Giga Church
It wasn’t long ago that the word “mega-church”came into existence. The definition of a mega church usually refers to Protestant Churches over 2000 in worship. Prior to the 1970’s there were just a handful of mega churches.
Since the late 1970s the number of mega churches has increased. The past twenty years the number has escalated. Now the number is exponentially increasing, some 2 1/2 new mega churches every two days or so. For more info on the mega church click here.
What is interesting to note is that when the mega church grows to more than 5,000 it usually starts growing faster. So I coined a new word for churches over 10,000 in worship during an interview with the Washington Post in 2004 - the “giga Church.”
Over the next ten years we will more and more giga churches and will need another word for them. I think”Tera Churches” would do (not my term). Tera churches are those over 50,000 in worship. So far in the U.S. there appears to be only one such church - Lakewood in Houston, TX. I think we will see many more of these churches as the multi-site concept spreads across the U.S.
What implications do you see for the rise of the “giga” and “tera” churches?