Five Big Things Smaller Churches Don’t Have

What makes the megachurch the default market leader in town?

Amarillo is a city with a population of more than 180,000. On any given Sunday, 64,800 people are in church, somewhere. Eighty percent of those people are sitting in the ten largest churches. With more than 300 churches in town, this means that the remaining 12,960 folks are spread out among 290 churches. Megachurches have five key leverage points that smaller churches do not have, and they capitalize on them every day.

• A Network of Distribution. A megachurch succeeds because it can afford to hire lots of development people. They sponsor big events and purchase premium ad space in the local television and newspaper markets. They have a network of the most successful and most gifted opinion leaders in their communities attending their fellowship. And they have no problem getting their services in front of the market.
• Access to Capital. These guys can get their hands on a lot of money anytime they want it. They don’t have to come up with personal guarantees, pay high-interest payments, and they don’t have to do downside risk estimates. If the church market can be bought with cash, megachurches can do it.
• Brand Equity. A megachurch has invested millions of dollars building a brand name. It has a lot of brand equity. Church people tend to trust anything a megachurch does. Every week, a megachurch gets to extract the benefits that come from having a huge market share. And people are like sheep, they tend to follow the brand leader.
• Market Relationships. The pastor of a megachurch has a tremendous advantage over a small church in that he can pick up the phone and meet almost any community leader in the city. In established markets like Amarillo, this is a huge advantage.
• Great Staff. A megachurch has a lot of exceptional people on the payroll. These folks were drawn to work for this ministry because it has a great reputation, offers stability, and pays well. A megachurch, if it is smart, has leveraged these people to the hilt. No doubt about it, successful megachurches have attracted some incredibly talented people to their leadership teams.

So where does this leave the small church? The advantage that a megachurch has over a small church is overwhelming, especially if the small church trys to act like a big church. The market won’t buy it. It has to do something different, if the small church hopes to survive. But the “Be Different” strategy has to wait for another post.

According to Wikipedia, a megachurch is a church having around 2,000 or more attendees for a typical weekly service. The Hartford Institute’s database lists more than 1,300 such Protestant churches in the United States. According to these data, about 50 churches on the list have attendance ranging from 10,000 to 47,000.

Steeple provides fund raising and organizational development services to faith-based and community-based organizations of the nonprofit sector. Our efforts are dedicated to putting nonprofit managers and trustees in touch with the tools and resources they need to develop their organizations and to conduct successful capital campaigns. Our work with clients is for the long-term—to build internal capacity, to create brand equity, and to attract and retain funding. Since 2007, we’ve helped nonprofit organizations like yours raise more than $14 million.

• Add to Delicious
• Add Delicious
• Click to Stumbleupon
• Click Stumbleupon
• Tweet this
• Tweet
• Share on Facebook
• Share on Facebook