Talk:List of megachurches in the United States

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Proper naming of article[edit]

Since this list does not include Catholic churches (since they are not considered "megachurches") it seems that this article should be renamed to "List of the largest Protestant churches in the USA" or "List of the largest megachurches in the USA" to properly reflect the scope of the list included. --Strandist (talk) 06:28, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with renaming. There should be a list of large Catholic churches, but a merged list would be unwieldy and there is a distinct Protestant megachurch movement. "Largest Protestant" seems the better name: "large-mega" is awkward. I will drop a note to the one other editor who has worked on this list, and if there is no objection will move it. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:12, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would say the list does not include Catholic churches because they are not "Protestant" rather than because they are not "megachurches".--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:26, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't it be better to call this: List of Protestant Megachurches in the United States as per the definition of megachurch listed here. I suspect that some places like the National Cathedral or larger liturgically based churches reach 2,000 weekly attendance but they don't seem to be listed. >> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 13:42, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • The National Cathedral isn't Protestant, so it wouldn't be on the list. also, the wiki article on it says the attendance is 1,667. Niteshift36 (talk) 19:55, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • It would be rare that a church with 1,667 attending on an average Sunday wouldn't have 2,000 members (the limit specified for the list); it is not uncommon for the membership number to be 2 times or more the average attendance. I haven't the time to search its attendance now since its own site doesn't list it clearly. It is Episcopalian which is protestant, in fact the article Episcopal Church (United States) begins "The Episcopal Church, also known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America." We either need to search out information to add or admit that this article is breaking WP:NPOV by favoring non-liturgical protestant traditions over liturgical ones. (I'm Catholic and so don't have a horse it that race.) >> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 21:05, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your personal math about number of "members" (many churches have no formal membership and use attendance as the member number) is pointless, since Episcopal churches don't go on this list. The name may use the word Protestant, but that doesn't make it a Protestant Church. It's Anglican. Read the history, not just the opening sentence. It's much closer to Catholic than Baptist. There is no NPOV issue since the list will never be all inclusive or finished. Right now, you're demanding inclusion of something you don't even have a source for. Once you do, we can debate whether Anglicans are Protestants or not. Niteshift36 (talk) 21:34, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sir, I will look for a reference; I'm going to e-mail them today. I know that Catholic parishes keep strict lists of members by families not persons and I am sure Episcopalians do either by family or person. Please deal with civility: I don't have a reference but I doubt anyone familiar with the topic would doubt that a large church would have at least 20% more members (what's needed here) than their average Sunday attendance. Second, to claim that Anglicans are not Protestants is an extreme stretch (almost WP:HOAX). They are listed as the first denomination of Protestants on the page on Wikipedia Protestant#Anglicans_and_Episcopalians. >> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 10:23, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Deal with it civily? Are you kidding me? I've been civil, while you've made complaints of bias and hoaxs? Second, "anyone familiar with the topic", would include me. Since you don't have the slightest idea who I am or what I know, for you to make a statement like that takes ignorance to almost an insulting level. Lastly, even if Anglicans are technically Protestants, this still comes back to that FACT that you've not shown a single source showing that the National Cathedral has a membership of more than 2,000, making it eligible for inclusion. So until you WP:PROVEIT, stop whining about it and keep your insults and personal math formulas to yourself. Niteshift36 (talk) 12:32, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • BTW, when you "email them today", don't think that a personal email to you will be a reliable source. Niteshift36 (talk) 13:49, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Coffee anyone? let's take a few minutes and think through our comments. I don't believe anyone is being intentionally uncivil. Let's breathe and discuss things.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:08, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I started to find the right refs but I need to get to bed soon since I have school tomorrow morning. This page on the Episcopal Church's website gives a summary noting "The largest active membership was noted as St. Martin"s, Houston TX (Diocese of Texas) with 8,311 members." It says that the full reports can be found here but I don't see it clearly. (The best I can see is "Currently, data in raw form is available going back to 1998. For information about obtaining it, pleasecontact Christine Kandic.") Doing further searches or inquires via these two official sites of the congregation may also help. If we are going to include Protestants, we need to include Episcopalians which currently have 0 churches on the list yet I'm sure they have a few with over 2,000 members. Hopefully someone else has time to complete my research and add it. I'm going to bed. >> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 20:09, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • And your own source says: "In an accompanying report of Episcopal Domestic Fast Facts 2009 (not inclusive of any of the non-United States-based dioceses), the largest ASA was posted as the Cathedral of St Peter & St Paul in Washington DC (Washington National Cathedral) with 1667." That is EXACTLY the number I gave at the start. You are not permitted to use your own personal formulas to extrapolate a "real membership" figure. So, you still have provided no sources that show the National Cathedral should be on this list.Niteshift36 (talk) 20:26, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • My point was never THIS church, it was churches with a liturgical tradition. St. Martin's at least should be added. I will also try e-mailing the main episcopal body to ask them where this report went or if they could put a PDF online based on the data they have. The Cathedral does not have its own membership but relies on the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation which also includes 3 schools. I presume if I find their membership (and it's over 2,000) that would count since it is just the church and its affiliated schools.>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 13:56, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's simple: If you have reliable sources, add it. Niteshift36 (talk) 14:35, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Most important reason why Anglican church should not be included is not because of it's liturgical similarity with Catholicism but its administrative similarity: they have parishes which are territorial units within which all people of that faith are basically "by default" members as far as the church is concerned.

