Thursday Thinking – Smaller Worship Centers

Six Reasons Why Church Worship Centers Will Get Smaller 
by Thom S. Rainer • June 29, 2015

I am a product of the Baby Boomer big worship center era. For many of us old guys, the formula for building a worship center was straightforward. We would project the church’s growth many years out and build a worship center to accommodate that growth in a single service.

Those days are ending.

The more common approach today is to build a worship center that will accommodate growth with multiple services, multiple venues, and multiple campuses. As a consequence, there will be no need for a large, single-service facility.

How did this change take place? Let’s look at six key reasons...

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Rainer's six key reasons summarized...
1. The pervasiveness of multiple worship services.
2. The growth of multiple venues.
3. The unexpected growth of multiple campuses.
4. The desire for perceived intimacy.
5. A greater emphasis on building stewardship.
6. The Millennial generation is sensitive to the issues of stewardship and fellowship intimacy.

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Thom S. Rainer is the president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources. Prior to LifeWay, he served at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for twelve years where he was the founding dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism. He is a 1977 graduate of the University of Alabama and earned his Master of Divinity and Ph.D. degrees from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.