U.S. Megachurches and New Patterns of Global Mission

Black Mega-Churches in the Internet Age: Exploring Theological Teachings and Social Outreach Efforts

“…From the directory search, a total of 189 African American churches provided online broadcasts of entire worship services. Drawing upon the criteria for what constitutes a mega-church (Elligson 2009;Goh 2008;June 2008;Priest et al 2010;Warf and Winsberg 2010) and the continuum of Lincoln and Mamiya (1990) from other-worldliness to this-worldliness, the senior researcher, along with another member of the research team, identified and selected 12 Black mega-churches. The research team purposely selected 12 exemplary Black megachurches from the online portal.…”

“…Primary characteristics of mega-churches include the following: (1) 2,000 or more people who attend the church on a weekly basis (Goh 2008;Priest et al 2010;Warf and Winsberg 2010); (2) lively, exuberant worship services including specific instrumentation, i.e., electronic instruments and drums (Goh 2008;Hall-Russell 2005); (3) two or more Sunday worship services; and (4) integration of technology such as a church website, texting, digital multimedia, and blogging (Elligson 2009;June 2008;Patterson 2007;Pinn 2002;Smith 2006;Warf and Winsberg 2010). Towards the goal of increasing church attendance and reaching larger and larger audiences, pastors of Black megachurches purposefully have invested in online outreach to bring the Gospel message to individuals beyond the confines of local geography.…”

New mission paradigms and the encounter with Islam: Fusing voluntarism, tourism and evangelism in short-term missions in the USA

“…It was incorporated into the ministries of non-denominational parachurch organisations, such as the Campus Crusade for Christ, now known Culture and Religion 307 as Cru, in the 1960s and 1970s, while also being adopted among mainline agencies as an alternative to colonial mission models (see Koll 2010). Mainline agencies have continued to sponsor short-term mission, but by 2000, it was a routine feature of evangelical youth ministry, facilitated by scores of national sending organisations, most non-denominational, and it has only continued to gain popularity since then (Priest et al 2006;Priest et al 2010;Weber and Welliver 2007;Wuthnow 2009). 7 Short-term mission's popularisation conforms to the 'missional' orientation of many evangelicals, a theological perspective on the mission field that views it as lying as much in one's immediate surroundings as in the distant worlds of nonChristian Others (Barth 1962;Bielo 2011;Bosch 1991;Newbigin 1989).…”

Short-term youth mission practice and the visualization of global christianity

“…Underwritten, in some cases, by millennialist theological principles and by conservative interpretations of missional Christianity, new evangelical bodies stressed the urgency of conversion of non-Christians and the Christianization of secular societies. 11 The short-term model, buoyed by the renewed embrace of mission among evangelicals and sustained by the new styles of missiological training and theory provided in evangelical institutions, steadily gained popularityincreasing its participation rates and spawning scores of sending agencies-in the decades following its founding (Priest, Wilson, and Johnson 2010;Wuthnow 2009). …”

“…Barnett 2011;Lindsey 2007;Nichols 1988;Olsen 2004). Theological and missiological sources offer statistical documentation on mission and frame it in the context of global Christianization (Barrett and Johnson 2001;Barrett, Johnson, and Crossing 2007;Jenkins 2002;Milbank and Ward 2008;Priest 2008;Priest et al 2010;Weber and Welliver 2007). 9 This is explored in research on "translations" of Christian metaphysics into vernacular cosmologies (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991;Keane 2007;Meyer 1999;Robbins 2004;Tomlinson 2009;Viswanathan 1998), on the mediation of culturally distinct Christianities (Bornstein 2003;Cannell 2006;Engelke 2007;Engelke and Robbins 2010;Howell 2003) and on Christians' cultivation of global subjectivities (Coleman 2000(Coleman , 2013Goh 2008).…”