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The Voice of the CIO Community Search
1,800Estimated number of megachurches (weekly attendance 2,000+)
7.2 mill ion
Estimated total weekend attendance
40,000Weekly attendance, Lakewood Church, Houston
9Number of campuses of Seacoast Church, headquartered in
suburban Charleston, S.C.
11,500Member churches, Willow Creek Association
$3 millionCost of high-end audio/video system
"Reach hither thy finger," says Jesus to Thomas in the Gospel
according to John, and on a recent Sunday morning atWillow Creek
Community Church, in South Barrington, Ill., a group of
middle-school students appears to be taking thatparticular bit of
scripture to heart.
What they're reaching for as they enter the massive building
amid a throng of fellow churchgoers is a fingerprint scanner,which
quickly checks them into Willow Creek for Sunday school. Nearby,
parents swipe ID cards through digital card-
readers to check in the younger kids. "We need a way to get them
in securely and without hassle," says Mike Gold, WillowCreek's
director of information technology. "When you're dealing with 3,000
kids, you need to be quick."
Beyond the high-tech check-in lies a church that is as wired as
any business in the country. Inside the 7,095-seatauditorium, the
image of Pastor Bill Hybels is projected on large video screens,
making him visible to everyone in thecrowd. Miss a sermon, and you
can catch it later via streaming video on the Web, and then surf
over to a church blog tolearn more about Gulf Coast relief efforts.
They still pass the collection plate at Willow Creek, but they also
acceptautomatic bank drafts. "We can tithe out of a bank account as
soon as a check is deposited, so God gets the first fruit,"says
Brian McAuliffe, CFO and director of operations.
About 20,000 people attend Willow Creek every week, making it
one of the largest churches in the nation. And like otherso-called
"megachurches"defined by average weekly attendance of more than
2,000 peopletechnology is essentialto almost every phase of its
mission. There are perhaps 1,800 megachurches in the U.S.,
including a subset of trulygargantuan institutions whose attendance
can approach 20,000, or more. And the bigger they are, the more
they tend torely on technology.
"Technology is essential for a church of our scale," says
DuncanDodds, executive director of Lakewood Church, in Houston,
whichhas weekly attendance of over 40,000 people, maintains a
60,000-name e-mail list, and meets in a renovated
basketballarena once used by the NBA's Houston Rockets. "You could
notdo church the way we do without it." Pastor A.R. Bernard of
the24,000-member Christian Cultural Center, in Brooklyn,
N.Y.,agrees. At his church, worshippers use the in-house WiFi
networkto call up Bible verses on their laptops as they follow
along withBernard's big-screen, PowerPoint presentations.
"Technology is a vital and integral part of our setup," he says.
"It is acore enabling element to what we do."
These tech-savvy institutions are the fastest growing element in
religious life in the U.S. "We're finding about one a week,"says
Dave Travis, who tracks megachurches in his role as executive vice
president of church innovations at theLeadership Network, a
Dallas-based research and consulting group that works with large
churches. There have alwaysbeen large congregations, says Mark
Chaves, head of the sociology department at the University of
Arizona, where hestudies religion, organizations and social
movements. But, he adds, the biggest got bigger throughout the 20th
century,and the rate of growth has accelerated over the last
generation. Historically, Chaves says, the biggest churches
haven'tstayed the biggest for very long: "They get overtaken by the
next cultural wave of innovation." Increasingly, innovation
isdriven by technology, which is a large part of what has allowed
megachurches to thrive. Says Travis: "One reason you'veseen an
explosion in megachurches is because of the technological progress
that's been made."
Religious groups have longembraced the technology oftheir day,
going back to theEpistles of Paul and theGutenberg Bible and
onthrough to the radio andtelevision preachers of morerecent times.
In that sense,the megachurches arefollowing tradition, but inmany
particulars they arechanging the way millions of
Americans worship, donateand interact with theirchurches and
with each other.Megachurches reflect a
culture that is comfortable with enormous institutions, from
suburban high schools and universities to retail outlets andbanking
companies. They tend to be less political than some of their
smaller brethren, but still represent a potentiallypowerful
political force. Their pastors wield great financial muscle and
public clout.
While they make up only a tiny percentage of the total number of
churches, the new breed of megachurches, typicallyfound in
suburbia, accounts for perhaps 7 percent of weekly church
attendance, according to Scott Thumma, asociologist of religion at
the Hartford [Conn.] Institute for Religion Research. The churches
are often unaffiliated withparticular denominations, and they span
a broad range of beliefs and practices. Taken as a whole, however,
theirmemberships add up to perhaps 7 million people or morethe
equivalent of the third-largest religious group in the
Home IT News & Trends Megachurch Megatech
Megachurch MegatechByEdward Cone | Posted 11-05-2005
LinkedIn Twitter Facebook 0 Share
Nowadays, spreading the Word involves a lot of sophisticated
information technology. Here's how IT works in a very
high-growth enterprise.
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country, says Thumma, trailing only Roman Catholics and Southern
Baptists (with whom their membership overlapssomewhat).
What's more, the megachurches are growing at the expense of
other churches. "Overall church attendance is not goingup. People
are going to megachurches from other churches," Chaves says. One
factor driving growth, he adds, is cost."You may have to go to a
larger church to get quality, such as a youth minister and more
programs, or better facilities."
Another cost center is the technology that touches nearly every
phaseof megachurch life. There are management systems that allow
hugecongregations to track finances and organize members with
relativelyfew staffers, audio-video tools that help pastors compete
formindshare with the clamor of popular culture, and telecom and
Webapplications that allow churches to reach outside their walls
and startsatellite campuses as well as manage national associations
that can
include thousands of other churches.Doing all this stuff
requires a substantial investment. At Willow Creek,the technology
budget tops $1 million a year, out of a total budget ofabout $27
million. A15-person IT staff helps support about 50 serversand 600
PCs, two more full-timers work on the Web team, and anarmy of
volunteers helps out with everything from maintenance to
design. In order to deal with its growing scale of operations,
Fellowship Church, in Grapevine, Texas, developed its ownmanagement
software, which it subsequently spun out as an independent company
called Fellowship Technologies; thecompany, an application service
provider, has more than 240 customers, says CEO and President Jeff
Hook, includingseveral of the largest churches in the country, and
brings in revenue of more than $3 million per year.
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