Long Run

In the short run of a few years, a successful church can reach many more people than individual believers. In that context, it can make sense for believers to invite potential new believers to a church service aimed at thousands, where they can hear the Gospel.

In the long run of a decade or more, an effort to help believers become disciple-makers—and what’s more, to become makers of disciple-makers—can scale to something that far outstrips the capacity of an individual church.

• Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul is probably the largest single church in the world, with about 800,000 members.
• The largest church auditorium is the Glory Dome in Abuja, Nigeria, with seating for 100,000 in a single service.
• ChatGPT tells me there is one bigger auditorium: Rungrado 1st of May stadium in Pyongyang can reportedly seat 114,000.
• More realistically, the largest megachurch auditorium in America seats 16,800.

Those are huge numbers. It’s hard to top them. But in 7 generations (see the previous post), a movement could have over 60,000 disciples—bigger than the biggest amphitheater in America. In 9 generations, it would be bigger than the biggest church.

In the short run, a 1,000-member movement is bigger than the average church in America, but many churches are larger. In the long run, movements have the capacity to grow larger than any individual church and most denominations.