Membership vs. Attendance[edit]

  • Membership and attendance aren't necessarily correlated, and the focus on membership skews this list. Faith Promise Church located near me is humongous. It's a multi-site megachurch with over 4000 weekly attendance (seems like more when you get stuck in their traffic jams), but their reported membership is well below 2000. It's not in this list because its membership isn't large enough to qualify. I'd endorse renaming the article to "Megachurches in the United States", adding a column for weekly attendance, and listing churches with more than 2000 in either membership or weekly attendance. If the scope is limited to "megachurches" and that concept is well-defined, I don't think it would inlcude Catholic churches. Some Episcopal churches may qualify for inclusion, though. --Orlady (talk) 03:02, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm tempted to go the other way. This list is already too big, yet I know of at least 4 churches in my county alone that aren't on the list but exceed the 2000 per week threshold. I'm sure my area isn't that unique. According to the source above, there are over 1,600 churches that belong on this list. I'm inclined to start thinking of ways to divide this list into manageable portions.Niteshift36 (talk) 03:13, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Couldn't we have an either-or limit? Either X attend or Y are members. Honestly since this list is getting to big to be useful, why not bump up the limit (I will start a new section for this point, comment there).>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 13:56, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's tricky. Many non-denominational churches no longer have formal "membership", thus no membership numbers. Outreach magazine, which is one of the leading sources in the area of size and growth, uses attendence figures for their annual issue about size and growth. I agree though that this list is getting too big to be useful. Niteshift36 (talk) 14:35, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with clarifying reporting numbers. I work with four numbers constantly: Official Members, Regular Adult Attendees, Average Weekend Attendance (headcount), and Children. Children counts could be included in Total Attendees and/or Average Weekend Attendance. (Communications Director of Bethel Church, Redding, CA)12.183.161.34 (talk) 00:36, 22 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Megachurch[edit]

The whole scheme here seems to favor a certain styles of churches, megachurches, over other "more traditional" styles. For instance, at a liturgical tradition, the individual "pastor" is not so important he would be included in the list. I suggest we simply rename the list "Megachurches." this point was lost above due to a side point about membership numbers for one certain church. (Or it may even be helpful to start a separate list for non-megachurches.) I would use this definition of megachurch which seems reliable but what do you all think?>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 13:56, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I don't agree that this favors certain churches. In just the first few repeat links I removed yesterday, I found over 20 different denominations (inc. non-denominational). I'm sure that number will rise as I work down the list. I'd submit that what you are seeing isn't a preference or favor here, but a shift in the US church communities. Many "traditional" churches are on the decline in attendence. I also think your statement about how individual "pastors" (why the need for scare quotes?) isn't as important in liturgical tradition sounds like a criticism of churches that have a strong lead pastor and an implication that it's a pride thing. I could be wrong, but that's the vibe I got. Niteshift36 (talk) 14:35, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • For something like the Episcopal Church the Diocese would be more important than the Pastor. (I quoted "Pastor" above to indicate that was a quote from the article, nothing else.) As well, I'm Catholic and will soon be a priest, God-willing. I know that the evangelicals are beating the mainline churches big time. However, seeing St. X Catholic Church and many nearby traditional Methodist or Episcopalian churches many seem like they would have 2,000+ members just with a glance at the neighborhood Catholic church with many more than that which is not much bigger. However, they don't seem to friendly about publishing stats and I haven't the time to check every suburban parish for numbers. I will leave you to this, and try to start the list of biggest Catholic Parishes in the USA which is what I was looking for in the first place went I was lead to this page.>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 19:15, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rightmost column[edit]

