregations. According to the report, 94 percent of megachurches use small groups—a strategy 12Stone uses as well.
During the pandemic, 12Stone organized small groups that met in homes to watch the church’s Sunday morning livestream. Collins joined a group of about 15 people who met for a year before returning to in-person meetings.
Maggie Harper and her husband began attending 12Stone in 2014. Coming from a smaller church, they realized joining a small group would help them adjust to the larger environment, which she found a little “overwhelming.”
“[Small groups were] definitely how we stayed with our community during COVID,” said Harper, who recently started live-interpreting 12Stone’s sermons into Spanish.
While scandals and flashy worship services often give megachurches negative stereotypes, Thumma, who coauthored a book on megachurch myths, stresses that these churches often do more good than people give them credit for.
“These congregations are open 24-7,” he said. “Too many people judge it just by that Sunday morning experience. But in fact it really is a much richer reality.”
For example, according to the report, 41 percent of megachurches plant new churches, not just new sites. They also stay active in their communities and share their space with local organizations, like food pantries and health clinics.
The Hartford report also shows that, with their recent growth, congregations feel more connected, stronger, and more optimistic about their future.
Although researchers know megachurches are growing, they still don’t know what exactly makes individual churches become megachurches. Many small churches have charismatic leaders, strategic leadership, great adaptability, and strong community presence, but why one takes off and another stays small remains a puzzle.
“Not every burger joint is going to become McDonald’s and Burger King,” said Thumma. “What makes one hamburger all of a sudden become the thing that’s going to make it a multibillion-dollar corporation and the other just a good meal is hard to know for sure.”
Even so, he says, churches can learn a lot from the success of megachurches.
“If you’re open to change, if you’re doing leadership development, if you’re intentional about connecting your people in small groups and in intimacy—all of those things lead to a more vital, healthy congregation,” he said, “no matter what size you are.”
