Addison Road

Evangelical mega-churches have quickly become the whipping boy of the new, sleeker, hipper po-mo folks. I know I’ve participated in the bloodsport myself. In the interest of balance, and to answer a question posed in the comment section of a previous post, I wanted to explore a few of what I think are advantages of being part of a large-church staff. I’m intentionally focusing here on the advantages of being on staff, not the advantages or disadvantages of being a congregant at a megachurch.

For those of you unfamiliar with the arc of my worship ministry career (soon to be a made-for-TV movie on the Bravo network), I’ve been involved in arts ministries at several mega-churches here in Orange County, in several different capacities. I’m now working at a mid-sized church that has a pretty nice balance of some of these advantages, but in a smaller community. I’ve also worked at churches that are really small, or that act really small, and some of my strong negative reactions are drawn from those experiences. So that’s my background, and here are my thoughts.

The best bits of being on staff at a mega-church:
In no particular order

1) Specialists. The smaller the church, the more things you have to be good (or at least competent) at. If you’re leading an arts ministry with a small congregation, you have to be able to conduct a choir, lead worship, arrange music for a brass ensemble, organize the children’s hand-bell choir, train the technical team, play piano for the lady’s tea, train the vocal team to blend, assemble the power-point for the sermon, burn rehearsal Cd’s, you get the vibe. Larger churches have the resources to staff specialists, and then give them the freedom to spend 90% of their time working in that specialty. If you’re a great orchestral arranger, there’s a good chance that a large church will be able to employ you to do just that, and you won’t have to conduct any children’s choirs or coach the vocal team. You get to do what you’re good at doing.

2) Talent. Talent matters. Competency matters. I think this is true in most ministry areas, but it is exponentially true in the arts: large ministries attract talent. This can be a maddening limitation in smaller churches; the collaborative nature of music means that the creative output of the ensemble will be limited by the talent level of its weakest members. One or two great musicians grow increasingly frustrated with working with other players who are less talented, who have invested less time in mastering their instrument, who care less about the quality of the musical output of the group.

Some church leaders seem think that this is a function of leadership, that a skilled and passionate worship leader can raise the level of the artistic competency of the entire group. While this might be true in a very limited sense, it’s not like children’s ministry or the facilities teams where the investment of the leader in training and equipping can develop competence in the individual members. There is a steep price to pay for artistic ability, and it is only payable on an individual basis. A guitarist who has spent his whole life as a hobby player, and whose entire investment in the instrument is two hours on Thursday night and two services on Sunday is never, ever going to sound like the guitarist from your favorite Chris Tomlin or Tim Hughes CD. He is probably a great guy, and willing to sacrifice time and energy to propel that ministry area forward; I don’t want to diminish those things. But on the question of talent, the effective artistic value of the entire group is always going to be limited by his level of competency.

The converse is also true though. When you’re drawing from a church population of 5,000 people, the talent pool is deep and wide. You have the ability to fill those key creative positions with people who are not only talented, but have invested a lifetime of time and energy into honing those talents. The freedom and creative energy that comes from leading worship with a group of talented, passionate, and dedicated artists is an experience unparalleled in smaller ministries.

3) Staff Community. The sort of people who gravitate toward vocational ministry are often (though of course, not always) compassionate, articulate, spiritually focused and relationally driven. They are the sort of people that you want to hang out with. This is not restricted to large churches, it’s very true in small churches too. The difference is that in a megachurch staff, you get to hang out with 80 people like that, instead of 4.

4) Resources. Cash. People. Facilities. Staffing support. Can you minister effectively without resources? Of course. But anyone who tells you that they prefer to minister that way is straight dope crazy. Who wouldn’t rather put together a a summer sports camp for community kids with $500,000 than with $500? Who wouldn’t rather run a technical ministry with a staffed professional team leader than with all volunteers? Especially in arts ministries, there are things you are able to do, experiences you can create, stories you can tell, modes of narration that are made available with resources, and that are impossible without them. A string orchestra of 90 will never be part of our mid-sized church’s artistic experience.

5) Job Benefits. Just to keep honest here, this is a significant employment advantage to working at a large church. I’m trying to find a way not to make this one sound crass, but there it is. There are aspects to vocational ministry that are ministry, and there are aspects that are a job. In a large church, they are more likely to handle the job parts of it in a professional, competitive way. A reasonable salary for the skills and responsibilities that the position entails. Medical and retirement benefits that make the other parts of life, outside of and after ministry, more viable. A better chance that your position will be sustainable long-term. And, just to nail it down to brass tacks here, if your position does disappear, moving from a position at a large church to another position at a different church is much, much easier than moving from a small or mid-sized church to another comparable position. On resumes and in interviews, numbers matter. We may wish it were otherwise, but it’s a reality of the ministry marketplace.

Ok, so there it is. I’ll be honest, this is a bit of a terrifying post to publish in the midst of ongoing conversations with different churches interested in hiring us; this sort of transparency is often not the “right answer” in those settings. But it is, in fact, a true answer, and there is some value in that that transcends the pragmatic. I think there are some difficulties and some barriers that arise from being part of a megachurch staff, but those are well-documented and well-worn. I thought it might be worthwhile to hit the other side of the nail for a bit.

-ml