What should the rightmost column heading be? A church may describe itself as Non-denominational, Episcopal, Fundamentalist, Evangelical etc. Terms like these may describe

  • Affiliation, organisation,
  • Beliefs, creed, dogma
  • Purpose, goals, activities

All seem relevant. "Orientation" does not seem to capture the concepts. "Denomination" seems to narrow. "Description" invites verbiage that would not fit the table format. Opinions? Aymatth2 (talk) 01:59, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect link[edit]

The article linked by Young Nak Presbyterian Church is not the one referred to in the article. It is actually the original YN church, from which YN Presbyterian Church of LA branched off of. Some members of the original congregation in Seoul, Korea immigrated to Los Angeles and founded a new Young Nak Church there. 99.38.133.87 (talk) 03:41, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have fixed the link - now a redlink. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:06, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Outdated[edit]

The attendance/membership numbers are mostly cited as taken from the 2008 Outreach Magazine "Outreach 100" list of the largest churches in the US. This is an annual report, and the most recent edition is 2010. (http://www.outreachmagazine.com/magazine/recent-issues/3762-The-2010-Outreach-100.html) Is there any way to pull these in bulk, or do they have to be updated individually?


Menlo Church should be on the list [John Ortberg] as the church had 3400 members in 2014 and 4400 per weekend in attendance. Menlo.church. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.24.24.150 (talk) 13:41, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Doctors[edit]

Why are only five or six of these pastors listed as "Doctor" when many, if not most have either earned a Theological Doctorate at a seminary or been granted an honorary doctorate by some institution somewhere? Most of these guys are "Doctors" so how come only a handful are listed as such? It might be more reasonable to remove that title from all of their names. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.189.167.13 (talk) 21:33, 20 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A lot is likely because of the way they are commonly addressed. Some of the doctorates may be honorary. Some may not have a reliable source as a reference. And some may just be out of date. If you have updates, please be WP:BOLD and put them in.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:20, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is 2,000 the right limit[edit]

We have set this list to be limited at 2,000. Right now the list is loosing its usefulness since it is getting so big. I would like to suggest that we either move the limit to 5,000 or we cut the list into two sections at 5,000. It would seem that then the list would focus on the truly largest not just include every large suburban church as it seems to be tending towards.>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 14:25, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

PDF - options to make it a reliable source[edit]

Since Episcopalian Parishes were not included, I e-mailed their research assistant.

I was trying to add some Episcopalian parishes to the list of biggest protestant Churches in the US on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_Protestant_churches_in_the_United_States). Unfortunately it is hard to track down the information. This page (http://www.generalconvention.org/gc/parochial_reports) lists you as the contact person for that information. I was hoping that you could point me to where I could find a list or that you could post it online in a domain owned by the Episcopalian Church. It could either be a complete list or a list of the biggest parishes (for the Wikipedia list, the limit is 2,000 registered members).

She responded with a PDF that lists about 50 parishes, however she did not post it on their website as asked. She noted that this is based on 2011 numbers but I believe that is current enough for this list. And the numbers are exact: 2004 is the smallest over 2000. I want to respond to her. Is asking that they publish it on their site the only way to make it a reliable source? Could I instead post it on wikisource or somewhere else? Would I need her permission for this?

