A Few Modest Suggestions for Making Your Megachurch Truly Mega!

There are so many people trapped in small or medium sized churches, where there is bad music and bad preaching and bad lighting and old people who might ask you things about your life. But thank God for the megachurch!

I've been thinking that these megachurches are not quite creative enough, or professional enough, to really bring in the mega masses. They have done some things, like abandoning doctrinal complexity, Biblical doctrines like hell and sin, intellectual depth in the faith, church discipline, accountability, real community, art, architecture, cultural engagement, Christian history, and the like, but they are perhaps not taking this thing seriously. Here then are my suggestions for making the local megachurch truly MEGA:

1. Food delivery during the service:

Clearly movie theaters have figured this one out, and there is no shame in acknowledging what people want. I know it is not like the church to rip off an idea from the secular culture, but this one could work! Jesus did after all feed the five thousand. We are only, as Sheldon puts it, "Imitating Christ." A question may come up regarding the wait staff. Since we all know that true Christian service and ministry takes place during Sunday services, then clearly expanding service opportunities only helps Christians grow. Serving sliders to the saints can be a Christian ministry! Problem solved!

2. Recliners:

This is another idea ripped off from theaters, but it is another amazing idea. No doubt recliners would be especially helpful for those rare instances when the pastor bogs the sermon down in some irrelevant theological or biblical point. The recliners could be sufficiently wide so as to keep a safe distance from all the strangers in the building, enabling each believer to experience Christian worship in solipsistic bliss.

Perhaps it would even be helpful to create multiple aisles that are only 2 recliners wide so no one has to step over anyone, and everyone has an aisle seat.

3. More technology:

Churches are always about a decade behind in technology. More people can be won to the Church if they see it is current with the times.

For example, many megachurches have, due to their mega-ness, expanded to multi-campus formats, where they have some onsite elements and some "projected" elements, such as the preaching. Churches like this have already discovered that television-addicted people love to have a jumbo-tron in their church, capturing the worship players and the pastor in various "shots" and moving from scene to scene, especially if the various players are attractive or charismatic or interesting. Why not use holographic images to capture the pastor from the remote site? Why not have a snappy dialogue between the holographic pastor and a witty side-kick at the various remote sites? We love celebrities, and it would behoove the multi-site church to do more to centralize the importance of the pastor. And holograms are awesome!

Another use of technology would be something like a video "mash-up" Sunday, where the creative director could be given freedom to produce a slick and humorous mash-up of various online videos that would inspire and encourage and entertain the faithful.

Another idea would be a partnership with Amazon.com to provide drone service to the congregants blissfully ensconced in their recliners during the service. We have busy lives, and it is difficult when one is not in church to remember to go online to purchase the pastor's latest leadership book, or the latest Hillsong album, or other church "merch," like the latest celebrity Christian's kitschy "Christian principles" book.

4. Extended daycare/Sunday school:

These megachurches, with their one whole hour of teaching the most rudimentary Christian stories and Bible passages to children, need to do more to shape our young people to be good Christians (meaning basically nice, moral people). Now one might think that parents have some responsibility in this, but they are not trained in theology, nor do they study the Bible, because it is hard and time-consuming. Megachurches could step into this problem and provide an all-day Sunday "life-on-life," "relational," "relevant" event for the young people, perhaps complete with interactive Bible-like games, and share-circles, and also taco trucks. All of this gives more church exposure to young people and gives the parents much needed rest on the Sabbath, and all for the price of their extremely generous tithe gifts to the church.

5. Music that melts your face, and your heart:

Now because you appeal to minds by grabbing emotions, the music is everything!

There absolutely must be a rock concert style of worship music, loud enough and awesome enough to crush out the sound of the amateur congregants and to make their singing (if they even try), like their recliner, totally solipsistic. And is it too much to ask for smoke machines, theatrical lighting, and good looking (or at least cool looking) people? Perhaps we can thrown in a few Abercrombie shirts, fedoras, skinny-jeans, tattoos, and sculpted beards. We want people saying they come to the church for the music because it makes them feel good and the people are relatably cool, and also accessibly cool.

Is it really so difficult? All one need do is go to a Hillsong United concert and find the musicians in the congregation most closely matching them in talent and appearance and then do that! They don't even have to write songs! In the name of all that is holy, it would be better to play videos of Hillsong than to trot out some no-talent group of homely musicians on a Sunday morning.

(Now that I think of it, this one is already mostly in place in most megachurches. Well, then, if you want a mega, then go and do likewise!)

6. Luxury boxes and helipads for big donors:

Can we be honest and face the fact that churches do a lousy job of giving proper honor to their big donors. They usually only give them seats on the board or general sheepish deference, but if churches provided them with luxury suites complete with amenities, then surely retention rates would increase.

Of course the other problem for our biggest donors is the circus that is the megachurch parking lot, or parking garage. Some of God's sheep, let's recognize the fact, are a little more sheepy than others. At the very least the church could put in preferred parking and plug-in stations for Tesla's.

7. Sponsorships:

Megachurches have exposure to multiple thousands of people each Sunday. It seems foolish for an organization that already brings in so many donor dollars to leave streams of revenue on the table. The pastor could do a brief humorous spot for Chick-Fil-A, for example. He could say something towards the end of the sermon like, "I know I've been preaching for awhile now and you must be hungry. Perhaps you should go out for a nice lunch at, say, Chick-Fil-A! Oh wait! You can't! And you know why? That's right, my flock. It's because they love Jesus!"

Or you could imagine the pastor wearing a Word Publishing tie and saying, "This sermon brought to you by Word Publishing, the Word behind the Word." It's a sentence. Still plenty of time for the pastor's self-help coaching based loosely on the Bible. No one would publish a popular blog without ad revenue. It's time to start making some real cash for your church that can be reinvested in the mission of spreading the good news of how Jesus helps us achieve our dreams.

Please remember that these are just recommendations, from someone whose seen a mega or two in my day. Not all churches will have the resources to make a go of all this, but surely steps and stages are better than business as usual. Remember the great commission, where our Lord said clearly, "Go into all the world and make casual consumers of all nations, teaching them to observe some of what I told you. And lo, I will be with you most of the time (when I'm not vacationing in Tuscany)..."