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I posted the following in another post. but thought, perhaps, it might make for an interesting discussion on its own.

"As I have been reading through the old posts herein, (this was in the Cloud Vs. Chappell topic) it gets me thinking: Even Lighthouse in San Diego, my old alma mater, as it were, has begun to allow some small amount of altered CCM into their music, an issue that greatly saddens me. I don't know how much, but I have heard it. And it gets me thinking, often the pastor himself takes a stand against such, but as a church grows into a massive size, the pastor cannot possibly be hands-on in every area as he ought to be, and has to entrust certain things to others. It is here that there enters the great danger of sneaking in this sort of music. I think that's what happened at Lighthouse, when a new music minister took over. 

All this makes me think that, maybe churches ought to consider, How big should a church become, before they begin to consider breaking into multiple assemblies, over just one church with thousands? Ultimately, the Pastor will answer for what has been allowed there, and if he can no longer have hands-on control, at least to a reasonable point, should that church, perhaps, become two churches? Or three? Ought we be in the business of building megachurches? The huge church in Jerusalem was never meant to remain that large, but they also had 12 leaders, 12 pastors, if you will, not one or two, and eventually it broke up into many scattered churches all over Asia and the middle east. 

So, should churches consider breaking up, rather than building huge monoliths, which history will tell us, ALWAYS eventually fall to error?"

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47 minutes ago, Ukulelemike said:

I posted the following in another post. but thought, perhaps, it might make for an interesting discussion on its own.

"As I have been reading through the old posts herein, (this was in the Cloud Vs. Chappell topic) it gets me thinking: Even Lighthouse in San Diego, my old alma mater, as it were, has begun to allow some small amount of altered CCM into their music, an issue that greatly saddens me. I don't know how much, but I have heard it. And it gets me thinking, often the pastor himself takes a stand against such, but as a church grows into a massive size, the pastor cannot possibly be hands-on in every area as he ought to be, and has to entrust certain things to others. It is here that there enters the great danger of sneaking in this sort of music. I think that's what happened at Lighthouse, when a new music minister took over. 

All this makes me think that, maybe churches ought to consider, How big should a church become, before they begin to consider breaking into multiple assemblies, over just one church with thousands? Ultimately, the Pastor will answer for what has been allowed there, and if he can no longer have hands-on control, at least to a reasonable point, should that church, perhaps, become two churches? Or three? Ought we be in the business of building megachurches? The huge church in Jerusalem was never meant to remain that large, but they also had 12 leaders, 12 pastors, if you will, not one or two, and eventually it broke up into many scattered churches all over Asia and the middle east. 

So, should churches consider breaking up, rather than building huge monoliths, which history will tell us, ALWAYS eventually fall to error?"

The church I grew up in went from having just under 300 people every Sunday to having over 2K people very Sunday in just a few short years. It brought in many new people and many new challenges that I don't believe the pastor was totally able to handle. Even the associate and assistant pastors couldn't really control a lot of what was going on at that point. Some CCM was being introduced in the youth department, and that was finally "nipped in the bud" by the associate pastor. That brought a lot of tension between the youth and associate pastor. The youth pastor finally left to take another church. The church purchased land to build a new sanctuary, but as other "challenges" popped up, and scandals began to show up in not only the congregation, but showing up in the paper and Christian school the church had started as well, the church decided to pass these problems on to other churches. The membership started to take a hit, many prominent members leaving for other, more contemporary churches. When my family moved to Ga from Illinois, the church was running only 600 people. that continued to dwindle down and is now between 100 and 200 people. I believe it would have been advantagous for our church to have started other churches instead of having so many people in the service. There were several men who were qualified to pastor, but our pastor didn't see the value in losing members to new plants. I've never liked the idea of mega-churches. There is always something lost when an elderly pastor tries to keep up with all that's going on in a huge church, even with associates and assistants.

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