With several massive multisite congregations dotting the South Bay, some locals argue the polished production value and anonymous crowds undermine authentic biblical fellowship. Others say the reach and resources of large churches are exactly what a sprawling, transient tech-workforce city needs.
Join the debate to comment
Reading is free. Members pay to post — that's why it stays clean.
Add your commentI actually think the transient tech workforce argument CUTS THE OTHER WAY from what the large-church defenders think. If your congregation turns over 40% of its membership every 18 months because engineers keep rotating to Austin or Seattle, a giant anonymous production-value service is PERFECT for keeping butts in seats and tithes flowing in. It's optimized for churn. Small groups get marketed as the "real community" but they're just a retention feature. I say this as someone who worked in product at a SaaS company and then served as a deacon. The language is uncomfortably identical.
Born and raised in San Jose, attended a small Foursquare church on Meridian for 20 years before it got absorbed into one of these multisite campuses. You know what we lost? The pastor who knew your name. The deacon who showed up when your dad had his stroke. Now it's a campus pastor reading from a screen showing some guy preaching from Brea or wherever. That's not a church. That's a franchise. Read Acts 2 again and tell me that looks anything like what they're selling on North First Street.
Went to one of these places once with a coworker. Nice enough. But I timed it — 11 minutes of announcements, 22 minutes of music, 28 minute sermon, out in 68 minutes flat. My coworker said "they really respect your time" and meant it as a compliment. I sat there thinking, since when is efficiency a virtue in worship? We've fully imported the product roadmap into Sunday morning and we're calling it ministry.
Ok but can we talk about the actual GOOD these big churches do in San Jose? The homeless ministry off Story Road, the ESL classes, the mental health counseling offered on a sliding scale. My small church of 80 people cannot do any of that. We can barely keep the lights on. A church with a $4 million annual budget serving the South Bay is not automatically a spiritual failure just because it has a lighting rig.
the whole lights-down-fog-machine worship experience just makes me feel like im at a Imagine Dragons concert not a church. like where is the reverence? where is the silence before God? my vietnamese grandmother would not recognize this as Christianity and honestly she might be more right than wrong
Hard disagree with the premise. I moved here from rural Indiana three years ago for a job at a semiconductor company and I knew literally nobody. The "megachurch" you all are criticizing was the first place anyone invited me to dinner. I joined a midweek small group and those people helped me move apartments in the rain. So maybe don't lecture transplants about what real community looks like when your tight-knit little congregations weren't exactly rolling out the welcome mat.
My family has attended the same church in Willow Glen for 31 years. Same building, same neighborhood, we did VBS with these kids and now we're watching them get married. THAT is covenant community. I'm not condemning anyone for going to a big church but let's be honest about what we're comparing here. One of these things is discipleship. The other is a really encouraging weekly motivational seminar.
ngl some of yall romanticizing small churches have clearly never been stuck in a 45 person congregation where the pastor's wife runs every ministry and if you question anything youre gossiped about by Thursday. megachurches have problems yes but so does every church. glass houses etc
Can someone correct the person who inevitably shows up in these threads claiming Willow Creek invented the megachurch model in Silicon Valley? Willow Creek is in Illinois. The history of large evangelical congregations in the South Bay goes back decades, including some Assemblies of God churches in the East Side that were running thousands before the tech boom made it trendy. Get your history right before diagnosing the disease.
Should Christians pray to saints — or is asking Mary and the dead for help straight-up idolatry?
56 comments
Did Christianity give birth to modern science — or did the church spend centuries trying to strangle it in the cradle?
56 comments
Does God choose who gets saved, or do you choose God — and is Calvinism secretly making God into a monster?
55 comments
Do humans have an immortal soul — or did the church steal that idea from Plato and dress it up as Scripture?
55 comments