Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Long reach of a big church

"Central is coming! Central is coming!"

The anxious whispers spread quickly, evoking great trepidation among members of Summerlin's small Christian churches.

Central Christian Church, the megachurch in Henderson that draws 10,000 faithful each week, was planning to open a satellite facility in Summerlin, 30 miles away.

Last Sunday , Central began offering two services in Summerlin's Palo Verde High School, complete with a full band and a team of pastors. Standing on stage in Henderson, Senior Pastor Jud Wilhite delivered his sermon by videotape, appearing larger-than-life on a high-definition projection screen.

Congregants responded to Wilhite's sermon as if he was in the room, raising their hands to questions four different times and laughing aloud at his jokes.

"We had our doubts, but it was awesome," says Dan Pacleb, who has been commuting to Henderson from Summerlin to attend Central with his family for six years. "It felt so much like we were there."

Other church activities and programs were similarly duplicated during the day, including videotaped teachings and live music, with preschoolers to teens getting the same age-appropriate message as their friends across town.

Central's new church neighbors are warily welcoming the nondenominational Christian church to the neighborhood. They wonder whether their own church rolls will be cannibalized by the new church that already boasts 10,000 members, just as owners of mom-and-pop stores worry about losing customers when Wal-Mart comes to town.

Such concerns have been raised in other cities where megachurches have branched out with satellite campuses.

Critics deride such congregations as "McChurches" or the "Disneyfication of Christianity," believing church leaders put a higher priority on entertaining the masses than seriously teaching the Bible, and defining their success by big numbers versus personal growth.

The tactic of large churches opening satellite worship facilities "is a way to make it very convenient for people, but from my perspective the Gospel isn't convenient and it shouldn't be," said Dan Newburn, pastor of Sun City Community Church in Summerlin. "What happens is that you can be a mile wide and an inch deep."

About 1,000 independent megachurches across the country operate with multiple sites, suggesting that their outreach strategy is becoming popular as a way to spread the faith.

Central, which was established in 1962, markets itself with slogans ("It's OK to not be OK," "One church, two locations"), billboard advertising, mass mailings and celebrity speakers such as "A-Team" television star Mr. T and concerts featuring the likes of country singer Randy Travis. The church employs an outside public relations agency to help with promotions.

Much like Wal-Mart, the church stations greeters at every entrance, mandating that Central be "the friendliest church on Earth."

In eight months, the church has experienced a 30 percent increase in attendance and baptisms, according to Mike Bodine, Central's senior leader and daily operations manager.

Central moved to Henderson in 1999 after outgrowing its building at Mojave and Pecos roads.

In 1994 it started a second church: Canyon Ridge Christian Church, in the northwest part of the valley, now has 5,000 members. In 2000 it helped Canyon Ridge establish the Crossing in the southwest, which now has 1,300 members.

Since 2000 Central's attendance has doubled, from 6,000 people to 12,000 . Holidays such as Christmas and Easter draw more than 20,000 worshipers. There are 120 people on staff and many volunteers, and the church operates on a $10 million budget.

Everything about the new Summerlin campus was designed to duplicate Central's brand and mission, Bodine said, which meant that Central had to cut some ministries, such as Wednesday night services, that weren't easily duplicated.

Summerlin church leaders are now waiting to see if Central's worship services, which feature rock 'n' roll music, witty dramas and dance routines, will lure away their own faithful.

Central may also prove irresistible to some people because its size allows the church to be more active in community work. For instance, Central serves 12,000 meals to the homeless annually, distributes 1,000 bags of food to impoverished families, takes Christmas gifts to hundreds of families, collects 800 backpacks of school supplies for needy students and has 200 people involved in support and recovery groups, many for addictions.

The question for the pastors of Summerlin's smaller churches is whether their members will seek out Central's excitement or prefer the comfort and intimacy of their smaller worship settings.

"I've thought about sending some people over (to Central) to check it out, but I've had some friends who say, 'Are you kidding me? If we send them over there, we'll lose them,' " said Rev. Dr. Tom Lobaugh, pastor of the 200-member Summerlin Presbyterian Church. "But I don't think that is true."

Lobaugh, a church growth specialist, said the tendency in church ministry, as in business, is to adopt practices that bring in customers. Central, for instance, copies tactics from fellow megachurches such as Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois and Saddleback Church in Southern California.

The results are template churches that lack character and personality, Lobaugh said. Not everybody worships the same way, and so there is a need for many types of churches, both small and big, to meet the need.

"We are not in competition with each other," said Rev. Tom Mattick, pastor of Desert Springs United Methodist, which is across the street from Palo Verde High School, where Central sets up shop on weekends for its services. "We come out of different traditions and different backgrounds but we are still doing the same work. The great commission is to go into the world and make disciples."

Conversely, Central's pastors say they are not actively recruiting members of other churches, but say they are hoping to attract people who aren't going to church at all.

"We want to reach people who in their life are far from God, who don't feel like they have a meaningful spiritual relationship with God," Wilhite said. "There are hundreds of thousands of people in this town who have no meaningful church relationships."

Satellite churches began sprouting six to seven years ago to address "the 30-minute problem," said The Rev. Dr. Edmund Gibbs, an Anglican and church growth professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

Churches such as Willow Creek, which draws 20,000 people from the suburbs of Chicago, found that involvement in the church dropped off significantly if members had to drive more than 30 minutes to get to services. The church now has three regional sites and a fourth opening in downtown Chicago in October.

Such branch churches risk derision for dispensing "Christianity lite" because they address sweeping topics and eschew serious, line-by-line Bible study. Such churches also are criticized for attracting churchgoers who prefer the medium (say, a celebrity pastor) over the message (the Scriptures). But they also do a great job of "attracting people who have given up on church," Gibbs said.

The video sermon promotes a "one church, many locations" feel, but Gibbs and other pastors question whether such sermons are as dynamic as having a live person on stage.

In the end, megachurches also tend to have as wide-open back doors as they do front doors, Gibbs and other pastors said. After a year or two, many people who find faith in a megachurch seek a smaller community, or one that offers a specialized ministry. In some cases, big churches can recruit people to Christianity who, after time, seek spiritual nurturing in smaller faith communities.

Most of Central's membership are people who had never previously attended church, or not participated since childhood. Its Sunday services cater to people who have never cracked open the Bible. The street out front of their main facility is called, appropriately, New Beginnings Drive.

Wilhite and Bodine say they want to plant satellites until everyone in Las Vegas is only 20 minutes away from a Central Christian Church site.

Shane Philip, pastor of the Crossing, assumes some if his church members in Summerlin attend Central. That's fine, he says.

"My philosophy has always been that when (God's) kingdom wins, we all win."

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