I will paste a link to this section on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard.>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 15:20, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The PDF is just another e-mail, and fails our requirement for verifiability. Even if it were published on their website, I think this still falls under self-published sources, and would not meet our standards of reliable sourcing. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:45, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I figured this was coming, as I preemptively mentioned above. I agree with Mike's assessment. Niteshift36 (talk) 20:45, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To User:Orangemike, a huge chuck of the references in this article rely on WP:ABOUTSELF (which allows self-published sources to be used). These references link to the website of X church saying it has Y members. The congregational body publishing a list of the biggest parishes (what such a PDF is) if online would be permissible a fortiori because it has less interest in self-promotion (i.e. we are more sure of the first criteria) and has the data-collection methodology listed online (listed at http://www.generalconvention.org/gc/parochial_reports and links from this page) unlike the others who simply state their membership (i.e. it is closer to a 3rd party source). I doubt any of us would find any problem with the 5 criteria for WP:ABOUTSELF in this case were it published online (I agree e-mails are not verifiable, obviously). If you disagree, please tell me which of the 5 criteria it would not meet, and then explain why the 30+ self-published sources already in the article should not be removed.>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 09:48, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why are we even discussing SPS, when WP:V is the first issue here. Niteshift36 (talk) 13:59, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If posting it on the website of the Episcopalian Church solves WP:V, would we still have a WP:SPS issue that would invalidate this material? That is my question which I believe the answer is no but you two bring into doubt. I believe if I explained it to this lady, she would post it on their website; but if we're going to reject it anyways, I don't think I'm being fair asking her to post it (considering in such organizations she probably needs to get approval from somebody else). You accepted them as a source above for St. Martin's but here you bring it into doubt. (p.s. I'm using usernames since I know User:Orangemike is a top editor who may not see this on his watchlist but if I name him the new system should give him a second alert.)>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 16:52, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • So they send you an email and then post the email to you on their own website? Niteshift36 (talk) 17:58, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't care if they post the actual e-mail. The file I'm after is the attachment which is a chart on their letterhead showing all Episcopalian parishes with over 2,000 members. (If you want to see it, I could upload it as a media file to my blog and link it from here.) It looks almost like this page except it lacks the column pastor (I think google searching the parishes would bring this up simply and again I believe WP:ABOUTSELF is fine for identifying the pastor of church). Even theoretically, I could simply use this PDF to google the parishes and find the same number (or something more general like "over 3,000") on half of the individual parish sites. Is the use of WP:ABOUTSELF approved if WP:V is resolved? Does posting a PDF on the congregations website qualify as WP:V? (As a side note: my theology exams are coming up and I have listed myself as attempting a wikibreak on my talk page so I will become a little slower in responding.)>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 08:24, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Personally, I don't have an issue with using numbers from a church website as a basis for inclusion on this list. However, a list of simply "over 3,000" posted somewhere, without specific numbers for each church would make me uncomfortable. Part of the purpose of this list is to show the size and allow for comparisons. 2,001 and 15,000 are both over 2,000, but very different numbers. Just saying "over x" doesn't really tell us what we are looking for. Niteshift36 (talk) 13:11, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'll go ahead and see if they will publish this. As a rule of thumb (since numbers are self-promotion), I would guess any church / parish that says over X could be cited at that since they probably have only a few more (if it says "over 3,500 members" it doesn't have 4,000 or else it would list that so listing 3,500 here is probably sufficiently accurate - in fact most of the churches listed here have much rougher estimates that the Episcopalians).>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 17:00, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is possible to go to the Episcopal Church website and pull up a chart for any extant parish showing membership and ASA over the past ten years; these do not have number printed on them but one can at least verify approximate values. There are three major caveats to this. Parishes which left the church have wildly inaccurate numbers because of the dispute over whether they can actually leave. It is common in those cases for the diocese to report old inaccurate values which make the replacement parish look much larger than it actually is for some years; also if the parish revival isn't successful it is impossible to pull up a chart. The second issue is that for most of its life Washington National Cathedral was not considered a formal parish and thus had a membership consisting precisely of the dean and his wife, and the bishop and his wife. Several years back they decided that this was ridiculous and started recording the cathedral as a normal parish. This instantly vaulted it to the top of the attendance list, but the record keeping on membership has yet to catch up with the change, so the cathedral chart shows a steeply climbing membership when what is really happening is that the effective membership is gradually being recorded. Finally, the PDFs showing the charts are dynamically generated and don't have fixed names, so it is not possible to permalink to them for citing. Mangoe (talk) 12:32, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Where and how can this be done on their site? I searched for half an hour and came up empty.>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 13:27, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Go to this page and go to the bottom, where there is a selector. For any given church you need to know what diocese it's in, so you select that first; then the other drop-down will be populated with a list of all parishes in that diocese, sorted by name; finally, you click on "view church chart" to get a PDF. So for instance to see the National Cathedral graph you select "Washington" for the diocese and "Cathedral of St. Peter & St. Paul" for the church. All of this stuff used to be very easy to find a few years back, when "Research and Statistics" was a selection directly off a main page index; but the redesign mushed all this into a menu item titled "our congregations". Mangoe (talk) 13:40, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Requiring them to know the diocese is makes it tougher to work with, doesn't it? BTW, I'd note that as of 2011, that source shows the National Cathedral attendance at around 1650, which is consistent with what has been said all along (and disputed). Niteshift36 (talk) 14:24, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

copied from PDF[edit]

