Survey on Megachurch

By -
Source: Straits Times

Apparently Straits Times published the results of a survey conducted by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies on the religious views of different denominations of churches in Singapore. I think they did a comprehensive job on the survey. According to the researchers, based on the results, it seems to suggest that megachurches are more conservative than traditional churches (if ever there's such a distinction). This seems counter-intuitive but at least I can confirm from what I know, as a member of a megachurch, that people from mega-churches are super friendly to people from all sorts of background. But not to discredit the rest of my fellow brethren from other denominations (so-called), one should not take it that people who come from traditional churches are more intolerant and such.

It is perhaps amusing that the researchers decided to divide their respondents into the four categories. But thinking about it, they seem to treat mega-churches as a category by its own, which I wonder if it is accurate (of course, due to the lack of information, one might also suggest that the focus of their research could be on mega-churches, therefore the categories). Some mega-churches are indeed also independent churches and one example I can think of is City Harvest and New Creation. But I guess in some sense, there is some value in trying to determine the difference in value and quantify the traditional viewpoint of mega-churches (if ever there's one) vis-a-vis the traditional denominations.

To give an example how my personal experience corroborated with this survey, as far as I know, my church has been fairly strict over the issue of BGR. Listening to stories from the dinosaurs, you would have thought that we are very traditional. The way to which we handle BGR went beyond conservative. This is of course, not the experience in other churches (definitely not other mega-churches as I know) but this, to me, is one example on how a mega-church can emphasize conservative values.

Comments

  1. Kevin8:34 AM

    Dear Matthias,

    The ST reporter seems to be misreporting the survey. In the survey, statement 2 is: "Christians should collectively express their views on public policy issues in public," while the summary of the reporter is: "they were...less likely to impose their own morality upon others." Interesting, eh?

    Anyway, there is a distinction between expressing one's views as an individual, expressing a group's views as a group, and imposing one's morality upon others (as a group or as individuals). The last is arrogant and unduly proud; however, the first two are integral to evangelisation. I'm not sure how exactly the survey was done, but I'd like to know how mega-churches view the conduct of evangelisation.

    Kevin

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown8:36 AM

    Actually you are right, the reporter seems to be misreporting. Other reports have reported differently.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Parable of the 'Good Samaritan'

By -
Once there was this man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among thorns, and the thorns spring up and choked him. And as he went on, he didn’t have money, and he met the Queen of Sheba, and she gave him 1,000 talents of gold and 100 changes of raiment. And he got into a chariot and drove furiously, and when he was driving under a big juniper tree, his hair caught on a limb of that tree, and he hung there many days, and the ravens brought him food to eat and water to drink, and he ate 5,000 loaves of bread and two fishes. One night when he was hanging there asleep, his wife Delilah came along and cut off his hair, and he dropped, and fell on stony ground. But he got up and went on, and it began to rain, and it rained forty days and forty nights, and he hid himself in a cave, and he lived on locust and wild honey. Then he went on ‘til he met a servant who said, “Come, take supper at my house.” And he made an excuse and said, “No, I won’t. I have married a wife, and I c...
Read more

Of Teaching and Learning

By -
Image
Over the past two weeks, I was invited to attend a block class on "Learning to Teach." After two weeks of class, here are some reflections that I have. We thank God Bro Casey is a pretty humane teacher... :P  Firstly, teaching needs to meet the changing challenges of the 21st century. This is especially pertinent with all the advancements in technology as well as the worldview changes with the generation today. There is simply no room for the teacher to remain stagnant and not be able to keep up with times so as to engage their students and to facilitate learning. Applying to theological education and Bible school, we have to consider what kind of ministers we are training for the churches in the 21st century. If we are training ministers who are able to engage today’s generation, then we need to review the current methods of teaching and train ministers to be savvy in social media and technology and be able to make use of them in their ministries. Reflecting back on...
Read more

Of Exegesis, Wedding Preparation and the Whole Lot of Things: Another Reflection

By -
Image
To those who know what happened, the past months since the start of 2016 had been very stressful to me. In the preparation to my impending wedding this coming October, my future father-in-law decided to throw a few spanners into the wedding preparation by declaring that he was not comfortable with me as a life partner to his daughter because I am a full time Christian worker and more importantly because I come from a different family background from her.  The latter means that there are certain practices in my own family which are unthinkable in his worldview on how a family should function. This led to intense tensions between Angelina and myself. To compound the stress, NT Exegesis class was not that easy also and the stress of meeting the deadlines mean that I sometimes did not have the time to reflect deeper into the situations I was facing in my relationship.  However, studying the text of Philemon 15-20 reminded me of the way we should conduct our relationship ...
Read more