Survey on Megachurch

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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

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