The PDF is a table. Here is the text copied from it. You can grab the dioceses from it. I could upload it to some site if that's needed.

Diocese Name City State Members as of 2011 Texas St Martins Episcopal Church Houston TX 8480
Los Angeles All Saints Episcopal Church Pasadena CA 7715
Dallas St Michael & All Angels Church Dallas TX 7180
Atlanta Cathedral of St Philip Atlanta GA 6119
Florida Christ Episcopal Church Ponte Vedra Beach FL 5842
New York St Bartholomews Church New York NY 5262
Texas St John the Divine Episcopal Church Houston TX 4671
Dallas Church of the Incarnation Dallas TX 4357
North Carolina Christ Episcopal Church Charlotte NC 4345
Virginia St Stephens Church Richmond VA 4073
Washington St Columbas Episcopal Church Washington DC 3957
Alabama Cathedral Church of the Advent Birmingham AL 3744
Texas Christ Church Cathedral Houston TX 3737
Upper South Carolina Trinity Cathedral Church Columbia SC 3712
Upper South Carolina Christ Episcopal Church Greenville SC 3455
Long Island Church of St Mark Brooklyn NY 3340
Tennessee St Georges Episcopal Church Nashville TN 3274
Maryland Church of the Redeemer Baltimore MD 3257
Pennsylvania St David Episcopal Church Wayne PA 3249
Atlanta All Saints Episcopal Church Atlanta GA 3182
New York St James Church New York NY 3148
Texas The Church of the Good Shepherd Austin TX 3141
Los Angeles All Saints Episcopal Parish Beverly Hills CA 3034
North Carolina St Johns Episcopal Church Charlotte NC 3017
Texas Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church Houston TX 2872
North Carolina St Pauls Episcopal Church Winston Salem NC 2867
Connecticut St Luke Episcopal Church Darien CT 2839
Alabama St Lukes Episcopal Church Birmingham AL 2802
North Carolina Christ Episcopal Church Raleigh NC 2704
Virginia St Jamess Church Richmond VA 2700
South Carolina St Philips Church Charleston SC 2677
Central Gulf Coast St Pauls Episcopal Church Mobile AL 2665
Olympia St Marks Episcopal Cathedral Seattle WA 2590
New York St Thomas Church Fifth Avenue New York NY 2580
Mississippi St James Episcopal Church Jackson MS 2551
Louisiana Trinity Episcopal Church New Orleans LA 2529
Massachusetts Trinity Church Episcopal Boston MA 2528
Colorado St Johns Episcopal Cathedral Denver CO 2513
Virginia St Pauls Church Alexandria VA 2497
Virginia Christ Church Alexandria VA 2488
Texas St Davids Episcopal Church Austin TX 2386
Virginia Christ Episcopal Church Glen Allen VA 2383
North Carolina Holy Trinity Episcopal Church Greensboro NC 2373
Pennsylvania Church of the Redeemer Bryn Mawr PA 2367
Kansas St Michael and All Angels Church Mission KS 2319
Los Angeles St Michaels Episcopal Church Anaheim CA 2305
Dallas Church of the Transfiguration Dallas TX 2297
Louisiana St James Episcopal Church Baton Rouge LA 2297
Atlanta Holy Innocents Episcopal Church Atlanta GA 2246
Massachusetts St Andrews Episcopal Church Wellesley MA 2238
Chicago Church of the Holy Spirit Lake Forest IL 2229
East Carolina St James Episcopal Church Wilmington NC 2188
South Carolina Grace Episcopal Church Charleston SC 2172
California Grace Cathedral San Francisco CA 2143
Tennessee Christ Church Cathedral Nashville TN 2141
Ohio St Pauls Church Akron OH 2140
Central Florida All Saints Episcopal Church Winter Park FL 2103
Central Gulf Coast Christ Episcopal Church Pensacola FL 2100
Virginia Church of the Good Shepherd Burke VA 2090
Maryland St Annes Episcopal Parish Annapolis MD 2078
Pennsylvania La Iglesia de Christo y San Ambrosio Philadelphia PA 2076
Connecticut Christ Church Greenwich Greenwich CT 2069
Virginia Church of the Holy Comforter Vienna VA 2055
Atlanta St Lukes Episcopal Church Atlanta GA 2050
West Texas Christ Episcopal Church San Antonio TX 2048
Long Island St Augustines Episcopal Church Brooklyn NY 2045
Virginia St Marys Church Richmond VA 2042
New Jersey Trinity Episcopal Church Princeton NJ 2019
El Camino Real St Andrew Episcopal Church Saratoga CA 2011
Florida St Mark Episcopal Church Jacksonville FL 2004

