Megaparishes

In the latest issue of Peter Brierly’s Futurefirst, there was an interesting piece of data: there are 1,750 megachurches in the United States, “all Protestant and most evangelical.”

Curious, I asked Google, “are there no Catholic megachurches?” and discovered the answer is: “it depends on the definition.”

“Megachurch” is a term used to describe Protestant definitions. However, there are many Roman Catholic parishes (Wikipedia says over 3,000) that would meet the definition of a megachurch (over 2,000 attenders).

• St Ann’s (Coppell, TX) apparently has over 30,000 registered parishioners.
• Google says the average Catholic parish has nearly 6,000 members, and 2,000 attending a Sunday mass is typical.

So while the ‘megachurch’ concept often has specifically Protestant evangelical connotations, the reality is that there are nearly twice as many Catholic services that would fit the same size criterion. I rarely hear about them (but then, not being Catholic, it may be that I don’t move in the right literature circles).