The leader looked him in the eyes and said, “Who’d want it? Who in their right minds would want to run that?” “That’s when it dawned on me,” Kallestad reflected. “By the time we service the $12-million debt, pay the staff, and maintain the property, we’ve spent more than a million before we can spend a dime on our mission…”

Megachurches are predominantly white, suburban, conservative congregations led by baby-boomer pastors. This is what an infographic about floating around the web lately has revealed. It’s based on research compiled by Forbes, The Christian Post, and Leadership Network.

For the most part the stats look very positive for mega and gigachurches (yes, that is a term now being used). These massive congregations, unlike many other churches, are still growing. They’re expanding staff, seeing increasing budgets and have an optimistic outlook.

But buried in the positive stats about megachurches may be signs of challenges ahead.

Could a bubble be forming? And when it finally bursts will the mega-model be abandoned or severely reengineered? Are we seeing the maturation of the megachurch movement into a sustainable and long-term model for the American church? Or, like Wile E. Coyote, is the ground going to suddenly disappear under its feet? Let’s look more closely at the numbers.

First, the average age of a megachurch pastor is now 50. Not surprising perhaps, but when linked with the fact that most megachurches are less than 30 years old, it means the senior pastor was likely the founding pastor, or the leader who took the congregation from average size to mega-status. Research found in James Twitchell’s book, Shopping for God, reveals the number of megachurches exploded with the baby-boomers:

Approximate number of U.S. congregations with 2,000+ in weekly attendance:
1970: 10
1980: 50
1990: 500
2005: 1500

Of course this rapid growth of megachurches doesn’t mean church attendance has increased. On average 50 small churches close their doors every week in America. We’ve seen 40 years of the Walmart effect — consolidation rather than expansion. And while the latest infographic reports the average megachurch was founded in 1971, most were not megachurches in 1971. They were average-sized congregations that reached mega-attendance levels in the 80s or 90s under the leadership of a baby-boomer pastor. (I’ve profiled a number of such churches in the pages of Leadership Journal over the years.)

With most of these congregations being led by boomers nearing retirement in the next 10-15 years, how will they navigate such a transition? Some will undoubtably be fine. But these are uncharted waters for the young megachurch movement, and churches of all sizes tend to decline sharply during leadership transitions. It’s part of the natural lifecycle of an organization. And some never recover at all — the sad story of the Crystal Cathedral in California comes to mind.

So, while things are looking bright for megas right now, there are serious challenges ahead for these boomer-led churches.

Secondly, the infographic shows that half of all megachurchs (48 percent) are located in young, growing suburbs of a major city. Anyone who has studied church growth or church planting knows that growing communities tend to fuel growing churches. (When was the last time you read about a growing church in Detroit?)

Read More