Hopefully that helps; I need to study for my theology exams.>> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 16:35, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • You know what? This is getting silly. Every entry on that list must have a reliable source or it is subject to removal. Enough said. Niteshift36 (talk) 16:49, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 21 March 2017[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved the consensus is that the current list is about individual congregations/parishes/local churches, not about larger denominational structures. (non-admin closure) TonyBallioni (talk) 00:23, 29 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

List of the largest Protestant churches in the United States → List of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States – Per WP:Consistency - compare List of Christian denominations, List of Christian denominations by number of members, List of the largest Protestant denominations, etc. Reasons: neutrality and circumference of definition. Chicbyaccident (talk) 18:01, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Strong oppose. Apparently the nominator has misunderstood this article - it is a list of congregations. StAnselm (talk) 20:18, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - per StAnselm --Temp87 (talk) 20:52, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Protestant is denomination.Your mean is Protestant have many denominations in United States?--Tr56tr (talk) 10:39, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This is a list of individual churches/congregations, not a list of denominations. The churches on this list belong to a variety of different Protestant denominations, and many claim to be nondenominational. Orlady (talk) 18:25, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Misunderstanding. "Protestantism" may be regarded as a denomination. So does its subcategories, for instance "Baptism". So does the "Baptist Church of the Holy Trinity" etc. If by "church" you mean denomination, then denomination is the consensus for Wikipedia of that meaning. If you mean congregations, why doesn't this article then change name to "List of the largest Protestant congregations in the United States"? (Hint: probably because you and others don't think "congration" is a good enough catch-all word for the contents of the list - thus meaning "denominations" would be more suitable). See also: "Although not all Christian traditions are comfortable with being termed as denominations, it is nonetheless common usage." - Category:Christian denominations - Chicbyaccident (talk) 11:32, 25 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Requested move 30 September 2017[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move to alternative title List of megachurches in the United States. Cúchullain t/c 14:18, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]


List of the largest Protestant churches in the United States → List of Protestant churches in the United States – Having size being the default order of the list, since no list of other ordering exists. Chicbyaccident (talk) 09:45, 30 September 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. DrStrauss talk 21:10, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • A list of all Protestant churches in the U.S., which the proposed title would imply, would seem untenable. As it is, over 1300 churches apparently qualify for the list. Station1 (talk) 20:25, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Oppose - needs to be restricted in scope. Could possibly be renamed to List of Protestant churches in the United States by size, but I think the current title is preferable. StAnselm (talk) 03:38, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • The lead for this article says "largest megachurch churches", which is 2,000 or more people attending each weekend according to Megachurch. I agree with Station1 that the proposed title would be untenable. It seems the current title is sufficient for the content. DoctorG  (talk) 17:04, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The proposed list would be unmanageable and to many low-end and mobile users, uneditable and perhaps even unviewable. The subcategories of Category:Churches in the United States already do the job required. Andrewa (talk) 22:08, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Please note that the proposal doesn't intend to change the scope or its qualifier, but merely confirm these conventions in the same contents under a shorter name. Chicbyaccident (talk) 10:39, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I would support also the alternative List of Protestant megachurches in the United States. As for the other concerns of restricted scope addressed above, I also support retainging a minimal membership qualification, although I would consider that a question of content and not of article title. The article rename request was out of brevity concern in accordance with WP:Article name. Chicbyaccident (talk) 23:22, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
According to the megachurch article, megachurches are by definition Protestant, so it's unnecessary to include it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:55, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Necrothesp's suggestion is a good one, that title is better than the curren one and better that the originally proposed one. I support moving it to List of megachurches in the United States DoctorG  (talk) 20:44, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
OK, support ALT. Chicbyaccident (talk) 21:16, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Additional editing of list needs to take place to insure "average weekly attendance" is used and not "membership".[edit]

