Mynhardt van Pletsen

Many Will See And Fear… 

Psa 40:3  He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the LORD.  

No matter how you spin it, there is something about a new, big thing that God is doing through a ministry, that attacts people’s attention, and even leaves them in awe. Christians and non-believers alike.

If there is a Christian ministry that can afford, against all odds, to build a church building of millions and millions of rands, it doesn’t matter what you believe about God, you have to respect and admire the accomplishment, whether you see it as man’s or God’s!

Therefore, the next positive thing that struck me about working and worshipping in a megachurch environment was this: just the existence of such a big ministry seems to be a testimony to the outside world. Just the fact that normal pastors and volunteers can grow an organisation to such a massive extent, seems to impress outsiders and members alike endlessly.

In the end, it is a testimony to the power, might and provision of a big God. When you’ve got a team of 200 staff members and 20 000 congregation members, standing in front of a R90 million building, saying: “Look what the Lord has done”, it gets kind of hard to deny the fact that God is at work among them!

Many times when I’ve doubted the inner workings of the megachurch system, I had to remind myself that the church is still the anointed of the Lord, even more so when growing, I assume. Now I know that bigger churches doesn’t necessarily mean better churches, but it still just helped to to keep my thinking straight.

Anyhoo, what do you think?

Are big churches a testimony in the world to God’s power and provision, just because of their sheer size?

Have your say!

Christ & Cash 

The coordinator of my very first evangelism outreach used to say that the kingdom of God rests on this two very simple pillars: Christ and cash.

You may or may not agree, but you cannot deny that money is definitely indispensible in building an effective ministry in today’s day and age – and usually megachurches not only steward over mega-sized bank accounts, but also get faced with some mega-sized bills at the end of each month!

It is also true that it takes money to make money, and that more money can do more, even for the kingdom. Of course God isn’t limited to how fat our church’s wallet is, but if I can be totally honest, money never seems to be the biggest hurdle to overcome for  our church when it comes to planning new ministry areas and opportunities. When more people are giving in a month, thus easing the fiancial pressure on the leaders, it just becomes easier to focus on spiritual, emotional and strategic growth issues.

Personally, I have experience of working in ministries where there are no salaries being paid, with hardly enough money for phone and electrical bills at the end of the month, to being on staff at a megachurch, having my office in a state of the art multi-million rand building, on one of the prime property stands in our suburb!

So this is my confession: one of the very real advantages of working and worshipping in a megachurch, has to do with the financial margin. Although on a very strict budget, we can with relative ease finance as many ministry projects as we can effectively motivate to our management team.

For more on this, checkout out Tony Morgan’s insightful post on church burgetary issues.

So, am I writing relevant truth or colossal garbage?

Let me know what you think!

[updated] This interesting post about megachurches investing in economic development just appeared over at the Leadership Network Learnings. Another interesting way how wealthy churches impact the community.