SEPT. 8, 2004

SOCIAL SERVICES
Black megachurches' mega-outreach

Megachurches have mega-programs. Black churches have always emphasized social services. Now the growing number of predominantly African-American megachurches are aggressively expanding outreach and economic development efforts in ways that are transforming entire communities.

The economic development work of black megachurches is relatively new and unstudied, though half have started their own community development corporations, according to Tamelyn Tucker-Worgs, a Hood College assistant professor who researches black megachurches. These CDCs develop housing, new businesses, health clinics and social programs of all kinds. That puts them among the one or two percent of congregations nationally that take on such ambitious programs, says University of Arizona sociologist Mark Chaves. Most focus on emergency shelter and food or programs for substance abuse and domestic abuse.

There are at least 740 U.S. megachurches, which have average Sunday attendance of 2,000 or more. At least 65 are largely black, Tucker-Worgs says. Some are new churches, but many are old ones with growing memberships. While white megachurches are predominately suburban, about half the black megachurches are in cities and have members who commute from the suburbs, she says. The largest numbers are in the Atlanta and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas.

Black churches have always been "one-stop shops" because some other means of access to community services were off limits, says Brad R. Braxton, assistant professor of homiletics and Biblical studies at Wake Forest University. What's new is the scale of investment and ambition among black megachurches, which draw on the financial muscle of the middle class.

Questions for reporters
• It's a megachurch, but is it black? Many megachurches are integrated. Houston's Lakewood Church, for instance, says its membership is 30 percent black, 30 percent Latino and 40 percent white. Robert Franklin, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Social Ethics at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, says "black" churches share some or most of these traditional hallmarks: a largely African-American congregation with an African-American senior pastor and lay leaders; a traditionally African-American culture of worship, usually including emotional expressiveness and call and response. Some churches, Franklin says, are in transition out of this traditional style.
• Look for ways that a churches' programs are affecting lives of those outside its own walls, as well as the lives of members who give time and money to them.
• What are black megachurches' attitudes toward government money? The Bush Administration's faith-based initiative divided black clergy. Some embraced the idea. Others worried it would shift attention away from political solutions, limit their ability to share the Gospel, or absolve government of responsibility for the poor.
• Ask how a church's theology informs its view of its obligations to its community. For example, some 20 percent of black megachurches preach a type of "prosperity" gospel, according to Franklin. These churches are more likely to work to develop individuals, while churches with a community orientation do more community development, according to James Shopshire, professor of the sociology of religion at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Skip to background

Click the map for interview sources in your state and region

National sources

• R. Drew Smith is director of the Public Influences of African-American Churches Project and scholar-in-residence at the Leadership Center at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He is a Baptist minister and political scientist. He has studied and written about black megachurches, and he edited New Day Begun: African American Churches and Civic Culture in Post-Civil Rights America (Duke University Press, 2003) Contact 404-681-2800 ext. 2186, rdsmith@indyweb.net.
• Robert M. Franklin is president of Morehouse College in Atlanta. He wrote Another Day's Journey: Black Churches Confronting the American Crisis (Fortress Press, 1997). He is an ordained minister and expert on ethical thought in African-American church life and politics. Franklin says megachurches tend toward a noncritical theological message of possibility that is attractive to people who are shopping for a church and have negative associations with "old-fashioned" religion. Contact 404-215-2645, rfranklin@morehouse.edu.
• Tamelyn Tucker-Worgs, assistant professor of political science at Hood College in Frederick, Md., wrote her doctoral dissertation on black megachurches and their role in community development. In addition to researching megachurches, she teaches African-American religions, the politics of the black church and black liberation theology. Contact 301-696-3686, tuckerworgss@hermes.hood.edu.
• Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, is an expert in African-American religion and social change. She says that black churches have always provided social services but that megachurches do it on a larger scale. Contact 207-872-3133, ctgilkes@colby.edu.
• Mark Chaves, professor and head of the sociology department at the University of Arizona, has written extensively about religious congregations and social services. He studies differences between black and white congregations. Chaves' Congregations in America (Harvard University Press, 2004) has a chapter on social services. He surveyed a nationally representative sample of religious congregations in 1998. Contact 520-626-2560, mchaves@u.arizona.edu.
• Peter Paris, Elmer G. Homrighausen Professor of Christian Social Ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, wrote The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Fortress Press, 1985), a widely used seminary text. He is an ordained Baptist minister, serves on the Princeton Affordable Housing Commission and is president of the board of trustees of the Princeton Young Achievers. He can discuss how black church values and traditions work in megachurch community development activities. Contact 609-921-8300, peter.paris@ptsem.edu.
• Michael Leo Owens, assistant professor in the political science department at Emory University in Atlanta, has written extensively about black churches, government policy and black-church affiliated community development programs. His dissertation, "Pulpits and Policy: The Politics of Black Church-Based Community Development Corporations in New York City, 1980-2000" is available online through Emory University. Contact 404-727-9322, mowens4@emory.edu.
• John Vaughn, is founder of Church Growth Today and the Megachurch Research Center in Bolivar, Mo. He conducts research on the growth, plateau, and decline of new and established megachurches. He is past president and founding editor of the American Society for Church Growth. Vaughn says that in 1970, there were just 10 non-Catholic churches with an average Sunday attendance of more than 2,000; in 1980 there were 50; in 1985, 100; in 2000, 500; and in 2004, there are 835, with roughly 3 million members total. Contact 417-326-3826, jv@churchgrowthtoday.com.
• Scott L. Thumma, a sociologist of religion, focused on African-American megachurches in his dissertation. He teaches at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut and is affiliated with the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. He continues to research megachurch issues. Contact 860-509-9571, sthumma@hartsem.edu.

Background

• See a database of U.S. megachurches organized by denomination and state at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Scott Thumma, who compiled the data, does not specify which churches are African-American. However, a number of black megachurches can be found by searching for the denominations that are historically black (American Methodist Episcopal, American Methodist Episcopal Zion, Church of God in Christ, Christian Methodist Episcopal, for example). Thumma estimates that 10 percent of megachurches have ties with historically black denominations.
• A Dec. 30, 2003, Christian Science Monitor article reports that while small and medium-sized churches of almost every faith are losing members, megachurches are growing.
• Read an Aug. 25, 2002, Baltimore Sun article republished by Religion News Blog describing the growth of black megachurches and neo-Pentecostalism.
• Order "The State of Black America 2000" from the National Urban League. In it, R. Drew Smith and Tamelyn Tucker-Worgs offer some of the first data on black megachurches, the results of a survey of more than 50 churches. They found that black megachurches are more involved politically and with community development than smaller black churches. Contact Rose Jefferson in public relations, 212-558-5316.