Some of these churches listed are based on membership and not "average weekly attendance". One example I've noticed is the Woodlands United Methodist Church in The Woodlands (Spring), TX. It was listed at 13,000 which, if correct, would be the largest U M church in average attendance in the U S. It is not; the average attendance was approximately 5200 or so as I recall. It is less than 50% of the average attendance of the largest U M, Resurrection located in the greater Kansas City area.


Another issue based on attendance is defining attendance. I agree attendance at regular church wide worship times is the most reasonable indicator of mega church status. Clarification of whether or not the church is a multi-site location is important as well as whether they are including count based on video feed attendance to a larger audience (outside of their regular actual attendees who are viewing a specific day from home) as this may be very misleading toward churches who large area or national T V programming. As far as defining attendance; some churches may only report adult member/visitor attendance or report "family unit attendance or membership" rather than including inclusive attendance of their worship attendance hours which would then include children's and youth programming, specialty programming like special needs, deaf, multi-language, etc. It should not include all events such as Bible studies or other programming during a calendar week but including regularly scheduled worship events outside their specific location such as a church plant, a community center or extended care facility held weekly is appropriate, in my opinion. It's long been a practice in a church's propensity to inflate any figure they publish such as not updating "membership roles" to on a regular basis to include those who still attend the church or never requested that a membership be transferred or removed, as one example. The megachurches specifically within some/many of the larger denominations are very "competitive" in this arena within their respective denomination.

Bob East bob.east@outlook.com sign-in name: bobeast77365 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bobeast77365 (talk • contribs) 15:40, 17 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Update Needed[edit]

This list is in need of a comprehensive review and refresh using reliable sources. For example, a cursory glance reveals at least three ministers (Tim Keller, Michael Ross, and James McDonald) that are no longer serving as pastors at the listed churches. I have added an update template to the top of the page until these issues can be fixed. I'll work on it a bit myself as time allows. Uncle Dick (talk) 02:13, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to be making edits based on Hartford Institute's database, and if there are other sources that are listed for the specific churches. These will not be for Ministers, but removing a number of unsourced churches that do not indicate they are Megachurches and updating the number of attendees.--VVikingTalkEdits 14:52, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

McLean Bible Church[edit]

McLean Bible Church is incorrectly listed as a member of a denomination. The church's website has a specific clarification stating that it is non-denominational (https://mcleanbible.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/SBC_Letter.pdf) and the Wikipedia page for the church McLean Bible Church was correct until the same user changed it this morning, listing it as non-denominational. I have tried to update this list but a that user has reverted my change twice, claiming a conflict of interest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bolt in blue (talk • contribs) 14:04, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Bolt in blue: Your first edit was without a source. Your second supplied a "source" in the edit summary, but honestly, affiliated with SBC seems more correct than non-denominational. The third edit adds a bare ref to the pdf, but it's not really a good source anyhow, and does state that they are affiliated with SBC.
@Viewmont Viking: How do you see it? Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:09, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Walter Görlitz: First, my apologies for my edit not being up to standards. I did not realize a source was required as most of the non-denominational listings don't give a source. Let me give some background here. There are a few members who appear to not be happy with the current leadership (lead pastor and elders) and one of them is trying to get them removed. Their main charge is that one of the current lead pastors has inappropriately joined the church to the SBC. That's why there is a lot of sensitivity right now over any denominational affiliation. There have been several lengthy messages about what is going on that have been sent to the entire church mailing list over the past week, but the PDF of the SBC's response is the only one available outside of messages sent to the church. Given that the church constitution reads "The Church shall not, and cannot, be affiliated with any denomination, but shall remain independent for the promotion of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Constitution Article I, Section 2, as found in the McLean Bible Church Membership Handbook, p . 47), I think it is clear how the church wishes to be seen with regard to the SBC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bolt in blue (talk • contribs) 19:11, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the clarification. The biggest problem with this article is lack of references. I'll argue that some existing entries are "grandfathered" into the article in this state, but I would like to see more sourcing. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:16, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Walter Görlitz: It doesn't really matter what the church wants to call itself, it is what the reliable sources consider it. (Complete example - The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints probably does like being referred to as a polygamous cult however that is what the RS often refer to it as.) As I stated earlier on @Bolt in blue:'s talk page "Duck, Mr. Platt was leader of the SBC and president of the IMB. In addition Mclean Church is affiliated with the SBC on all three levels of affiliation local, state, and national. Walks, Quacks, and Swims like a duck with RS.
Based on the sources "affiliated with" or "associated with" would be the best options all things considered VVikingTalkEdits 16:15, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not ping me. This article is on my watchlist.
Unless you can find a RS that refutes the claim that they are only affiliated with SBC and not a full member, I tend to agree with Bolt in blue, even though the source is primary. Walter Görlitz (talk) 16:18, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I will not ping you again, my apologies. Finally I will go with what is felt correct by others. Thank you bolt for bringing this to the talk page. I agree with Walter that this article has some issues as far as references. I know I worked on this article a while ago to clean it up a little, but it still needs help. VVikingTalkEdits 16:24, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. See. Now I'm at the top of my watchlist.
Again, I'm not 100% convinced that they are not SBC, but the only source we have makes the claim they are not members ... Walter Görlitz (talk) 16:30, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Inclusion Criteria and Sourcing[edit]

