Get Your Strategy On
Megachurches Impacting Local Economies
Nov282007 Filed under: Growing Strategies Author: Tony MorganChris passed along a link to this NY Times article that details the impact megachurches are adding to local economies. It includes the story of ChangePoint, a church in Anchorage, Alaska, that built a sports dome to meet a need in its community and provide a "front porch" for reaching people for Jesus. Several other similar projects are cited in the article. It’s an interesting perspective on the convergence of community development and outreach by churches in America.
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Tony Morgan is a pastor and the Chief Strategic Officer at NewSpring Church where he develops creative solutions for communications, technology and NewSpring Ministries--the church's ministry that equips other church leaders.
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The Saving Freak
November 28th, 2007 at 10:44 am
What great expansions for ministry. I had seen and heard of churches running for profit businesses (McDonald’s, Coffee shops, etc.) but had no idea the lengths that the local churches were going to expand ministry and revenue. I do wonder what these businesses do as far as tithing in the church. Does it make people less likely to tithe due to the amount of money the church is bringing in?
Chris
November 28th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I don’t know about the churches operating malls or McDonald’s stores, but at ChangePoint, as far as I know, the Dome is an entirely separate business entity. ChangePoint money did not build the Dome and Dome revenue does not go to ChangePoint. Once the construction loans and everything are repaid, I’m not sure what’s going to happen (maybe prices will go down, since it’s technically a non-profit) but for now, it’s a deal done in partnership with ChangePoint (and the man who came up with the idea for the Dome and who spearheaded its construction is a member of ChangePoint, though the board of directors are not all ChangePoint members) but not technically done by ChangePoint. I could be wrong on this, though
The community response has been overwhelmingly positive. There are a few complaints from the operators of a couple of much smaller air domes (worried that we’re unfairly competing with them as a non-profit), but the community needed this space so badly that no one is paying attention to them. And it’s working as we intended: we’ve already had people coming to the church who otherwise never would have come, wondering what kind of church would do this kind of thing for the community. Now that’s something to praise God for!