I just arrived on this page. There is a lot of unsourced information on here! This is a mammoth project, and hats off to those of you trying to diligently maintain this list. But... it all needs to be sourced. User:MPSchneiderLC made a point above that the list is unworkable at an inclusion criterion of 2000 and maybe this should be raised. I would definitely suggest that is done for the following reasons:

1. The list is currently not very useful to the uninitiated. It is just too big; 2. Everything needs sourcing and although there are 182 citations, there is a lot missing here; and 3. What is even the purpose of this list? Other than seeing your own church moving up and down the league, what is anyone even supposed to get from this? Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 20:43, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The definition of megachurch is pretty standard at 2000 people. But note that the first sentence says "This is a list of the largest megachurches..." (emphasis mine). That implies that not all megachurches qualify. I would be happy to have the cut-off at 10,000. I note that this article uses 10,000+ as a category. StAnselm (talk) 23:32, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I concur with User:StAnselm that 10,000 sounds like a decent limit, even though I suggested 5,000 above. Doing my own counting (I may be off by 1 or 2), I get 111 churches with over 10,000 average weekly attendance. Usually, list articles of "biggest" or similar have a cut-off at 50-150 items as beyond that the list often ceases to be as informative. Every church of that size is notable enough for its own article (I would guess any church with 5000 av weekly attendance by that factor alone is noteworthy, and some smaller megachurches may be noteworthy for other reasons).
Also, agreeing with User:Sirfurboy about sourcing, I would take off every unsourced Church, BUT I would check the Church's Wikipedia page before I delete any due to lack of sourcing, and maybe even do a quick off-Wikipedia check. For example, the biggest unsourced one is Church of the Highlands, but its own page provides sources for attendance figures.
I think reducing the list to churches with 10,000+ would make tracking down the missing references manageable.
Off-Wikipedia, I'm prepping to start teaching a semester at a new university next week so don't have the time to do edits myself. >> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 15:15, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks both for this. I too am going into the busy new semester, but even though I could do this work (fair enough as proposer), I also want to proceed with caution as the proposal is major and I would like other interested editors a chance to object before doing so.
The proposal is as follows:
Two new inclusion criteria should be applied of:
  1. weekly membership of 10,000
  2. Entry must be sourced
to be included in this list. Smaller churches will no longer be included and will be removed. Larger churches and those on the 10,000 borderline will not be removed until adequate work has been undertaken to source figures, but no new unsourced entries will be allowed. This will bring the list down to accepted Wikipedia list sizes and also deal with the sourcing issue and allow removal of the maintenance tag.
If anyone objects to this, please say so. I will not touch the article for at least another week and I can wait longer if anyone feels it necessary. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:21, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good to me. >> M.P.Schneider,LC (parlemus • feci) 23:11, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is now done. I have left in all churches over 9,000 for now, subject to verificaton. I updated the lead. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:24, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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